Million Mile Road Trip

by Rudy Rucker

  Villy feels slightly annoyed with Zoe. Maybe he would have liked the pearl. And now Scud starts screaming in his face like a psycho. “You killed Mom!” As if this scene wasn’t bad enough.

  Yampa and Pinchley work on Scud, and finally he snaps out of it. The five of them stand by the car, tired and dispirited. At this point Zoe produces her trumpet and crouches over Meatball’s big saucer pearl, gently tooting. The pearl’s surface turns gauzy, then transparent.

  “What the eff are you doing?” snaps Villy. “You’re going to bail?” His voice is cold and empty. He feels zero empathy just now. He’s a guy who killed his mother. He wants to die.

  “I never said I was the bravest person in the world,” goes Zoe. Her face is anguished. “I wish I could do the big mission, yes. Maisie won me over last night. But now, the next thing I know, here comes this, like, fake ghost of your mother and she tries to kill us, and—”

  “So leave,” says Villy. Even though, more than anything, he wants Zoe to stay. But right now his emotions aren’t working. “Go ahead into the tunnel. Who cares. I’m sick of your scenes.”

  Zoe is silent for a long minute, as if disappointed. Waiting for Villy to beg. She leans forward, studying the unny tunnel gate that the saucer pearl has become. Looking into the mouth of the unny tunnel, with her trumpet held at the ready. And then, quite abruptly, she plays a falling pattern of notes, and saucer pearl goes opalescent again. The gate is closed. Zoe glances over at Villy. Her expression is hard to read.

  “What?” goes Villy.

  “This pearl’s tunnel—it goes to a bad place,” says Zoe, her voice shaky. “Spiky things with red eyes in there. One of them was starting to come through. I can’t use this particular pearl to go home. I’m stuck here. And you hate me.”

  “I don’t,” says Villy, dragging himself back into the light. “I love you, Zoe. I love you more than anything in the world.”

  “That’s what I needed to hear,” says Zoe with a tremulous smile. Villy wraps his arms around her and hangs on.

  “We can still use the pearl to levitate,” puts in Scud. He’s flushed and hoarse from his freak-out, but he wants to be part of the gang again. “I can use this big saucer pearl to lift our car. I know the trick.”

  “You say upsy downsy inside out,” goes Villy, remembering Madclaw’s words.

  “Yeah!” says Scud, “I had a dream about that. Or, no, I was teeping with Madclaw.”

  “In the tuj haze,” says Villy, getting in a dig. He’s very upset about his mother, and some of those feelings are coming out as resentment towards Scud. The kid had made this latest scene even worse than it needed to be.

  “I think it’s more than just saying upsy downsy inside out,” prattles Scud, off in math magic land. “Madclaw teeped me something about a line drawing of a cube. And you flip it back and forth in your head. Changing the perspective. Like when you look at a wire-frame cube and you say to yourself—which is the closest corner? Your perception flips back and forth, and each time you flip, it’s like you’re mentally rotating the cube in the fourth dimension, and that’s how a saucer pearl flies.”

  “Huh?”

  “You spin the cube in your mental hyperspace. Upsy downsy inside out!”

  “Hearken to the Learned Pig,” intones Villy, stressing the second syllable like it’s Learn-ed, the way an old-time carnival barker might do. “Tap your trotter, Learn-ed Pig. What’s three plus two?”

  “I hate you, Villy.”

  “I love you. Especially when you almost get us killed. Especially when you make me shoot my mother in the head.” A little unfair to blame Scud this way, but that’s how Villy is feeling.

  “Don’t fight, boys,” interposes Zoe. “We’ve got a long road ahead.” At least she sounds like she’s back on board with the trip again.

  “Give me the pearl,” Scud says to Zoe. “Then we can fly instead of driving.”

  “Greetings, humans of ballyworld Earth,” says a crackly, hissing voice.

  “Oops,” goes Yampa.

  “One of them giant crabs!” exclaims Pinchley. “Way bigger than our car. Keep the bubblegun ready, Villy. But don’t shoot unless you have to. We ain’t got but the two shots left.” Pinchley makes his voice loud. “Hey thar, Mr. Crusty Crab. We gonna be friends?”

  The crab’s mandibles are in ceaseless motion, like a man chewing his mustache. His folded claws are the size of canoes, his stalk eyes like bowling balls. His long, finicky legs move on tiptoe in a brittle ballet. His low-tide odor is laced with a sharp tang of iodine.

