Million Mile Road Trip

by Rudy Rucker

  “Why?” says Scud, turning balky.

  “Oh, stop trying to be smart all the time,” says Zoe. “Just frikkin do what I tell you, or you’ll die. I don’t have time for a big science-nerd discussion about—”

  “Go now!” shrieks Maisie. “Saucer!” A vampire saucer shaped like a flat pig is floating their way. Maisie is already in the seat of her dune buggy and she’s got her dark-energy motor running. A quick wave of her hand and she peels out, spraying gravel. Zoe and Scud retreat around the corner of a building, with Zoe holding her trumpet and her pearl—whose frikkin tunnel still isn’t fully open.

  Dzeeeent!

  An unbearably bright zap of light strikes the ground where Zoe was just now standing. Charred dirt puffs into the air. Staying out of the pig-saucer’s line of sight, Zoe tosses her saucer pearl onto the ground and plays her full riff, plays it fast. And now, just like that, the gate is clear.

  Zoe and Scud charge towards the gate, only the size of a golf ball—but it seems to get bigger as they approach. And by the time they hit the entrance it’s the size of a closet door. They’re in, and the leech saucer can’t touch them.

  As before, Zoe sees weird mirror-like images of herself while within the tunnel—she’s seeing clear around the circumference of the wormhole. Meanwhile the dim, warped shape of nighttime Los Perros lies ahead of her, complete with the glaring headlights of Mom’s SUV. Hoping that Scud grasps the program, she storms out of the unny tunnel’s Earth-side gate—and runs like hell across the wet pavement of Los Perros to the safety of the sidewalk. Scud’s at her heels, yes. From the corner of her eye, Zoe sees the flickering passage of her two earlier selves. And the SUV skids to a stop, its horn blaring.

  “Zoe!” It’s Mom, of course, yelling out of the side window of her car. “Are you crazy? The show’s about to start! And what did you do to your clothes? You’re a mess! Quick, quick, get in the car.”

  Wow. It’s back to square one. Zoe isn’t missing the talent show after all. Even though by now she’d all but forgotten about it. Good thing she’s got her new horn.

  “Okay,” she tells Mom, kind of laughing to herself. “I’m ready.”

  Scud begs off from accompanying them to the show. He’s going to sleep at his father’s house. He and Zoe agree to meet tomorrow morning at the graduation. And for now, Scud will keep both the new saucer pearls.

  Then Zoe’s in the car with Mom. She rolls down her window and listens. She feels like she can even hear Groon’s music over here. It must be filtering through that big unny tunnel that Groon’s crew is working on. Not that Mom notices it.

  “Are you high or something?” Mom asks Zoe. “Why didn’t you wear the clothes I laid out?”

  “I can’t do this conversation,” says Zoe, waving Mom off. “Can’t even.”

  “So secretive you are,” says Mom, bulling her car into the high school parking lot and claiming a handicapped space. She scored a blue sticker when she sprained—or nearly sprained—her ankle three months ago. “A musician’s helter-skelter life,” says Mom sententiously. “Promise me to at least wash your face before you go onstage.”

  “I guess I am dirty. I’ve been—” Zoe stops herself from trying to tell the whole hairball story.

  “You’re going to be wonderful,” says Mom, patting her on the knee. “My amazing daughter.”

  “Thanks,” says Zoe, caught off guard by the maternal support. So much happening at once. She feels like her head could explode. And when Mom kisses her cheek, Zoe damn near bursts into tears.

  Guided solely by muscle memory, Zoe runs into the school through a side door and finds a little-used ladies’ room. It’s empty right now, which makes things easier. She steps to the sink. Hate to admit it, but Mom had a point. Zoe looks like a street person. She literally hasn’t seen a mirror in—would you call it a week? The last mirror was at the Borderslam Inn. A long time ago. So, okay, wash face. Dab mud, saucer smeel, and bodily fluids off blouse. The jeans—never mind. Wash arms up to elbows. Use wet paper towels to dab pits, butt, and crotch. Comb out hair with spread fingers. Too bad she can’t borrow a—

  “Comb?” goes a girl, coming into the bathroom to join her.

  Zoe looks over. Oh my god, it’s Maisie. Carrying her purse and her trombone. And somehow she’s all tidy, in a lacy white summer dress that’s loose around her waist. She’s even wearing lipstick and blush. She looks excited, like she’s about to burst.

  “Where did you come from?” asks Zoe.

