by Rudy Rucker
ZOE
Sky Castle isn’t a regular cloud—it’s neither haze nor fog nor mist. It’s like a swarm of fireflies or a nest of grids or, more strictly speaking, like a 3D moiré. Not that anyone but Zoe Snapp would say that. Zoe is most excellent at seeing patterns.
All her life she’s been fascinated by moiré patterns, the visual effects you get when, say, two window screens or two chain-link fences overlap each other. A fluid series of lobed interference-fringes emerges, light-show lop-lops that change as you move. What you’d call a 2D moiré. Old-school op-artists made moiré canvases from sets of bold stripes. Getting physical, textile designers can mash grooves into a fabric, not quite parallel to the cloth’s ridges, and a flowing 2D moiré effect emerges—quite the high-end craze during Zoe’s junior year. Too expensive to buy moiré dresses new, but Zoe made her own bitchin moiré ensemble by taking a pair of scissors to an upscale cocktail frock she bagged in a thrift shop. DIY forever.
Zoe has found that, once in a while, her mind creates moirés on its own. And sometimes when she’s zoning out in her bedroom—deeply meditative or musical or bored or even high—she can see three-dimensional moirés. They’re pale purple or even ultraviolet patterns, lucid and improbable as air. A bit like the presence of Goob-goob.
As Zoe sees it, the underyling ingredient for a 3D moiré is a pair of 3D grids that fill a whole room. These imagined grids might be, like, 3D graph paper, or miniaturized wire-frame models of cities, or glass honeycombs, or fine-meshed jungle-gyms for ants.
The two overlapping structures are ever so slightly out of phase with each other—and the interference patterns form the glorious, yummy 3D moirés. When Zoe gets her freak on, the melting, merging 3D moirés caper in her room like the luminous blub-fish of the Mariana Trench.
And when the visions get the best, Zoe starts to believe that she herself is a 3D moiré. Jiggly layers of Hilbert space yes-no quantum fields, right? Whatevsky. If you want fuller details—hey, go talk to a physics teacher or, if all else fails, Scud Antwerpen.
Anyway, up here in her big adventure with Villy, mounted atop a living zeppelin, Zoe sees that the Sky Castle is filled with—ta-daah!—3D moirés. Big ones, and wilder than what she used to see in her goth girl bedroom. She sees a striped tiger whose furry back is a mountain range. A marble statue of—how’d that happen?—Pinchley and Yampa. And, wow, a giant pencil wearing glasses on her perky sharp nose, and her pink eraser down low. And here comes a San Jose-sized locomotive, mutating out from the other moirés. The locomotive has dials on valves on tubes feeding into carburetors that power gears and cams pumping the pushy phallic connecting rods that drive the moiré juggernaut’s adamantine wheels.
All these intricate apparitions are woven from the interplay between two cosmic meshes within the Sky Castle cloud. Black/white, one/many, male/female, plus/minus, raw/cooked, rough/smooth—the names of the two sides are illusion. The interplay is what matters.
“Vive la différence,” Zoe gaily says to Villy. “Hither the yin, yonder the yang.”
“And listen to the sounds,” goes Villy, cocking his head. The space of Sky Castle is reverberating like a cosmic cathedral with two competing pipe organs, ever so slightly out of tune with each other. The dissonance produces what acousticians call beats, meaning that the two dense lines of melody are enhancing or cancelling each other, making chaotic blips and gaps that are a—
“Sonic moiré,” goes Zoe, right on cue. Of course she knows what Villy’s thinking. It’s a teep-heavy zone. And they’re still holding their magic guitars.
A polychrome kite drifts past, or no, it’s a verdigris bronze Buddha with a million arms, or no, it’s a brittle deep-sea starfish. The moiré shapes are dark, or flashy, or matte, or iridescent, with every attribute eternally subject to change.
“Where’s Goob-goob?” asks Scud, peering around like a hick tourist.
By way of response, Stolo blats one of his wet blubs, then tweaks his ballast by laying a monstrous turd.
Oh, come on guys, isn’t that a little too…
Wait, whose thought is that?
They rise through the Sky Castle matrix at an ominously increasing rate of speed. The meshes and their attendant moirés grow yellower, brighter, and then—
“That’s her now,” says Zoe. “Ready, boys?”
It’s the same figure Zoe saw in the Harmony basin, when she was nearly dying, and she had that vision of a high school guidance counselor. Well, it’s not obviously the same figure. But Zoe knows.