  “My name is not Crusty Crab,” he says with a creaking hiss. “It’s Klactoveedsedstene. Give me that saucer pearl.”

  “No way in hell,” says Zoe.

  “I’m going to use it to fly,” prattles Scud.

  “I doubt you’ll be able to,” hisses the crab, then echoes Villy’s teasing phrase. “Learn-ed Pig.”

  “Don’t you call me that!” yells Scud, already on the point of losing it again. “I’m not an idiot! I know about math and the fourth dimension!”

  “You go, savage swine,” says Villy, regaining some of his family feeling. He and his brother are both crazy, okay? He pats Scud on the shoulder.

  “Back in the car, guys,” says Zoe, poised in the driver’s seat. “Hurry before it’s too late.”

  “No need to fear me,” clicks Klactoveedsedstene the crab. “I’m nonviolent. I eat seaweed and the dead bodies that I find.” But by now the kids and the two Szep are all in the car with the doors shut tight.

  Unwisely, Zoe feels she has to unburden her conscience. “I feel guilty because we ate two of your brothers or sisters,” she tells the crab through her fully open window. “Last night.”

  “At the Flatsie beach party?” hisses the crab. No hope of reading any expression from his gleaming stalk eyes.

  “That’s right,” says Villy, leaning across Zoe to talk out the window. “And then the Flatsies let a narwhal kill a third big crab. What are you going to do about it, shiteater?” In Villy’s freaked-out state, enraging the crab seems like a sound move. Lay everyone’s cards on the table, right? “You should have heard that third crab scream,” adds Villy, waiting for the reaction.

  “We do indeed scream when we’re being tortured to death,” says Klactoveedsedstene mildly. Taking the high road. Being all philosophical. “That’s the way of the world, eh? Nature red in tooth and claw.” He produces a long strand of dried kelp and delicately nibbles it. His mandibles are busy and intricate and disgusting. He tiptoes closer, his mouth at the level of the car window framing Zoe’s face.

  “You’re making me paranoid,” goes Zoe.

  “Your bad conscience is at work,” says the crab in a lulling tone. “You worry I might be as callous a killer as you.”

  “Step on the frikkin gas,” Pinchley tells Zoe from the back seat. “This crab is working his way up to a rampage. That’s how they do.”

  “Wait,” says Zoe, seemingly unable to stop talking. “I know you’re very smart, Klactoveedsedstene. Like Charlie Parker. Or Einstein. So tell me this. Is mappyworld real?”

  “Meaty question,” clicks the crab. His shell bumps against the car.

  “Give me the gun,” Scud whines to Villy. “I’m the one who got the gun from the Bubblers, and I want to be the one who shoots the crab.”

  “Human minds are like nests of snakes,” says the crab, resting one of his claws atop the car. “Snakes swallowing their tales.” He churns his mandibles so rapidly that they make a whining buzz.

  “Go!” Pinchley implores Zoe.

  “Wait for your answer,” singsongs the crab. “Is mappyworld real? Is ballyworld real? Yes and yes. Yes and no. No and yes. No and no. And I prove these propositions thus—”

  The crab digs the tip of his great claw into the car’s roof, opening it like a sardine can. Zoe snaps out of her trance.

  “Yeek!” She peels out and they roar off along the ridge.

  Klactoveedsedstene stands there, furiously waving his c
laws. All signs of philosophical detachment are gone.

  “Folks do take it hard when you eat their relatives,” Pinchley tells Zoe. “Especially if you come mooching by to say you’re sorry.”

  They speed on, passing through another three-way intersection. A new basin appears on their left—Yampa says it’s called the Teetertotter Forest. The sprawling Bubble Badlands remain on their right, but none of the Bubblers are in the vicinity.

  “Let me hold that saucer pearl,” says Scud yet again.

  “It stays with Villy and me,” says Zoe. Indeed, the lustrous orb is in Villy’s lap. He’s kind of falling in love with it. What a beautiful luster it has. And a nice heft. And it’s wonderfully smooth. He feels like he can figure out how to make it levitate.

  “No pearl for you,” says Villy to Scud. “But I’ll give you back the bubblegun, okay? And let’s try to remember there’s only two shots left for the Iravs.” He passes the murderous thing over the seat. He’s glad to be rid of it.