  “I used the saucer pearl in my purse to tunnel back to the gym,” says Maisie, very pleased with herself. “I started from the gym in the first place, you know. I did that original jump from the gym, ten minutes ago, Los Perros time. Because I’d seen that you weren’t showing up for our concert, and I figured you’d gone off to mappyworld. So I followed you, and we’ve been over there chasing each other for, I don’t know, a week of mappyworld time? And, you know how it works, when I jumped back, I came out at the same Los Perros place and time that I left from in the first place.”

  “I thought you said you have a lot of stuff to do in Van Cott.”

  “I did it!” says Maisie with a giggle. “Don’t you understand yet? And all along I knew that when I jumped back I’d be in Los Perros tonight. Which is where I need to be.”

  “You’re gonna play in the show?”

  “Wouldn’t miss for the world,” trills Maisie. “My trombone and my frock were all set in my gym locker. Will Scud be at the show to see me?”

  “I think he went home,” says Zoe.

  “Damn. I want to kiss that boy again. I’ll get him tomorrow morning. Scud’s another reason I want to be here, of course.”

  “Work it, girl,” goes Zoe. “Are we still okay with time? You’re sure Groon won’t be coming through the giant unny tunnel until tomorrow afternoon?”

  “No prob,” says Maisie. “The big tunnel is still narrow. Not nearly wide enough for Groon. And not wide enough for those two monster saucers they want to send through before him.”

  “How do you know exactly how wide the tunnel is right now?” asks Zoe, suddenly suspicious.

  “I saw the gate.”

  “But the gate’s inside Saucer Hall with all those hostile leech saucers guarding it. Did they let you go in there? Are you friends with them? Are you on their side?”

  Maisie smiles. “Only one gate is inside Saucer Hall, you paranoid freak. The other gate is, ta-daaah, inside the Los Perros High School gym. Where I just was.”

  “Oh wow. And that stuff Scud said about the dead saucers? Is the gate—”

  “You have no idea. Unbelievably foul and gnarly. Saucer meat piled twenty, thirty feet high, spread all around the gate like lava from a volcano. Pools of smeel. Every possible color of saucer skin. Eyes and fangs and innards and brains. Everything is completely dead and stock still. But then a minute later another slave saucer comes through, and it’s inside out, and it’s shrieking in terror and pain. But what you hear is just a faint whimper—because the saucer’s inside out, right, so its mouth or speech organ is buried inside its meat. It whimpers a few seconds and then it dies. And its body comes apart. Ultra goth. You’d like it.”

  Zoe is half repelled, half intrigued. “So the dead saucers are already there during our talent show concert?”

  “Unny tunnels,” says Maisie. “They can connect anywhere to anywhen.”

  “If I go look, will I be late for our act?” Zoe wonders aloud. She has no precise concept of the show’s schedule, nor, for that matter, does she know exactly what time it is.

  But now the decision is taken out of her hands.

  Here comes Ms. Boot, the vice-principal, doing a routine patrol of the off-the-beaten-track rest rooms, alert for drink and drugs.

  “On stage, girls! It’s Jazz Prowlers time! At least you’ve got your instruments. Zoe, you look like hell. You should learn from Maisie. Come on, come on, come on.”

  Ms. Boot herds them down the hall and through a secret door, and then
they’re with the other band members, finding their places on the high school auditorium stage. The act before them is filing off. Ten ballet dancers. Looking out at the crowd, Zoe sees that the talent show has drawn a full house. Does she remember her part?

  29: Cosmic Beatdown, Part 1

  VILLY / ZOE

  The problem is that Villy can’t see well through the goggles in the flat cow’s skin. Depending which way he’s facing, he might see Van Cott, or Los Perros, or the unny tunnel between them. But he doesn’t see regular 3D objects. He sees oddly shaped 2D slices of the world, marbled and mottled with details, like very thin slabs of fruit cake, or slices of some quirky kind of salami you’d never want to buy.

  He teeps with Yulia about it, and—thank you—she’s much more talkative than before. She says Villy’s effed-up vision has to do with them being in 4D space. She even shows him a Scud-Antverpen-style Figure 9.

  Figure 9: Regular Eye and Higher-Dimensional Eye

  “On the left it’s a Square in 3D trying to look at a 2D Triangle wooooman,” says Yulia. “And he sees a 1D strooooke.”

  “Why is the Square’s heart and flesh all covered up, and the Triangle has her guts showing?”

  “A kindly magic cow gave the Square a smeel overcooooat,” says Yulia. “To keep his guts from falling oooout.”

  “Nice of her,” says Villy. “And why do you draw them thick?”

