by Rudy Rucker
One slight prob—here in the deepening dusk, it’s a little hard to see where he’s going. A head-crunching collision with a tree trunk is a very real possibility. So now, as the last dim, drowsy glowon settles onto Farktooth’s limbs, Villy spirals down to rejoin his crew.
It’s a magical scene beneath the faintly lit branches of the great tree. Zoe flings her arms around Villy and, yah mon, she lays a deep tongue-kiss on him. “Like a god,” she says after a bit, stepping back and beaming, just barely visible. Both of them are breathless from the big smooch. “My Villy.”
“I could fly too if you’d let me have a chance,” whines Scud.
“Spectacular shaman Villy,” rustles Farktooth. “Soaring with supple strength. Small Scud shall style a secondary stunt: shooting sparks.”
“I can learn to zap?” says Scud. “The same as Meatball and the saucers? How?”
“Sense the subdimensional seething in the saucer pearl. See sizzle within your soul. Sally against the seamy Iravs!”
“Let’s go after them right now,” Scud exclaims. “I want to get even.”
“Nest rest,” chirps Pickpeck. “Dawn best.”
“There’s a nest on a wide forked branch at the top of Farktooth,” says Villy. “I saw it.” Pickpeck bobs her head.
“We can all get in the car and Villy will fly it up there!” exclaims Zoe. “Fun!”
“No way my brother can lift our car up there,” says Scud. “We’ll sleep here on the ground.
“Snorting savage swine stampede this sylvan scene soon,” says Farktooth. “Seek safety atop my summit.”
“Pigs bite,” adds Pickpeck. “All night.”
Zoe smiles at Villy, and her expression makes Villy bold. “I’m ready!” he cries.
“Yes indeedy,” says Pinchley. “Get in the car, and let pilot Villy do his thang. I don’t want to be standing around with my thumb up my ass when no herd of killer boars thunders in.”
“The terrible trotters of Teetertotter,” says Yampa. “Heinous hams.”
“I’ll balance the car on that nest,” says Villy. “Let’s just hope Farktooth doesn’t sway too much.”
“I shall surely sway,” says Farktooth. “As I spear squalid swine for supplemental sustenance. But I’ll strap your sedan with secondary sprouts. Shall we savor some of our powdered chocolate?”
“Dandy candy,” sings Pickpeck.
“You got it,” says Pinchley, and rummages in the back of the car. He emerges with a spoon and the battered tin of chocolate powder, which is still a quarter full. “Open wide, birdie.”
Pickpeck presents her maw, and Pinchley tosses in a dose of the brown dust. Farktooth smacks the barky sap-damp lips in his trunk, and Pinchley serves him a portion as well. Farktooth sways in delight. Pickpeck chirps some very high notes, scratches the ground, and turns in a circle. Pinchley and Yampa take a quick couple of tastes from the cocoa tin and put it away.
“Fun for all,” says Zoe. “What a bunch of freaks. I’m ready for bed.”
Villy sits in the driver’s seat with the saucer pearl in his lap. For a moment he’s stilled by doubt. But then he feels the ball doing its hyperdimsional twist, like a lioness rolling beneath her trainer’s touch. The power flows into him again. Thanks to the pearl, the car feels like part of his extended body. Lifting it is no harder than raising his eyebrows.
He blunders up through the glowing branches, feeling his way. Sudden fierce snorting from down below. Dim porcine shapes. Glittering tusks. The Teetertotter boars already! Villy wonders how high those pigs can jump. He redoubles his pace.
And then their car is in the clear night sky, hovering above Farktooth, their new friend the walking and talking tree. Gracefully Villy sets the car into the nest, putting its weight onto the forked branch that lies beneath the nest’s length. Helpful Farktooth sends smaller branches whipping up, and the pliant shoots wrap across the car’s hood and rear bumper. Additional sprouts twine around the wheels and quantum shocks. A solid connection. They’re safe.
As for bedding—Pickpeck and two of her friends settle down into the sticks and straw of the big nest, allowing the two Szep and the three Earthlings to find nooks amid the great birds’ downy breasts and bottoms.
Villy and Zoe go around to the far side of Pickpeck the redbreast robin—away from the sight and sound of Scud, Pinchley, and Yampa. Pickpeck is already asleep. The two lovers are alone amid the treetops, with the steady, warm grunting of the wild pigs below. Now and then Farktooth sways slightly to one side and stabs a root through some over-bold pig who then—very briefly—screams.
