Million Mile Road Trip

by Rudy Rucker

  “So Nunu is my relative?” cries Zoe. Another shriek of laughter escapes her. “I’m sorry, Maisie, but I’m utterly and completely losing my mind. Put me in the rubber room. Get me a straitjacket.”

  “Nunu is your half-sister’s half-sister,” says Maisie calmly. “So you’re still inviolate and without stain—okay? The Immaculate Zoe Snapp. As for my mother Meemaw—another reason not to mock her is that she’s handicapped. Some narwhals attacked her two years ago when she was on vacation in Surf World. The narwhals didn’t kill Meemaw, but she has scars now, and she flies crooked. Kind of sad.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” says Zoe.

  “Dad still loves her, and so do I, and Pa Saucer likes her too. Anyway, you better start the car. Because I’m picking up vibes from Uncle Boldog. He’s not far. I totally hate him, by the way. He sold himself to Groon on purpose, just to get paid some extra smeel. So it’s perfectly fine with me if you and the Flatsies kill him. But I don’t want to be here when it happens. Or somehow I’ll get blamed.”

  “How would the Flatsies kill Boldog?”

  “They do this special routine with the narwhals and a ziggurat wave. Boldog should know about that, but he’s too dumb to inform himself. Have you ever noticed that stupid people never doubt themselves?”

  “I doubt myself a lot,” says Zoe. “Especially I keep wondering if I should bail on the million mile road trip and go back to Van Cott and tunnel home to Los Perros.”

  “Listen to me and go to Szep City,” urges Maisie. “Do it! And now please start the car.”

  “Why is everyone pushing for Szep City?” complains Zoe. The purple whale’s dark-energy engine pops into life. Pinchley didn’t get around to taking off those paddle fins last night, but that’s okay. She bumps quietly along the beach towards the snoozers by the Flatsies’ dead fire.

  “I don’t know why I have to explain this over and over again,” says Maisie. “Goob-goob says that if you go see Lady Filippa she’ll have a special wand. Lady Filippa is an Aristo, which is a big deal. And supposedly an Aristo’s wand is good against saucers. I’m not exactly sure what the wands are. I do know that they’re alive, and that they won’t actually help you unless they meet you and approve of you. The other big thing is that you need to connect with Goob-goob while you’re in Szep City. With Goob-goob on our side, we’ll really have a chance.”

  “A chance at what exactly?” Zoe holds herself back from screaming this into Maisie’s face. “Sorry to be slow, but I’m not able to guess the parts that none of you ever bothers to tell me.”

  “Here we go again,” says Maisie. “You should learn to listen when people talk to you, Zoe. Groon wants tens of thousands of his slave saucers to invade Earth, and then he wants to crawl over to Earth himself—greedy, skungy, scrotum-like bagpipe that he is. Earth will become a planet of zombies. A race with no wit and no love. Even more than now.”

  “Okay, I remember,” says Zoe. “And this when I say it’s too dangerous for me to go to Szep City.”

  “You won’t die,” says Maisie. “You, Villy, Scud, and me are cosmic heroes. We can’t lose. We’re living myths.”

  “Even Scud?” protests Zoe, although she does like the idea that she herself might be mythic.

  “There he is,” says Maisie, her voice soft. They’ve reached the spot where Scud lies asleep beside Pinchley and Yampa. The two Szep are twined around each other like a pair of woody vines.

  “I’ve come to think of those two Szep as cute,” says Zoe.

  “Scud’s cute too,” says Maisie. “Even if he is a year younger than me.”

  “Hate to repeat myself, but—Scud?”

  “In some ways Scud’s like me,” says Maisie. “A complete outsider. And we both like fossils.”

  “I didn’t know you liked Scud.”

  “Oh—you,” says Maisie. “There’s a lot about me you don’t know. You just think about yourself, and not about your family.”

  “Let me try and fake it,” says Zoe. “Just now you told me that my dad’s really and truly alive. He lives in New Eden with a hot but decrepit flying saucer named Meemaw. And Meemaw is my half-sister’s mother.” And now Zoe’s giggles are starting up again.

  “Our father is working with the good saucers for a revolution,” says Maisie, her voice firm. “This really isn’t funny, Zoe.”

  Zoe gives Maisie a rambunctious shove, and finally Maisie lets up and starts laughing with her.

  “All this crazy shit you told me,” says Zoe after a bit. “I feel like I just watched a two-hour movie in ten seconds.”