This manifestation of Goob-goob is a 3D moiré shaped like a stairstep-sided Mexican ziggurat-pyramid, a stone jungle ruin. The pyramidal bulk has the look of a sculptured Mayan head, with features etched across the steps by thick vines and weathered grooves. Some eyes, a nose, and a few mouths. One mouth is a fancy arch in Goob-goob’s base.
The nearest side of the ziggurat wears a multi-angular Mayan headdress. Thick, snaky locks of graven hair merge into a stone topknot hair bun with a peculiar glow.
The ziggurat moiré wobbles in welcome, a gesture like a full-body wink. Tropical feathers sprout from the plinths. A truckload of merry skeletons cascades down Goob-goob’s side, leaving bones in the steps. Zoe braces herself. Be strong.
“Zoe, Villy, Scud,” intones the goddess. A smell of musk and jasmine and roast meat. The voice emanates from her topknot—but it’s not a sound, it’s teep. “I sent Pinchley and Yampa to enlist you. You’ll trap and destroy Groon,” says Goob-goob. “You’ll end the plague of leech saucers.”
“Yes, fine,” says Zoe evenly. “Anything if we can go home.” She feels a visceral longing for her simple old life. She wouldn’t have expected that. This trip has been strange and wonderful beyond imagining, but—she’s due for some chillax.
“Are you ready for battle?” presses Goob-goob.
“I’d say we’re done with basic training, right?” says Zoe. “Scud has his Aristo wand. Villy and I have our magic guitars. We trapped and killed a Tollah dog.”
“Yes, yes, the guitars and Skzx the wand,” says Goob-goob. “You should thank me. Be like Stolo.”
The three kids are still perched on Stolo, by the way. He’s turned himself around so his blunt end faces the ziggurat. He’s got his tentacles spread in worshipful ecstasy, and his curved beak is wide upon—like he’s swallowing the light from Goob-goob’s topknot. Zoe thinks also of a weathered man in a hot shower—his first shower in many moons.
“I’m thankful, sure,” says Zoe. “But I’m not feeling the let’s-worship-Goob-goob thing. You’ve been gaming us pretty hard.” Somehow, even here, Zoe finds finding the courage to say what she thinks.
Villy chimes in. “I think you’re an alien from another dimension,” he tells Goob-goob. “Not really a god. And the Aristos are alien parasites who rode in on you. Divine lice.” Villy raises his voice. “No way we have to be your lice, too, Goob-goob. Fine, we’ll run your scam or revenge or power-grab on Groon, whatever it is. Und, ja boss, ve’ll be wery grateful if ve get rid of zaucers. But don’t expect us to hymn your name.”
“Won’t be raising our cracked, humble voices in praise,” adds Zoe.
“Not how we are,” concludes Villy.
Scud starts laughing. He likes it when his big brother is rude to the authorities. And then, as usual, Scud goes too far. He yells a curse and gives Goob-goob the finger.
“Don’t be angry with the boy,” Zoe quickly says to Goob-goob.
“I accept you three as you are,” says Goob-goob. “No aspect of this, my world, is odious to me.”
“Odious,” parrots Scud, probably on the point of cracking a vulgar joke.
“You,” says Goob-goob, suddenly turning all her attention on the boy. A fierce eye-beam of light beams onto Scud’s face. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Huh?” goes Scud, his voice turning to cracking squeak.
“My present?” says Goob-goob. “Your offering to me?”
“Oh, right, yeah, the rest of the caraway seeds, you bet,”
says Scud, hastily fumbling the jar out of his pants pocket.
Goob-goob’s eye-beam twitches. The caraway seeds rise from the jar to the top of the ziggurat and go into orbit around Goob-goob’s topknot.
“Servant, well done,” intones Goob-goob. “Your provident benison will amplify the efficacy of my flat cow, Yulia. She’s four-dimensional, and she’s a part of me.”
“Flat cow?” goes Scud, who has no idea what’s going on. “Yulia?”
Scud looks over at Zoe, who favors him with a calming gesture and a smile. She’s filled with a sense of peace because Goob-goob has just now teeped a secret message into her head. An infusion of wisdom from the stone topknot. It’s a detailed plan for defeating Groon and the saucers. At least that’s what Zoe thinks the message is. But it immediately percolates down into her subconscious before she can fully examine it. To be read later. Okay, fine. Transmission received and archived.
