by Rudy Rucker
Only the distended hand-Irav remains. Zoe can make out the bulge of Yampa’s head, intact within the hand-Irav’s body. The hand heads towards the purple whale, walking high on his fat fingers, plump, proud, insolent. Clearly he means to finish Zoe. The Iravs are implacable.
Coming up on the waist-high hand-Irav from behind, Villy grabs two of his heavy fingers and wrenches at them, as if wanting to tear the monster in half. The hand-Irav squirms, getting ready to bite Villy with the mouth in his palm.
Moving fast, Scud fetches the big saucer pearl from the car. He glares at the hand-Irav, still wrestling with Villy. The air around Scud’s body wriggles with dark energy. The charge is building up. The hand-Irav is on the point of biting into Villy, but now Scud zaps the monster with a jolt of dark energy.
The hand-Irav goes limp and drops to the ground. But he’s not dead. He’s faking. He’s poised to launch himself at Villy again. And Zoe is powerless to warn him. But Pinchley sees.
“Finish him!” screams the Szep, even while he continues pushing and releasing Zoe’s chest. “Kill the skorker who ate my wife!”
Scud wreathes himself with a fresh corona of dark energy, twice as strong as before.
“It’s not my fault,” wheedles the hand, suddenly breaking into speech. He has a high, thin, insistent voice. “I’ve still got your caraway seeds. Take them now and please let me go.” He bends one of his fingers and—pop—the jar of caraways emerges from his spongy flesh.
Villy grabs the seeds and jumps to one side. Scud frikkin zaps the hand-Irav twice. Heavy blasts. The hand-Irav is dust, and the swallowed head of Yampa is dissolved into ashes and radiation as well.
Scud stands there in the wake of the explosions, unsteady on his feet, staring into the air. “The pictures,” he mutters. “Yampa’s pictures. They were still in her head. And now—” He gestures as if he’s touching invisible things. “I see them all. They came to me. Thank you, Yampa.”
This is when Pickpeck glides down and petitions the boys for her promised allotment of caraway seeds. At first they don’t even understand what she’s saying. Scud is dizzy from the images in his head. And Villy wants only to get to Zoe. Once he picks up the thread of the importunate bird’s requests, he hands the jar of seeds to Scud.
Scud angrily accuses the big robin of setting them up for the ambush. Pickpeck huffily denies it, and who knows, maybe she’s not lying. She is, after all, a birdbrain. Just to be rid of her, Scud gives her some seeds and she flaps away. And then he flops down onto the ground, lying on his back, as if staring up at an inner holographic slide show of their trip.
Meanwhile Villy has taken over Pinchley’s task of helping Zoe breathe. Rather than pushing on her chest, Villy presses his open mouth against hers and breathes in and out. Zoe is glad for Villy’s touch. But she’s cold, cold, cold—right down to her core. This is how it feels to die.
And then she’s gone.
Dead? She’s in—a room. Like the guidance counselor’s office at Los Perros High, with shelves of books. An oriental rug on the floor. Battered wood furniture. Sitting behind the desk is a—presence. Flat-nosed, solemn, with intent eyes. She resembles a Latina woman with her hair pulled into a topknot. She has extravagantly curved lips, and her nostrils are like scrolls. She glows a warm shade of white, diamond bright, but the light doesn’t dazzle Zoe, and why should it, given that Zoe’s—dead?
“I’m Goob-goob,” says the woman. Her motions sweep out sheets of light. Her voice is as rich and layered as choral song. “You’re Zoe. I sent Pinchley and Yampa to enlist you.”
“Yes,” says Zoe. Her pain is gone, but she can’t move her tongue. She’s speaking with her mind. Teep. She feels horribly sorry for herself. She and Villy were at the dawn of a lifelong love story. And now she’s facing some bullshit interview in an afterworld office.
“You’re not gone yet,” says Goob-goob. “You can go back and save your planet. You and Villy and the despised Scud.”
“Despised?” says Zoe, slightly cheered by the spot-on word.
“You’ll lead them,” Goob-goob tells Zoe. “On to Szep City and Sky Castle. You’ll ride a jet stream to New Eden, and cross the ridge to Van Cott. And there you’ll find a mighty unspace tunnel to Earth. The saucer-master Groon will seek to pass through. Your crew will knot Groon within the tunnel like garbage in a bag. And thus will end an evil age.” The glowing shape laughs. Not exactly a laugh.