  Abruptly Maisie hugs Zoe. “I’m so glad I told you. My whole life, it’s been like nobody can see me. And now I have my sister for true.”

  “I’m happy,” says Zoe. “And now? Any more advice?”

  “You have to kill Meatball,” says Maisie, turning intense. “If Uncle Boldog doesn’t kill you, then Meatball will. That’s her mission. Her and the Iravs. You have to kill them all.”

  “Pinchley might find a way to do them in,” says Zoe, studying the gnarly, sleeping Szep. “He’s tough.”

  “And be nice to Scud,” puts in Maisie. Unexpectedly she kneels down and kisses the sleeping boy on his cheek, and then on the mouth. Scud shifts, smiles, murmurs—and keeps sleeping.

  “I’ve wanted to do that all year,” adds Maisie, getting to her feet. Valentine hearts flicker on the rim of skin around her waist. “Can’t you see at all that Scud’s lovable?”

  “Scud? He’s too young.”

  “Stop that. He’s almost a junior. One year younger than me. So what?”

  “So—let it be Scud,” says Zoe. “I honor your decision, sis.” Although privately she still has doubts about ever being nice to Scud.

  “We need to wrap this up,” says Maisie. “Boldog draws nigh. We’ll connect in New Eden or Van Cott. I’m glad to be important for once. I may be half saucer, but I’m fully on Earth’s side. And I’m telling you, Zoe, if you don’t get that wand, Earth’s going under.”

  “Got it.”

  Zoe studies Maisie, her mousy hair and her intent, modest expression. She’s odd, but, yes, Maisie is a person like Zoe, hoping to fit in, longing for love, wanting to do right. Full of hopes for her upcoming senior year.

  “I’m sorry I’ve been cold to you at school,” Zoe adds.

  “I understand you better than you realize,” says Maisie. “You’re not as bad as you want people to think. You were nice to me plenty of times.”

  “Sisters,” says Zoe.

  “Sistahs!” echoes Maisie with that accent she puts on. She raises her hand. “Gimme five!”

  A slap of their hands and Maisie goes on her way, a cryptic moth flying low across the dim waves, clutching her pair of folded Neptune’s tablecloths to her chest and holding her purse that has—Zoe now realizes—a big saucer pearl inside.

  19: Riding the Ridge

  SCUD

  Someone is shaking Scud. He has sand in his eyes. His head hurts. Last night—he was dancing with the gingerbread men and the Szep. Chugging tuj while the Szep ate chocolate. Madclaw with his saucer pearl. Madclaw told him how to use a pearl to fly. Upsy downsy inside out. Like looking at rotating cube and flipping its perspective? Aside from all that, there was something more important. In Scud’s dreams, a girl had kissed him.

  “Wake up, idiot!”

  It’s Zoe, poking him with her foot. Bitch. Why doesn’t she like him? It’s still dark. Pinchley and Yampa are standing over him too.

  “Scud!” Weird-smelling Yampa leans down to his face. She’s worried. Pulling on his arm. “You are able to arise?”

  What a question. With some effort, Scud gets onto all fours and—retches onto the sand. His stomach spasms two more times and then it’s empty.

  “Get him in the car!” says Zoe. “That killer saucer’s almost here.”

  Pinchley and Yampa walk Scud towards the monster-wheeled whale.

  “I can do it myself!” says Scud, twisting free and clambering into the ba
ck seat with the Szep. Away from Zoe. His pulse is pounding in his brain, like tuj, tuj, tuj. Yampa hands him a pod of water. Thank you.

  The car roars, cruises, stops. Zoe runs into a hut, screams at someone for a while, then comes back with Villy, who’s clearly in a bad mood. He swings into the front seat next to Zoe. Zoe peels out and slews the car onto a mountain trail resembling a fire road.

  “What’s the panic?” Scud asks the company at large.

  “Zoe says a big saucer is flying here to zap us,” goes Villy as the car rumbles around a first bend. “Nunu’s Uncle Boldog? Maybe he’ll spare you, Scud. Since you’re in the family and like that. Careful, Zoe. These are serious cliffs. You’re driving like a crazy person.”

  “Jerk,” says Zoe. “Why am I even saving you?”

  “Because you think you own me?” says Villy, his voice cold.

  “You don’t love me one bit, do you? Stupid gearhead surfer test-flunker.”