“That’s mappyworld for you,” says Villy. “Red in tooth and claw. Like the crab said.”
“Never mind all that,” says Zoe. “It’s time for us.”
Soon the two of them are lying in a warm embrace amid soft feathers, billing and cooing, their clothes cast aside. Naked at last.
“Now we do it?” says Villy.
“Now,” says Zoe. “Yes.” A soft kiss. “I want all of you.” She giggles. “I looked in your pants pockets when you were asleep. I saw your condoms.”
“I brought a lot of them,” says Villy.
Villy readies himself and lies upon her. Their bodies fit together like the pieces of a puzzle—a puzzle Villy’s been wanting for so long to solve. Zoe’s breath is sweet and spicy. She’s luscious all over. Her honeyed scent is nectar.
They rock slowly at first, savoring their bodies’ all-over touch, knowing they’ll finish soon, wanting to make it last. And then the full wave of passion overtakes them. Kissing and moaning, they ride the primeval rhythm into the flashbulb white light of the gods.
“I’m coming.”
“I love you.”
Together at last.
21: Harmony
ZOE
When Zoe wakes, it’s dawn, and here she is in a downy nest with Villy, cuddled against Pickpeck’s rust-colored breast. Feeling Zoe move, the great robin raises her head and peers at the lovers, eyes alert, beak large.
“Shhh,” goes Zoe, rising onto her elbows. “Not yet.”
Pickpeck tucks her head down to snooze some more. Three birds in the nest, plus Yampa, Pinchley, and Scud, who remain conveniently out of sight.
Zoe looks down at Villy. He’s awake, watching her.
“We did it,” Zoe whispers to him. “I’m glad.” She flops onto his chest and they begin to kiss. Morning breath, but what the hey. They’re in love.
“More?” whispers Villy. Such a good-looking guy.
“Yes,” says Zoe, reaching down to feel him with her hand. “Let’s do it again to be sure.”
“Sure that we’re lovers?” Villy’s mouth is a straight line with curved corners. Keeping a straight face.
“Yes,” says Zoe.
This time it’s slower and smoother. Deeper. Zoe lies on her back, with Pickpeck’s red breast like a cozy wall beneath the ceiling of the sky. Perhaps Farktooth senses they’re making love. It feels like he’s swaying to match their rhythm. And then—oooo—they’re done again.
“Dear Zoe,” says Villy, kissing her. He smiles, draws back, and licks her eyelids. Why not?
Happy Zoe is wondering how it would be to wake up every morning in bed with Villy. But then the tiresome wide world starts up again.
“Hey thar!” It’s Pinchley. “Ready to waste those skorker Iravs?”
As they begin bustling around. Pickpeck flaps to the forest floor and returns with a giant blackberry, sweet and inky, holding it near Zoe’s face until she bites into it. An earthly delight. And one of Pickpeck’s bird friends fetches a fresh pork steak, torn from the carcass of a wild pig that Farktooth stabbed last night.
“Not going to eat that raw,” says Zoe.
“Let’s see if I can cook it with zap!” says Scud. “Let me hold the saucer pearl, Villy. Please?”
“Okay,” says Villy. “How do you think you’ll make a zap?”
“I’ll do what Farktooth said. Sense the subdimensional seething. I bet I can
do that. I seethe a lot.”
Scud lays the chunk of pig meat on a leaf, takes the saucer pearl in both hands, and scrunches up his face in a scowl. Moments later Zoe sees a shimmer of dark energy around Scud’s fingers. Sparks dance across the meat. Not killer zaps, but hot. Scud rocks his head, keeping the flow going. A minute later the Teetertotter swine steak is seared to fragrant perfection.
“I channel energy from the saucer pearl’s quantum vibes,” says Scud. “I have to feel angry for it to work.”
Scud peels a bacon-like strip off the pig meat, chews, and fails to drop dead. So, okay, Zoe eats some as well. Energizing. Tasty. Goes well with the juicy blackberry.
“I’ll drive today,” says Villy after a bit. “If that’s okay with you two.”
They hoist themselves into the car. Villy levitates them off the branch and down to the dirt road atop the ridge.
“It would be nice to know exactly where the Iravs are,” says Zoe. “So they don’t surprise us. Can you tell us, Pickpeck? Or Farktooth?”