“How—” begins Zoe, but she doesn’t know where to begin. Instead, she’s obsessively flashing on a mental image of her body lying motionless on the seat of the purple whale. Maybe she’s teeping the sensations of Villy watching her die? Maybe her seeming conversation with Goob-goob is a death-spasm brain-glitch.
“And if you’re not returning to life, I have some forms for you to fill in,” says Goob-goob, suddenly turning all gray and middle-aged. She conjures up a meter-high stack of papers on her desk. Her manicured hand tap-taps the stack. Her topknot inclines. “Your application, Zoe. It’s still not done.”
Zoe cries out, and the office disappears. She’s lying on a cloud, surrounded by music. Not exactly a cloud. It’s slimy and alive, with a faint smell of honeysuckle. And, wow, she’s breathing again. Something is nursing on her chest—an eel. Sucking out the poison where the dart hit her. Thank you.
Villy is sitting beside her, his hand on her brow. Scud and Pinchley aren’t around.
“You’re back,” whispers Villy.
She smiles at him. How wonderful. Her lips can move. “We beat the Iravs?”
Villy nods. “But they killed Yampa. And your horn is gone.”
Three translucent, pocked, wobbly cubes are near them, making music. One is a rich lavender, one’s pale red, and the other is acid green. Their sides pulse deep notes, and their little holes sing high ones. Threads crisscross their insides. They rest amid the drifts of white slime.
“Harmons,” says Villy, gesturing at the waist-high cubes. “You’ll like them. Can you stand?”
“Let’s try.”
Villy helps her to her feet. Dizzy. The healer eel drops from her chest and wriggles off. Zoe leans against darling Villy, alive alive alive. His warmth, his touch, his scent, his outsider face.
“We made love last night,” says Zoe, savoring the memory. Although now she wonders how long she’s been unconscious. While having a wack near-death vision of Goob-goob in a high school office. Goob-goob offering her a choice. Fill out a gigundo application form—or come back to life and do—something. Save Earth?
“It was two nights ago,” corrects Villy. “But we also made love yesterday morning, remember? And then the Iravs ambushed us, and you got hurt, and you slept straight through, all afternoon and all night. Pinchley had a healer eel in his tool belt, and it worked. Dear Zoe.” Villy pauses, caresses Zoe’s cheek, continues. “Pinchley’s acting weird. More weird. He keeps imitating Yampa. I guess because she died. Hard to imagine how bad that would be. Scud’s trying to cool him down.”
“The despised Scud,” murmurs Zoe absently. “So where are they?”
“Working on the cars,” says Villy. “The purple whale, plus Pinchley’s old yellow convertible that the Iravs were driving.”
Zoe doesn’t want to talk about the Iravs. “What’s this white stuff on the ground?” she asks. “I like it. Did it help me get well?” Actually, she’s not a hundred percent well. Her knees feel like they could bend in any direction at all.
Villy wraps his arms around her. “Want to sit down?”
“Not yet. Tell me about the white stuff.”
“Smeel foam,” says Villy. “It links the Harmons together. A basin-wide overmind. The Harmons are like living musical instruments. Try playing them!”
Zoe is so tired that it feels like she has wet bags of sand sewed inside her chest. But for sure she wants to play the Harmons. Villy helps her over to the red cube. She pats it on the side, and it goes oom-woom-oom. The other two Harmons echo the sound, riffing on it. Zoe prods and thumps them as we
ll. Oom-woom-ga-honk-squonk-boomy-bomp-oom.
“Jam session,” she whispers, briefly happy. But her body is a wobbly stack of dishes. She slumps to the ground in a snowdrift of smeel foam, and she’s out again.
This time Zoe dreams of Maisie, wearing yellow tights and a pale blue jersey. Maisie’s saucer disk sticks out around her waist. She’s decorated the disk with symbols for musical notes. Maisie’s got her floppy hair in a ponytail and she’s carrying her trombone. Even though Zoe’s asleep, she realizes this isn’t a dream. It’s Maisie teeping her again.
“Sistah!” goes Maisie. She raises her trombone and sounds a wet bleat. “Welcome to the music world.”
In her odd, half-waking state, Zoe can feel the tingly smeel foam on her skin. She’s picking up the vibes of a hundred thousand Harmon cubes, all of them teep-linked together. Like she’s in a stadium full of musicians tuning up. The biggest jam band ever.
Maisie leans over Zoe and does a soft wah-wah with her slobbery trombone. Maisie’s tomboy features are intent. “Reveille, sis.”
“You should let me sleep,” says Zoe. “Instead of pushing into my mind.”