  “Because it’s truuuue,” says the flat cow. “Beings of three dimensions have a slight thickness in the foooourth. But you should focus on their thooooughts.”

  “On the right, the hipster Square’s grody 3D eyestalk lets him see a fuller image?” says Villy, playing the good student. “He sees the Triangle’s outside and insides all at once. A gods-eye view. Can I get a 4D eyestalk?”

  “Noooo. You’ll see through the 4D eye that I’ve goooot.”

  “Okay, then,” says Villy, not entirely sure what they’re talking about. “Start teeping me what you see.”

  “Will doooo!”

  The flat-but-actually-4D cow begins feeding images into Villy’s brain. The images aren’t like photos, they’re more like—like dreams. Or visions. Fully realized 3D scenarios. What you might call gods-eye views of mappyworld, ballyworld, and the unspace between them.

  Villy sees the fields of the New Eden basin, and the inner mineral veins of the basin’s ridge, and the insides of some rooms in Van Cott, and the gnarly inner architecture of the mile-wide body of Groon, who’s still inside Saucer Hall.

  The flat cow draws closer to Saucer Hall. Her 4D vision shows Villy a clear picture of the tunnel gate inside the hall. The ball is slowly growing, fed by a steady stream of slave saucers. Villy watches as a gray saucer pauses beside the big gate, says a prayer to Groon, and then disappears into a slender unny tunnel based on the saucer pearl within his own body. The little tunnel’s glowing gate drifts a few feet across Saucer Hall to merge into the larger gate—which shows a nearly imperceptible augmentation in size. It’s like building a haystack out of straws. Villy and Yulia watch for a while as this scene repeats.

  “Do the slave saucers die?” Villy asks the flat cow.

  Yulia bends towards a different direction of 4D unspace and now she’s sending Villy images from the inside of the Los Perros High School gym. A pile of lifeless, inside-out, ripped-apart flying saucers litter the floor. Over a thousand of them by now. Enslaved by the bagpipe and killed on a whim.

  “Mass suicide,” murmurs Villy. “The cult of Groon.”

  Yulia flips her viewpoint back to the inside of Saucer Hall. Groon’s slave saucers continue pouring in. So confident is the gross bagpipe of his eventual victory that he thinks nothing of sacrificing his troops. Villy is sickened by the heedless cruelty. How dreadful it would be if Groon were to control Earth.

  “Show me Zoe,” he implores the 4D flat cow. “Take me to her. We have time. Let me see Zoe Snapp. Has she done her concert yet?”

  “Come see,” goes Yulia.

  §

  After the extreme adventures that Zoe’s recently been through, the Jazz Prowlers performance is a slight letdown. This said, there are some bitchin’ moments where she’s totally nailing her Miles Davis tune, “So What.” And it’s jolly to have younger sister Maisie right behind her with her slobbery old slide trombone at the ready for the next song. And sweet to see Mom’s little face in the audience, smiling and nodding and glowing with pride. Maybe life doesn’t totally suck after all.

  Once the concert’s over some of the kids are going to a party at Tawna Garvey’s. Incredibly enough, Tawna herself asks Zoe to come.

  “I never knew you could play like that,” gushes Tawna. “You’re deep.”

  Rich, rich praise. But Zoe bows out. She’s gonna catch a ride home with Mom and go to bed. She’s so tired that her knees are about to buckle. Mom herself is surprised that Zoe’s coming home. Zoe’s story for Mom is that she’s worn out from studying so hard. Mom doesn’t even pretend to believe this. She’s always suspected that Zoe is a secret pot smoker. And Mom knows that pot makes you tired. She used to smoke a bit with Kirkland, back in the day.

  “Can I sleep over at your place?” Maisie asks them just as they’re going.

  “Well…” says Mom, not sure what to say. Like, probably Maisie’s a pot smoker too? And there’s the whole history of Maisie’s birth having sparked Mom and Dad’s breakup sixteen years ago. That wasn’t exactly the newborn baby’s personal fault. But still…

  “Sure you can,” goes Zoe. “We can always fit you in, sistah.”

  “I can’t face seeing Sunny,” says Maisie. “My so-called mother. I didn’t have a chance to mention this to you, but she’s acting weird. More weird.”

  “How do you mean?” goes Zoe.

  “It’s like Sunny’s been bitten by a vampire,” says Maisie. “If you know what I mean.”

  “Got it,” says Zoe, filling in the picture. And now she remembers Dad warning her that Sunny Weaver has gone over to the side of the leech saucers. But eff that shit.