“Sneakily skulking,” says Farktooth, which is totally unhelpful.
“Scout tout.” goes Pickpeck, perching beside the car. “Need seeds.” Her red breast is downy in the daylight, and her eyes are bright. She stands a bit taller than Zoe. Impressive that she was able to lift Villy into the air yesterday.
“Pickpeck means she’s gonna fly along with us,” says Pinchley. “She imagines she’s a native guide. And she’ll be wanting those caraway seeds we promised. Not sure how much help Pickpeck will actually be. She’s got a brain the size of a pea. I’m just glad we have our bubblegun.”
“And I can use the saucer pearl to zap,” says Scud.
“And I’m ready to kick physical ass,” says Villy.
“You be careful,” Zoe tells him. “I don’t want to lose everything. Our romance is just starting.”
“I want what you want,” answers Villy. “But if we turn back, the Iravs will hunt us down. We have to end it today.”
They bid Farktooth farewell and set off down the road, winding the speed up towards a thousand miles per hour.
“Can you fly the car like a plane?” Zoe asks Villy. “That might give us an edge.”
Even though Zoe’s holding the saucer pearl while Villy drives, he’s still able to use the pearl to levitate. He can manage little jumps—that is, he can drive the car pretty fast, then levitate it into the air—and then drift through a nice long arc, powered by the car’s previous momentum. But the pearl isn’t powerful enough to seriously accelerate the car forward while it’s in the air.
Scud keeps begging to be the one with the saucer pearl, so Zoe lets him hold it, and Villy can still levitate the car anyway. Pickpeck flies along with them. Even though she’s just a giant robin, she has no problem keeping pace. Pinchley wasn’t kidding when he said the animals here are fast.
Pickpeck squawks raucously with the other big birds they encounter, but it’s not at all clear that she’s asking about the Iravs. At one point it does sound like a big robin chirps about the Iravs, and that she mentions a specific place.
“Did she say amami?” Zoe asks.
“Harmony,” says Yampa. “Melody music land.”
“It’s the next basin over,” says Pinchley. “Big wobbly cubes of jelly live there. Called Harmons. A Harmon can play like an orchestra. They do it for fun, but it’s more than fun.”
“Of course music’s more than fun,” says Zoe. “It’s divine. The voice of the unknown.”
“The ecstasy of empathy,” echoes Yampa. “Ending ere you expect.” Something odd in her voice. She takes Pinchley’s face in her two hands. “Lingering love of my long loop of life.”
“We not done yet,” says Pinchley, almost embarrassed. Like he wants to brush the foreboding moment away. “I love you, too, Yampa.”
Zoe hears sweet sounds in the distance, coming and going with the slipstream’s damped breeze. “Lift us real high so we can see,” she tells Villy. He gets the saucer pearl from Scud and levitates the car a hundred yards into the air, smiling at Zoe all the while. Zoe feels proud of Villy’s power, although it’s maybe a little unsettling to be this high and to know it’s only him holding them up. It’s like dreaming about flying and at the same time dreaming that your power of flight might suddenly go away.
“I see Harmony,” declares Villy.
Up ahead the ridge forks in two, with Birdland on the right, Teetertotter Forest on the left, and a new land in the middle: the Harmony basin. To Zoe it looks like an enormous summer salad bowl, with big cubes of colored Jello and mounds of whipped cream and twitching sprigs of mint. Not that those are accurate descriptions, but it’s what Harmony reminds her of. A festive dish at a summer wedding buffet. They can hear the wonderful calm music of the Harmon cubes.
“Paradise,” says Zoe. “Let’s go there.”
Villy lowers the car down to the trail, and they roll into the clearing where the three ridges meet. They get out of the car. Pickpeck flies into the distance, surveying the terrain, excitedly chirping.
And this is when the Iravs attack. They were hiding just over the ridge, right at the edge of Harmony, with their car squeezed down into a giant drift of the foamy white stuff that Zoe thought looked like whipped cream.
The Iravs still look like four pieces of a chopped-up body. Hand, legs, chest, head.
The hand-Irav is the size of a turkey, with big heavy fingers. He’s been eating well. He has an eye on the back of his knuckles and a toothy mouth in his palm.