“News flash,” goes Maisie. “You’ve barely driven twenty thousand miles. You’ve got nine hundred and eighty thousand miles to go before Szep City. You’re too slow.”
“What am I supposed to do about it?” says Zoe. “We’re driving a car. Also—I might be dying right now. In case you didn’t notice.”
“Such the thespian,” goes Maisie. She leans way back and blats a haw-haw-haw with her horn. She lowers the instrument and studies Zoe. “Listen to me. You and Villy need to get musical instruments from the Harmons. The music will help you go faster. So that it doesn’t take you, like, six months to hit Szep City.”
“I’m confused, Maisie. I almost died. Make it simple for me. Tell me what to do.”
“Beg me,” says Maisie, flipping her saucer-skirt. “Say: Please mighty Maisie.”
Zoe doesn’t like this. “I thought you said I was nice to you in school and that you don’t bear a grudge.”
“Maybe I’ve changed my mind. Please mighty Maisie.”
“You’re a geek and a loser.”
“There’s the real Zoe,” goes Maisie, enjoying herself. “Maybe I should leave? And then the leech saucers will eat everyone’s soul. All because Zoe Snapp is a snooty pig. Unless—”
Maisie breaks off and razzes a slow, wavering crescendo on her trombone, as if to indicate rising tension—a sound like on a quiz show when the audience is waiting for a contestant to answer.
Zoe isn’t fully focused on Maisie’s teep. She’s adrift in a psychic sea, vast and planetary, with the Harmon cubes like plankton, and the smeel foam like currents. By way of focusing Zoe’s attention, Maisie starts bumping her with her stupid trombone.
“All right,” teep-yells Zoe. “Please mighty Maisie. Help me go faster. Okay?”
Maisie does an Egyptian-style dance step, profiling her face, holding her arms at angles like in a hieroglyph, waggling her trombone, and printing the word “YAY” all over her saucer rim. So corny.
“Do you have something to tell me or not?” goes Zoe. This conversation is way too long. She wants to nod off in the foam.
“Stratocasting,” says Maisie. “You’ll be able to crank the car’s speed to a hundred thousand miles an hour. Not just one thousand miles an hour. You’ll reach Szep City in a day.” Maisie strikes a fresh pose, holding her trombone sideways at her waist like a guitar. “Deedle deedle deedle. You and Villy. You play lead guitar and he does rhythm. Get the guitars from the Harmons.”
“Guitars are lesser,” scoffs Zoe. “Villy—okay, fine—he plays surf guitar. But horn is what I play. Can’t I use a trumpet?”
“Deedle deedle deedle,” repeats half-sister Maisie. “Your horn’s gone. Now you use a gee-tar, baby.” Her expression is intent. “Stratocasting.”
“God you’re a pain in the ass.”
To make it worse, Maisie starts shoving Zoe with her feet, rolling her out of the big, comfy smeel-foam drift. Zoe snaps fully awake. She’s lying on the bare ground. There’s no Maisie in sight. Just Villy. But Zoe is hearing the stratocasting sound in her head. A soaring pair of guitars.
“What up?” goes Villy. “You passed out again, but just for half an hour. You were arguing with someone and then you rolled out of the foam.”
“Maisie,” mutters Zoe. “Guitars.” She rubs her face and looks around. It strikes her that she’s now completely well. Here with the Harmons and dear Villy. It’s the start of a new phase. Yeah.
“You and I are supposed to play guitars,” she tells Villy. “So that our car goes fast. A hundred thousand miles per hour.”
“We don’t have guitars,” says Villy, totally doubting her. “And you don’t know how to play one.”
“Stratocasting,” says Zoe.
“Stratocaster is a model of Fender guitar,” says Villy, talking slow like Zoe’s out to lunch. “As it happens, my brah Znork in our surf trio plays a Fender Telecaster. Me, I have a cheap-ass git-box from N-Mart.”
“I’m not talking about models,” says Zoe, rising to her feet and meaning to stay there. “Stratocasting is a sound, Villy. A screaming double line that probes to the edge of the universe. Deedle deedle deedle, understand? A ladder of notes, climbing the frets to heaven. Like Kiki Krush and the Kazakhstan Guitar Army? I’m way better on the guitar than you realize. But meanwhile, is there anything I can eat?”
“Glad you’re hungry,” says Villy. “Avid Zoe.” He produces a linty, sticky food mint from his pocket. “Here’s the turkey one. Healthier than living on smeel foam.”