  Right now Zoe’s feeling simple and happy, and she’s thinking about how great she played, and how much everyone clapped. And that’s the space she wants to be in. Stay in that glow and go to bed.

  “I avoid Sunny Weaver like the plague,” puts in Mom, with an odd, light laugh. “Despite her good deeds.” At this point Zoe finally grasps that, at some level, Mom is glad that Sunny relieved her of Kirkland Snapp sixteen years ago. She doesn’t want him back at all. Mom smiles at Maisie. “If you want to defect from Sunny’s team to ours, that’s fine. The more the hairier.”

  So Maisie beds down on the couch in Zoe’s room. Maisie wants to have a sleepover gossip session, but Zoe can’t even. In minutes Zoe and then Maisie are out for the night.

  §

  Yulia can’t find Zoe’s concert, but later the flat cow lets Villy peek at Zoe lying alone in her virginal teen-girl bed in her Mom’s home, sound asleep. Zoe has a new trumpet next to her pillow—somehow Villy can tell the trumpet is the same living entity that was recently Zoe’s guitar. Good for Zoe. Mentally Villy caresses her virtual form—as shown to him in holographic anatomical detail by Yulia’s 4D eye. Being near Zoe feels soothing, good, and right. Villy realizes he needs some rest too. And then he’s asleep. Little Duckworth nestles under his chin, sleeping as well.

  §

  She awakens to yet another perfect California day—bright sky with puffy clouds. An intense yottawatt sun. The air with a pleasant touch of coolness, somehow like clear water. Chickadees chirping, bees in the lemon tree, jasmine blossoms on the vine. Graduation Day. It’s nearly ten a.m. The ceremony is in two hours. At noon. Everything’s in place.

  Except, oh no, today is also Groon Invasion Day. The sudden memory is like a horrible human-sized crab that races out from under Zoe’s bed and seizes her wrists in its claws and shoves its churning mandibles into her face. She moans.

  Maisie snaps awake, sits bolt upright, and starts talking a mile a minute. “I’m gonna go che
ck out the gym right now. Gauge the size of the gate. And then, if there’s time, I’ll flirt with Scud. And then I wait till I see that you and Scud get into the tunnel without Sunny Weaver messing it up. And then I tunnel back to Van Cott. So I can be there in case Groon tries to back out. And if you guys do kill Groon, I’ll want to be in Van Cott for whatever happens next.”

  “Stop it,” says Zoe, pressing her hands against her head.

  “Good morning, sleepyheads!” calls Mom. “Zoe, you shower and get dressed, and we’ll go right over to the school. You can hang with your friends and I’ll grab a seat. Are you eating with us, Maisie, or do you have to go now?”

  “I’m going,” says Maisie, taking the hint. “Zoe said I could borrow her bike?”

  Zoe hasn’t actually said that, but whatev. She gives Maisie the key to the bike lock. Maisie snags a piece of cinnamon bread from their kitchen and peels an orange while she’s at it. Gets Zoe’s beater bike from the garage, and she’s on her way.

  “High school romance!” yells Maisie, as she cheerfully pedal-pumps off.

  When Mom and Zoe get to the high school about an hour later, Scud comes up to Zoe right away. He looks inordinately happy.

  “Saw Maisie?” says Zoe.

  “Yeah,” beams Scud. Zoe’s never seen him so ebullient.

  “Was your dad mad at you for leaving on the road trip with Villy?” Zoe asks.

  “He hadn’t noticed,” says Scud, laughing. “It’s not like we were actually gone for long. Not from his point of view. I told Dad about the trip, and for once he was interested in me. You remember about Yampa’s pictures being in my head? Get this. Dad helped me use my teep slug to transfer Yampa’s pictures from my brain into my internet image cloud. It was tricky, but we did it. So we’ve got a buttload of photos from ballyworld. Gotta be some fame and money in that, Zoe. If we survive.”

  “Sweet,” says Zoe. But her thoughts on the upcoming battle. “Where’s Maisie now?”

  “She’s talking to her mother. Sunny Weaver? Sunny started yelling at me when I said something about killing Groon. She says Groon is God. And that it would behoove me to welcome him. I’ve never heard anyone say that word before. I told her she’s a psycho, and that she should stay the eff out of our way.” Scud chuckles to himself. “I was like a mouthy skater kid. And then I walked off. Sunny was foaming at the mouth. So Maisie is trying to chill her out. Do you want your new saucer pearl now? We’ll use them to zap and to fly.”