  With the paddle-fins still on the tires, the car is vibrating really hard. In Scud’s opinion, Zoe’s driving very well: accelerating on the straight bits, doing stuttery four-wheel skids in the hairpin turns, and monster-trucking over obstructive boulders. But he doesn’t say that to Villy.

  Way down below them, the Flatsie village is a cute cluster of lights, as if seen from a plane. The glowing sea slants to the horizon. It’s pale green, streaked with combers, pocked with ziggurats, and—uh-oh. What’s that glowing violet spot?

  “Uncle Boldog,” says Pinchley, also spotting the saucer. “Faster, Zoe.”

  Even though they’re going several hundred miles an hour, Scud opens his window. Above the steady shuddering of the finned tires, he hears the Flatsies in their village. Shouting, chanting, and blatting on that giant seashell horn of theirs. Fwhooooo! They know Boldog’s coming.

  Just as the car’s about to reach the top, Boldog’s zap-ray sizzles into life, hard and white. The ray looks to be aimed at the hut where Zoe and Villy spent the night. The zap beam sizzles for thirty seconds, profligate with its dark energy, digging so deep that—oh wow—an immense thousand-foot facing of stone begins to teeter loose from the very cliff they’re driving on—and there goes the support for the dirt track that the purple whale has been barrel-assing along.

  Zoe screams and mashes the pedal. The paddle-finned tires kick savagely at the loosened plinth. The whale claws its way upward, nimble as a goat, slamming its fins against one ledge after another, scaling the final sixty feet to the cliff’s crest. They come to rest at a weird angle up there, nearly rolling back off the edge, but not quite. Whew. Huge roar from the ongoing avalanche below. But the collapsing face is off to one side, and most of the Flatsies’ village is spared.

  Meanwhile the whale’s overclocked engine has stalled. And frikkin traitor Meatball’s right overhead, blinkety-blinking her light. Calling in the hit. Here they are! Uncle Boldog homes in on them, no doubt recalibrating his death ray as he comes. Tremulous Scud manages to cover his eyes as the zap hits the front end of the whale. But even so, the long flash is so bright that it goes, like, inside his head, under his skin, into his flesh, and through his bones. Relative to the apocalyptic zap, Scud is transparent. A puny microbe doomed to die.

  But then, phht, the light stops. Something’s knocking the fat maroon saucer off-kilter. What? No time to look. Scud’s the first one out of the trashed whale, hitting the ground on all fours with his butt high in the air, running like a primeval hyena.

  The whale’s flaming front tires light the scene. And Scud’s eyes do still work. Looks like Boldog’s blast blew the whole frikkin engine off their car, vaporizing part of the roof as well. Thank god Boldog missed the passenger cabin. Villy’s prized surfboards are charred, melted scraps.

  Scud spots a drop-off just a little way ahead of him—this ridge isn’t more than thirty feet across. Dreading another blast from Boldog, he makes it to the far edge in, like, three seconds.

  Without so much as a downward glance, Scud swings his legs over the edge and lets himself drop. Dwindling downward scream? Naw. He jolts onto a ledge five feet below. A solid, abrupt thud that clacks his teeth. His head is just barely peeking out across the ridge now. He’s like a soldier in a trench. Perf.

  Bloated Boldog is still out there, a Las Vegas-neon-sign shade of lavender, but there’s something screwed up with him, and he’s still not firing a follow-up blast. The ocean beneath him is aglow. Something has just darted up into Boldog’s belly.

  Scud focuses on his companions. “Hey! Over here! Move it!” Villy is leading Zoe by the hand—she’s in a daze—and Yampa’s holding Pinchley’s arm. The four are vague and wobbly.

  For his part, Scud feels sharp and on point. Maybe this is an upside of having a hangover? It’s like the world around him is in slo-mo. He scuttles up onto the ridge and helps the others to his nook, and then the five of them are lined up on the ledge.

  Pinchley is such a grease monkey that he’s already obsessing about fixing the car. He digs into his tool belt and sends a pair of two-inch-long fireman beetles buzzing over to the blazing front tires. The beetles poot out some kind of bio-nano-pixie dust that quenches the flames.

  Meanwhile the Flatsies’ giant alpine horn is steadily booming. And now Scud understands what’s happening to Boldog. A patch of the nearby seawater has flared to luminous yellow-green, chartreuse. It’s a titanic ziggurat right offshore. The Flatsies have mobilized the waves.