“Got it,” says Zoe, popping the turkey mint in her mouth. “That smeel foam—already I like it too much.”
“It feels really good when it soaks through your skin,” says Villy. “You could say the Harmon cubes are hooked on it.”
“Like jazz musicians,” says Zoe. “Can we talk to the cubes? Maisie said we could get our guitars from them.”
“Try.”
Zoe touches the red Harmon cube with her hands, and he responds with spacy warbles, but Zoe’s also talking to him in words, and—to the extent that she knows how—she’s teeping an image of what she wants. Two electric guitars: one maroon and one a sparkling black. One is a classic Flying Vee, the other is like Frank Zappa’s Gibson SG.
“I’ll ask Goob-goob for them,” says the Harmon. “And you give me—what?” He sqwonks his question from a hole in his side.
Not having much else to offer, Zoe spits her turkey-flavored food mint onto the cube and—whoa—he likes it. But it’s not enough. He wants more.
“You can have Pinchley’s old car,” says Villy out of the blue. Zoe seriously doubts that Villy has Pinchley’s permission to make this offer. “You can drive all around Harmony in it,” says Villy, kind of laughing.
The red cube makes a tuneful zooming sound, wobbles his sides, and—this is weird—unfolds his six sides, letting them flop onto the ground, making a shape like a flat red cross, with an extra square on one of the arms. Almost immediately something moves in the air above the flattened Harmon. It’s a filigree of light, a three-dimensional moiré mesh, faint purple, glowing. Maybe it’s the incarnate presence of the great god Goob-goob.
The mesh tendrils mass together and form a twisty pair of vines. Two buds dangle from the vine and fatten like ripening fruit. It’s a pair of little guitars, about two-thirds of normal size, and they match Zoe’s mental image specs, yah mon, it’s a red Flying Vee and a black scrolly Gibson SG. The guitar necks glow and flex as they dangle from the vine. Their bodies gleam with dark and kandy-kolor paint. They pinch free of the vines and settle onto the unfolded red Harmon. The vines and the moiré mesh are gone.
Zoe picks up the black Gibson SG and strums it. Strums him. He’s warm to the touch. He flexes beneath Zoe’s hands as if reading her mind. He has a dark-energy amp built in, or something like an amp, and he wails just the way Zoe wants, a tight feedbacky
sound that gets gooder when Villy picks up his red Flying Vee and lays cosmic reverb across Zoe’s filigrees.
“I call these god chords,” goes Villy.
“We fit,” says Zoe, playing on. “We’ll stratocast together. A hundred thousand miles an hour. I love you.”
“I love you back,” says Villy. “Rocker girl. You’re well.”
“Ready for the roll,” says Zoe, fingering the strings and savoring the chiming of the notes.
Done with being flat, the red Harmon cube has folded himself back up. He studies Zoe and Villy with their new instruments. “Don’t forget my car,” he says.
“Let’s find Pinchley and Scud,” says Villy.
The guys have the Szep’s old car parked beside the purple whale. They sit behind the two steering wheels, gunning the engines like gearheads.
“Those are cool midget guitars,” says Scud, leaning out of the purple whale’s window.
“They’re not exactly guitars,” says Zoe. “They’re, well, Goob-goob made them. And this red Harmon here, he helped.”
“Is that my car?” says the Harmon, bouncing over to where Pinchley sits at the wheel of his big-wheeled yellow convertible. The boys have dusted it off and have applied a nice shine. On its hood it still bears a large red P&Y monogram.
“What you talkin’ there—my car,’” goes Pinchley. “This is Pinchley and Yampa’s P&Y.” For whatever reason Pinchley is doing a perfect imitation of Yampa’s voice, and he’s moving his arms like his dead wife.
“Pinchley is wack,” Scud tells Zoe.
“I, uh, told this Harmon here that he could have your car in exchange for the two guitars,” says Villy, looking abashed.
Pinchley glares in outrage.
Zoe strikes some notes on her Gibson. Deedle-deedle-deedle. “It’s a good deal,” she says. “With these guitars we’ll be stratocasting at a hundred thousand miles per hour. And, um, when our trip’s done, you can keep Villy’s purple whale, Pinchley.”
“What are you saying?” cries Villy. Now he’s the one getting screwed.
“Can we just go?” says Zoe.
Somehow, with much grumbling, they get things smoothed out. The four of them stand by the purple whale. The red Harmon cube takes the wheel of Pinchley’s powerful yellow convertible—and drives off, careening through the white foam, blasting big band jazz.