As before, the chest-Irav is a chunk of a torso plus an arm with a hand. He has beady eyes and a frog-like mouth in his chest. And he’s added a pair of nimbly shuffling feet. As he rocks along, he leans back for balance, with his arm projecting like a crane. He’s got that poison-stinger whaler snail riding atop his hand.
The legs-Irav has a baby-blue eye in the front of each thigh. His crotch opens into a toothy mouth.
And then the head-Irav appears. He’s got the full-size head, plus the neck, a shoulder, and an arm with no hand. He’s balancing himself on thin stork legs with knees that bend backwards, so creepy. He’s grown a sea-anemone clump of tendrils to replace his missing fingers. The writhing little stalks are translucent and boneless.
The main thing about the head-Irav is that he’s running straight towards Zoe—and he’s holding a heavy hunting-knife in his sea-anemone hand. He’s out to kill her.
Villy dives at the head-Irav, knocking the creature’s long bird legs out from under him. The head-Irav screams in fury. Villy tears the knife from the creature’s sticky fingers and tosses it to the side. Villy begins pounding the head on the ground, meaning to knock it unconscious or even kill it.
But now the legs-Irav joins in, getting a scissors-lock around Villy that pins his arms to his side. At the same time, the legs-Irav is trying to work his crotch teeth towards Villy’s neck. For the moment it’s a standoff.
The head-Irav wriggles out from under Villy and manages to stretch his arm far enough to seize the knife again. It’s a heavy-handled thing, with a long blade, well balanced. Moving very fast, the head-Irav squints at Zoe and flings the knife as hard as he can. Zoe drops to the ground, but the head-Irav knew to aim low, and the knife is coming very fast. It’s going to hit her.
But wait. Here comes Yampa running in from the side. The smart, lively, courageous Szep has seen what’s coming, and she’s getting in front of Zoe, intent on plucking the knife from the air. But now, a hideous misfortune. Yampa stumbles—and the heavy, hard-thrown knife gets past her hands—and the knife strikes Yampa’s thin neck, severing it entirely. The Szep’s head thuds to the ground. Pinchley screams. The full volume of the blood in Yampa’s body gushes out and, just like that, she’s stone cold dead.
Scud fires the bubblegun and vaporizes the head-Irav.
In the ringing silence after the blast, the vile hand-Irav scuttles over and starts—unbelievably—to feed upon Yampa’s remains. He starts with her feet, grinding them up with the mouth in hi
s palm. In fast-forward motion, he works his way upwards, swallowing Yampa’s legs from bottom to top. The hand grows fatter and heavier as it proceeds. Before anyone can stop the hand, he’s swallowed Yampa’s whole body.
And then, with an obscene hiccup, the creature distends his mouth wide enough to swallow Yampa’s head. The hand-Irav is ten times as large as he was two seconds ago. He’s swollen like a well-fed tick. Unspeakably foul. The hand trots off on the tips of his fat fingers, circling the car, readily evading the weeping Pinchley’s maddened pursuit.
Meanwhile Villy’s still in the grasp of the legs-Irav. Sensing an opportunity, the chest-Irav enters the attack. He shuffles rapidly towards Zoe, holding out the whaler snail. Zoe scrambles towards the car, thinking it can shield her, but the chest-Irav is too fast. He lurches another step closer and aims. His whaler snail fires a dart into Zoe’s breast.
A stinging coldness spreads along her arms, down her legs, and into her head. She collapses to one side, her body twisted so that her head is facing the Iravs. Her glassy eyes are open. She can’t speak or move, but she can see.
Mad-eyed Pinchley snatches the whaler snail from the chest-Irav—and smashes it on the ground with his foot. Nothing daunted, the chest-Irav grabs Zoe’s trumpet and scoots away.
Zoe is so paralyzed that she can’t generate the nerve impulses that would expand her chest and fill her lungs. So she can’t breathe. Pinchley knows this. His Yampa is gone, but he’s going to save Zoe. He leans over her, giving her artificial respiration, pushing on her chest. And still Zoe can see what’s going on.
With an angry lunge Villy twists himself free of the legs-Irav’s clasp. The chest-Irav darts towards the freed Villy, but Villy sidesteps the creature and topples him onto the legs-Irav.
Scud takes this chance to fire again. A two-in-one. He blows away the chest-Irav and the legs-Irav with the bubblegun’s final charge. The blast vaporizes Zoe’s trumpet as well, and certainly she’d bewail that if she could, but she has no voice.