Meanwhile Goob-goob is on to her next topic. “Walk through the door now,” she says. “All three of you.”
“Okay,” says Zoe. At this point, she’s got no better option than to trust this god or super-alien or whatever she is. And thanks to that heavy teep message, whatever it was actually about, she kind of likes Goob-goob now. She takes Scud and Villy by the hands. “Okay to get off the blimp?” she asks the brothers.
“I’m ready,” says Villy.
The three of them slide down the side of the living zeppelin, landing on a gentle slope of moiré cloud that feels reasonably solid—even though Zoe was half-worried they might fall right through it and tumble wildly screaming for miles, going splat onto a Szep City street.
Not, at this point, that dying would matter all that much. But wait, that’s not a newly-energized-Zoe thought, it’s a secretly-depressive-Villy thought that’s been teep-moiréd atop Zoe’s stream of consciousness. Scud thoughts are in her head as well—for instance, she’s picking up a lustful image of Nunu the sexy flying saucer with her rim cocked at a randy let’s-do-it angle. Ick. Goob-goob is a mirror that’s absorbing and shuffling and reflecting all of their thoughts. Way teepy.
At this point Zoe hears the sound of some heavy farm-type animal munching food atop the Goog-goob ziggurat. Yulia the flat cow is eating the caraways? Zoe can’t see that high because she’s down near the arched door or mouth at the bottom of the pyramid.
The door is bordered by bas-reliefs of Mayan scenes—women grinding corn, men stabbing each other, children playing with bones, and gods accepting obeisances from squid-zeppelins. The images flicker with a moiré shimmer, creating a lightweight animation effect so the glyphs seem to bop back and forth. As for the freaky shadows and bright flickers visible through the door in the base of the pyramid—
“I feel an air current flowing into that door,” observes Villy.
“I’m hoping the door is a teleportation gate,” says Scud.
“For some reason I’m thinking of a Bible story,” says Zoe.
“You?” goes Villy. “Bible?”
“Well, this is that type of setting,” goes Zoe. “What with Goob-goob being like a god. In this one Bible story, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are pious youths who refuse to worship King Nebuchadnezzar. And he throws them into a fiery furnace. So maybe this scene is like that. Us three about to enter an annihilating blast of dark energy.”
“We shouldn’t go through that door,” says Scud very quickly.
“Ah, but Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego weren’t harmed by the furnace,” says Zoe. Where is she getting this stuff? She sounds like a prize pupil Sunday-schooler. “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego walked freely among the flames, accompanied by a mysterious fourth figure.” Maybe Goob-goob has teep-triggered this latent memory as a subtle message?
Right about then a heavy, meaty shape slams into Scud’s back, knocking him off his feet. Rebounding, the hairy form strikes Villy in the stomach, then flops against Zoe’s side, sending her reeling. The boneless disk of muscle seems conscious, in a rudimentary way. Like an over-friendly pet.
“It’s the flat cow!” cries Scud. “Yulia!”
Indeed, the creature smells like a cow, and she’s mooing, and her hide has short cream-colored hair with three large brown spots. A brindle flat cow. Not that she’s shaped like a cow. She’s a big, flattish disk, thicker in the middle. Like, um, a flying saucer. No horns, no udder, no mouth. She does have a pair of dark brown eyes, and a cow-like tail. The tail is long and sturdy. Rather than having a tassel at the end, it just kind of stops, as if disappearing into another dimension.
“What do you want with us?” Zoe asks the flat cow.
Yulia flips herself off the ground and continues flexing her body against the kids, urgently mooing. Zoe quickly realizes the flat cow is herding them through that door they’re scared of. And it’s hard for Zoe to form any plan of resistance because everything in her head is so—muddled. It’s that same thing she had a minute ago, with Villy’s and Scud’s thoughts blending into hers. What is Yulia?
“The fourth figure from the fiery furnace,” says Scud, maybe out loud, or maybe in Zoe’s head. Or maybe it’s Goob-goob that says it.
And by now Zoe’s been noodged through that frikkin door. The first one to go. “Not a furnace,” she calls to the others, trying to sound upbeat. “More like a big closet.”
Scud and Villy come staggering after her, off-balance, against their will. Instantly a trapdoor opens beneath their feet. The flat cow’s done a number on them.