  The trees of Teetertotter Forest are in constant motion—flexing their limbs, swaying from side to side, ambling about on mobile roots. They have friendly-looking eyes set into their trunks. One of the redwoods beckons, but Zoe’s into driving. She’s got the big-wheeled whale cranked to damn near a thousand miles per hour. Somehow she’s gotten past her fear of high speeds.

  As for Villy, the cumulative stress is caving in on him. He slumps in his seat. He feels boneless. “Falling off the gallows with the noose around my neck,” he says to Zoe. “Deep fried in rancid fat.”

  “Relax,” Zoe says, glancing over at him and patting his hand. “You’re safe.”

  Villy smiles at her touch. “Maybe.” he says. “But—weren’t you the one saying this whole expedition is doomed? And that every time we turn around, something tries to kill us? It’s true.”

  “I flip-flop,” says Zoe with a shrug. “You know that. Right at this moment, I cheer myself with the notion that we’re invincible. Maisie told me we’re mythic cosmic heroes. Predestined to win.”

  “Maybe she was shining you on,” says Villy. “Building up your confidence, and who knows why. I mean—Maisie’s not even human. Not a hundred percent.”

  “Redneck much? Take your nap, Villy.”

  They bowl along. Thanks to the car’s streamline supershine treatment, Villy can hear everything outside. The fluttering leaves of the Teetertotter Forest are like the soothing susurration of a crowd. The saucer pearl in his lap is like a glowing, cozy cat. He nods off.

  When he awakes, the car’s at rest, and the others are outside. It’s dusk, and the glowon light is warm yellow. Motes of dust hang in the air. Gnats jitter. Villy has slept through most of the day. They’re parked between two basins, with the Teetertotter Forest on their left, and a new basin called Birdland on their right.

  Birdland features a symphony of cheeps and peeps, produced by big birds on low, sturdy oaks with wonderfully long and twining branches. The birds are six feet long, all kinds of them, in many colors. Sitting on the branches, they remind Villy of notes on musical staves.

  Zoe, Scud, Pinchley, and Yampa stand by the car in conversation with a six-foot robin and a two-hundred-foot redwood who balances himself on a tangle of flexible roots. Scud has managed to get hold of the saucer pearl, and he’s cradling it against his belly.

  “Hi, Villy,” says Zoe. “Check out these two. The robin is named Pickpeck. And the talking tree is Farktooth. Pickpeck seems a little dim. They’re warning us that the Iravs are up ahead along the ridge, maybe five hundred miles from here.”

  “The Iravs are still driving Pinchley’s car?” asks Villy. “And do they still look like pieces of a chopped-up body?”

  “Word is they still got my car, yeah,” says Pinchley. “And they haven’t smoothed out their shapes, nor merged back together. Maybe they suppose they’re scarier if they look that way.”

  “I’m—I’m worried we can’t ever beat the Iravs,” says Villy. That thing with Meatball imitating his mother has blown most of his confidence away.

  “Farktooth and Pickpeck can teach us how to use our saucer pearl for flying,” says Zoe. “Then we can, like, raise the car up into the air.”

  “Why would the bird and the tree want to help us?” asks Villy. “Do they want something?”

  “Powdered chocolate,” says Yampa. “Cocoa. The crazy cup that cheers.”

  “And I said as how we can give them some of our caraway seeds,” adds Pinchley. “After we get that little jar back from them damned Iravs.”

  “You’re optimistic,” says Villy.

  Pickpeck squawks her shorthand version of the Irav problem. “Jerks lurk!” She twitches her wings and bobs her head as she talks. Each of her feet is an orange claw with four scaly meaty toes—three in front and one in back. To Villy’s eyes, the feet are like some monstrous murderer’s hands. He can’t stop staring at them. Paranoia, the destroyer. But Pickpeck’s glassy black eyes seem somewhat friendly, thanks to her pale-yellow irises. And her muted red breast feathers are downy-soft.

  “Cocoa loco,” says Pickpeck. Villy wonders if she really has to talk this way. Could be her routine is a joke, in that odd mappyworld way. Or, as Zoe says, maybe she’s not very intelligent. She is, after all, a bird.

  “We should save our powdered chocolate for Szep City,” objects Scud. “Instead of dishing it out to these two. We don’t need the bird and the tree. Like I already told you, I teeped with Madclaw back on the beach. So I already know all about how to fly with a saucer pearl.”

  “But you don’t know,” says Zoe. “I’m letting you hold the pearl—and you’re just standing on the ground talking. If you frikkin knew how to frikkin fly, you’d be in the air.”