  “They’re shooting him!” exclaims Villy, getting the picture. “The ziggurat is spitting narwhals into the air, see? Like submarine-launched missiles. The narwhals are using their fins like wings, and they’re—”

  “Arrowing into Boldog and getting inside him and chewing him to bits!” cries Scud. “Sweet!”

  With a stolid, subsonic groan, Boldog pitches to one side and skims unevenly towards shore. He slams into the beach and bursts—with chittering toothache-white sparks of zap energy dancing across his goo. As with that ocean saucer, the victorious narwhals root in the dead flesh, wheezing to each other, waving their tusks—and now they’re batting the dead saucer’s pearl back and forth. Scud wishes he could get that pearl.

  “Come on and help me with the car,” says Pinchley, interrupting the boy’s reverie. The Szep is already back onto the flat part of the pass. Scud shakes his head. He doesn’t like to say so out loud, but he thinks Pinchley’s crazy. The car is junked.

  Meanwhile the air around them is starting to turn light. Daybreak. No sign of Meatball. She’s wafted off. Readying another ambush? Damn her.

  “Let’s eat breakfast,” goes Villy, pulling himself up off the ledge. “Throw us our packs from the car, Pinchley.”

  So there they are, the five of them—three humans and two Szep—happy to be alive and not all that sure what comes next. Flatsie Pass is yet another triple point, another vertex where three basins meet. One of the three basins is of course Surf World, and the other two are supposed be the homes of the crabs and the Bubblers. This ridgetop trail runs along Surf World, with a fresh branch going off between the two new basins.

  “That’s where we should go,” says Zoe, pointing down the branch trail. “We need to get off the Surf World part of the ridge before another saucer comes. I’d thought we might stay on this ridge, but it’s like being a target in a shooting gallery.”

  Pinchley has thrown Villy and Scud their packs by now, and Villy is digging inside his. “You want a hit of this tom turkey food mint, Zoe? Or roast beet?”

  “I’d like to say yes,” goes Zoe. “But I’m not speaking to you.”

  “Why?” says Villy, actually sounding confused.

  “I, uh—I forget?” says Zoe, and she starts laughing. “Because we yelled at each other in the car? Because we didn’t have sex last night? Because we were fighting about whether to give up and go home?”

  “Look, if you really want to head back to Earth, we can do it,” says Villy, throwing his hands in the air. “Who knows, man. Maybe you’re right. Why should we do a suicide mis
sion? I was overamped last night. Ripped on surf glory.”

  Zoe turns her face towards him like a flower. The glowon dawn’s light is sweet on her skin. Scud hangs back, just plain watching. He’d be happy to look at Zoe all day. Happy to have a girl love him.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Zoe is telling Villy. “I think we should go for Szep City after all. Find Lady Filippa. Get an Aristo wand. Talk to Goob-goob. Stop the saucers.”

  “Yeah,” puts in Scud, longing to be part of their conversation. “Go for epic.”

  “I was talking to Maisie last night,” Zoe tells them. “She pretty much convinced me. She says we’re destined to succeed. And Scud, did you ever know that Maisie has a crush on you? She was looking at you while you were sleeping.”

  Scud flashes on that ghost of a memory he’d woken with. The dream that a girl had kissed him. Maisie. Score! He stands there smiling.

  Zoe studies Scud for a minute, her expression almost kind—but then she flips back to being mean. “The reason Maisie has a lump around her waist? You ever wonder about that, Scud?”

  “I don’t know,” mutters Scud. “I’m not really that observant of, like, girls’ clothes.”

  “That lump is a saucer rim,” says Zoe, slapping down the words like cards on a table. “Maisie is half flying saucer. Maisie and I have the same father, see, but Maisie’s mother Meemaw is a flying saucer. You might say that my father Kirkland is the same kind of perv as you.”

  “I’m not a perv,” says Scud weakly. He’s totally confused. And, wait, did Zoe just say Meemaw? Wasn’t that the name of—

  “Meemaw is Nunu’s mother too,” says Zoe, seeing the question in Scud’s eyes. Zoe looks as happy as a cat tormenting a rat. “Me and Maisie—half-sisters. Maisie and Nunu—half-sisters too. Get it?”

  “Stop harshing on my brother,” says Villy, interrupting her. “Let’s go see if Pinchley can actually fix the car,” The two of them join Pinchley beside the bombed-out front end of the soon-to-be-even-more-highly-modified whale. The Szep is kneeling beside the trashed front end, holding a crooked little ant from his tool belt. He’s talking to the ant and telling it what’s what.