Next thing Zoe knows, the kids are in freefall, well clear of Goob-goob, tumbling pell-mell through the misty moiré of Sky Castle. Somehow Villy and Zoe still have their guitars—it’s almost like the living instruments are clinging to them. And Yulia the flat cow is with them too, still mooing, although not in an agitated way. And just when Zoe feels she might relax for a second and catch her breath—whoops, they’ve reached the savagely speedy ocean of air that forms the lower boundary to Sky Castle.
“It’s that same gale we were in before!” yells Zoe, even though she doubts the boys can hear her. The vagaries of the winds have positioned them at some distance behind her.
But Yulia is close by Zoe’s side, eyes bright, and with her tail in motion, sometimes short, sometimes long, and with its tip never in view. Zoe gets atop the flat brindle cow and rides her, banking the disk, surfing the sky. And then, without too much trouble, she picks up the cheerful Villy.
“I like it when the worst thing possible happens,” he says. “Then I can relax.”
“Lie still on Yulia’s back and grab two tufts of her hair,” orders Zoe.
Then they get Scud, and they settle in with Zoe on the right, Villy in the middle, and Scud on the left. The visible section of Yulia’s tail is outstretched like a pennant, although there’s no telling about the invisible tip of the tail.
“I don’t get it,” says Scud. “Why a flat cow?” He’s grasping for the logic of their situation.
“Moo spelled backwards is Om,” goes Villy.
Zoe doesn’t waste time on that. “I’m thinking this storm doesn’t go far. It’s wide and diffuse. It’s not a focused jet stream like Groon blows. We’ll need to get into Groon’s stream if we want to ride to New Eden.”
“We’ll hit it soon,” declares Villy. “As soon as we drift over to the Pit basin.”
“But I’m worried about the saucers in the jet stream,” says Zoe.
“Uh-oh, I see them now,” goes Villy, still obscurely amused, as if jolly over the cascade of disasters. “There’s the ridge between Szep City and the Pit, right? And the little things in the air after the ridge? Shiny specks, no two of them the same?”
“The saucers in Groon’s double jet stream,” says Scud. “This is bad. The saucers didn’t notice us in the Pit because we were inside the whale and you guys were playing that crappy Groon bagpipe music. But if we go and get in tight with the saucers, riding down their private flyway—they’ll slaughter us. I wish Nunu was here.”
“As if she would help us,” s
ays Villy.
“I’m the father of her children,” goes Scud.
“Oh please,” says Zoe. “Can we not talk about that? So vile.”
“Right now, this flat cow is the only friend we’ve got,” Villy tells Scud. “Yulia. Think about her, okay? Think hard.” He pats the flat cow’s back.
Scud switches to his tedious logic mode. “Suppose Goob-goob did mean for Yulia to be like the fourth figure in the fiery furnace. If so, she’s here to save us. How? First of all, she can blend in with the saucers. The way she looks, she’ll be lost in the crowd. So therefore—” Scud breaks off, like he’s repelled by his impending conclusion.
“So therefore we hide inside Yulia!” cries Zoe.
“Muur,” goes Yulia. It’s a rich, warm, friendly moo. As Zoe has already noticed, the tail is odd—it doesn’t actually have a fixed tip. It just kind of disappears at the end. In any case, the flat cow now lengthens the visible section of her tail, as if reeling more of it in from hyperspace. A loop of the tail slaps against Zoe’s right hand. Zoe takes the hint and pulls. And, ah yes, it seems Yulia’s body can open up along its right side. The near end of the cow tail acts like a zipper-pull on the edge of a change purse you might get as a souvenir of a visit to, say, El Zigurat Fabuloso de la Goob-goob. And Yulia is the purse.
Taking care not to be swept away by the wind, Zoe folds Yulia’s unzipped upper flap to the left. Yulia’s cavity is lined with smooth red skin like fine Morocco leather. Zoe scoots inside. Villy does the same.
“I’m not going in there,” says Scud, all tense and ready to throw a fit.
“So die,” snaps Villy. He starts pulling the flap over himself and Zoe, as if he’s totally ready to sacrifice his brother. This could be bluff, like a tough love thing—but it comes across as stone harsh. For all Zoe knows, Villy might not be kidding. She still doesn’t quite get the brothers’ relationship.
Like, with all their shared history, why can’t Villy and Scud can’t be nice to each other? Not that Villy’s exactly wrong to pressure Scud. The Sky Castle gale has brought them to the slopes of the ridge between the two basins. And they’ll be plowing into that jet stream of saucers in less than a minute. But they can’t just abandon Scud.