  “I understand the theory of how to fly,” says Scud, quickly covering his ass. “And later, when I’m ready, I’ll put theory into action. You get the pearl to do a four-dimensional rotation. As if it’s turning inside out. And the 4D rotation puts a kink in the gravitational field. And you ride the kink.”

  “Or maybe the kink rides you,” says Villy, not entirely in mockery.

  “Scud supposes he sketches the solution’s shape,” rustles Farktooth. “Silly to submerge the senses in science symbols. The simple secret is to sail the sky. I say send sturdy Villy on superb swoops.” Farktooth has a bark-groove face and knothole eyes. Maybe he’s smiling.

  Villy stretches out his hand. “Give it here, Scud. The magic ball.”

  “No.”

  Scud’s about to go all wild-eyed and irrational again. Truth be told, both the boys are a little crazed from the horrible encounter with not-Mom. Scud clutches the iridescent pearl to his chest as if it’s his last worldly possession. But now Pickpeck delivers a brisk, well-aimed poke of her yellow beak—and the orb springs into Villy’s grasp.

  So that’s sweet, but then, a lot faster than Villy is ready for, Pickpeck grabs his legs with her claws and lifts him into the air. Not digging into his flesh or anything, but she’s holding him really tight, and he’s hanging upside down. At least Villy manages to hang onto the grapefruit-sized saucer pearl as Pickpeck flaps upwards, bearing Villy up along the full height of Farktooth’s woody body, passing an oversized bird’s nest that rests on a thick, forked branch at the top—and then proceeding into the sky.

  Villy’s dangling there with the blood rushing to his head, holding the saucer pearl very tightly between his cupped hands. He has a sense of what’s coming. It’ll be a variant of that callous old routine: Throw him in the water and he’ll learn to swim.

  Far below, Zoe is berating Pickpeck. Scud is jabbering about the fourth dimension. Yampa has her arms out and is trotting back and forth, angling from side to side, perhaps by way of encouraging Villy to fly. Practical Pinchley has deployed a self-inflating, cushion-like creature from his protean tool belt. Quite large by now. It’s scooting back and forth, as if hoping to be in the right place when Villy hits the ground.

  “Try fly!” chirrups Pickpeck in her throat—and then she rele
ases her hold on Villy’s legs. Thanks a lot, robin. Villy drops from the sky like a crippled cow. Mandatory soul time.

  He starts with Scud’s jumbled ideas about reversing a wire-frame cube and visualizing a hyperspace rotation. But this doesn’t seem to work for Villy at all. He mouths Madclaw’s mantra: “Upsy downsy inside out.” Still no good. In desperation, Villy turns to the wisdom of his peer-group culture.

  Flying doesn’t have to be so different from surfing, right? Which reminds Villy that, thanks to Boldog, his good old red surfboard is gone. He takes a moment to be glad that Boldog is dead. And now—back to the crisis. That is, back to this pressing issue of falling hundreds of feet to the ground. And the question of how to solve it by surfing. Why can’t the pearl be a surfboard?

  Something begins growing out of the saucer pearl. It’s a nacreous, transparent wriggle in space, like a three-foot-wide rim around the pearl. A circular fin drawn forth by Villy’s ongoing prayer that the surfer god Kahuna save his ass. Or maybe the help’s coming from Goob-goob.

  Either way, it’s working. The saucer pearl shifts in his hands, hyperdimensionally turning. Its saucer-like rim is gaining substance. Villy cries out in a loud voice—like a surf-shredder entering the holy eye of a mile-high wall-wave’s upper-edge tube. Villy focuses on the saucer pearl like a bodysurfer leaning into a handboard. He’s getting some traction. Cutting into the air.

  All this is happening very fast, you understand, like in the first thirtieth of a second of Villy’s fall. He’s just short of skronking into the topmost branches of old Farktooth, the ones that hold the nest. But now—yah, mon—Villy does a full one-eighty, veering upwards like a skywriter sketching a J.

  Villy’s integrated himself with the saucer pearl. Its virtual disk is like an edge around his body. He’s like a flying squirrel, or like Da Vinci’s glyph of a man in a circle. He’s controlling the osculating plane of his space curve, as brother Scud might say. And this means that Villy can, ah yes, swoop and loop and barrel-roll all around the towering spikes and branches of the Teetertotter trees, an ascended master of curvature and torsion.