by Rudy Rucker
In the far corner of the room was a big transparent-walled love-puddle with a bunch of people in it merged together. Hard to be sure how many. Four, five, six? You could see the faint outlines of their limbs through the sides of the merge tank; the limbs were temporarily fused, but there was still a kind of wrinkle where one person started and the other left off.
Right next to the merge tank, some moldies were sitting around a big round table getting high on betty, rubbing each other with ointment from a little jar shaped like a pyramid. The lifted moldies were growing their bodies into really odd forms. It was like they were trying to outdo each other—though none of them was really as good as the fighting eyeballs, who kept running across the betty table as if to playfully hassle them. One of the lifted moldies was made of nothing but long, wagging, spitty-looking tongues; a second was shaped like the Book of Mormon, with Urim and Thummim stones dangling to one side; and a third was a lacy hollow form a bit like wrought-iron lawn furniture. Babs danced closer, studying the lace moldie’s pattern, trying to remember it so she could copy it later, but just then a teenage girl vomited on the floor right next to her, spattering chunks of camote all over her shoes.
“Gettin’ a little rough,” said Randy. “Let’s go into the big room, Babs.”
They pushed through the sound-canceling imipolex curtains that separated the bar from the big room. It was a vast echoing space, formerly one of the ship’s holds, with steel deck and slanting steel walls. Dwarfed in the center of the cavernous volume was a little round stage, lit by an overhead spotlight. Slowly-gyrating at stage left was a pale purple Snooks moldie with a fat stomach and a nose that grew out like a long trumpet. Babs knew him from sight; his name was Ramses. Ramses was fingering his nose horn, playing soft Egyptian music. The note progressions were hypnotic, a whole different world from the bar’s chaotic munge. Babs took a few deep breaths and peered around, getting a look at the crowd.
There were no chairs; people and moldies were either standing or sitting on the steel deck. There were maybe a hundred spectators in all—far too small a crowd to make this enormous cold room feel properly inhabited. It was easy to pick out the few moldies in the crowd because they glowed. Of the humans, it looked like there were a lot more men than women. Babs had never known anyone who had even met any woman who was a cheeseball. But men liked to imagine that such women did exist—to imagine, in other words, that some women could be such indiscriminate hump-anything horndogs as men.
Now Babs noticed some objects moving about overhead, repeatedly passing through the spotlight’s bright cone like great, bumbling moths. Phil’s blimps! He must have given them to the moldies when he left town. Babs knew them well, as Phil had always brought them to their block parties. She pointed out the blimps to Randy, telling him some of their names. “That little one is the Graf Z,” she whispered. “And there’s Led Zep, and the big fat polka-dotted one is the Uffin’ Wowo. And, oh look, its dots are Egyptian cartouche patterns now.”
“Pssst!” said Yoke, sidling up out of the darkness. “Most of the Metamartians are in here. See over there? Peg the devil-girl with the proverbial drunk businessman. I asked her if she could help us, but she said the same thing as Josef. ‘It’s up to Om.’ What a bitch. I didn’t talk to any of the others yet. See Wubwub over by the wall? With the beautiful woman on his arm? Can you even believe?”
“That’s a trannie,” whispered Babs. “Look at her hips.”
“Oh, too true. And Shimmer and Ptah are sitting together right beside the stage, someone said they were about to perform.”
“I don’t see Siss or Haresh,” said Babs.
“Siss went off with Cobb,” said Yoke. “Maybe he can get her to talk? Like if he fucks her?”
“What’s Siss look laahk?” interjected Randy.
“Like a snake-woman,” said Babs, giving Randy’s leg a big pinch. “Bite! Uh-oh, Shimmer and Ptah are going onstage.”
Babs had been around moldies for most of her life; she’d been five when her father sponsored the Moldie Citizenship Act of 2038, and there had been a steady stream of grateful moldie visitors ever since. And of course Babs’s mother herself was part moldie; that is, Wendy Mooney’s personality lived in a moldie Happy Cloak that had a symbiotic relationship with Wendy’s human flesh. In the natural course of things, Babs had seen moldies having sex a number of times—moldies weren’t modest. It excited her even less than seeing two dogs fucking, which was not at all.
But Shimmer and Ptah certainly did give a spirited performance. They bounced up onto the stage, began embracing each other, and, just for the goof of it, Shimmer pushed her body right through Ptah’s, his bronze flesh forming itself back together on the other side of the marble Shimmer. Ptah did the same to Shimmer, and then they corkscrewed themselves together so tightly that they looked like a candy-cane or a barber-pole. To top off the foreplay, Shimmer divided herself up into an archipelago of separate globs, and Ptah juggled her. While continuing to juggle, Ptah began pinching off more and more globs of himself, until all that was left of him was a pair of hands down on the platform of the stage, incredibly keeping some two score white and bronze balls aloft. And then the bronze hands became balls as well. Before the balls could all tumble out of the air, two of the white balls stuck to the ground and formed themselves into hands—and took over the juggling. At each round another white ball stuck to the hands, and the hands grew into arms, into a torso, and finally into all of Shimmer, juggling bronze globs of Ptah, and then Shimmer stepped aside and Ptah’s globs somehow sprang together in midair, reassembling the grinning bronze superman all at once.
Even Babs had to applaud for this. But now the inevitable had to happen. Ramses’s music took on an urgent, throbbing tone, and Shimmer and Ptah swooned to the ground. They softened their flesh to a near liquid state and pasted their bodies together, opening up their pores enough to exchange wet flows of imipolex that carried along cells of their algae and their fungal mold. The mold nerve magic took over, and they shuddered in a mutual orgasm. A musty, cheesy reek came drifting down from the stage.
Babs peeked over at Randy. His eyes were wide and his mouth was open. Emboldened by her two beers, Babs couldn’t resist letting her hand steal over to gauge the state of Randy’s excitement.
“Oh yes, Babs,” moaned Randy. “Please touch it.”
Well, why not? Just for a minute, anyway. She slipped her hand under the waistband of Randy’s baggy pants. Hmmm. A girl could definitely do something with this. But no point letting him come. After a few quick caresses, Babs took her hand back out.
“Later!” she whispered. “Can you get me another beer?” Randy hurried off.
“What’s up?” said Yoke, who was standing on Babs’s other side.
“Never mind,” said Babs. “I bet Kevvie’s next.” Ramses picked up the pace of his music, managing to sound like several instruments at once: drum, oud, tambourine, and flute.
And now, surging out of the darkness behind the stage, there came a big bird-headed moldie carrying a robed woman in his arms.
“Oh puke, it really is Kevvie,” said Yoke. “I don’t want to see this.”
“Hold on,” whispered Babs. “I want to see how it starts.” After living near Kevvie for a year or so, Babs didn’t have much sympathy for her. “We’ll leave as soon as it gets too rank. Oh thanks, Randy.” He was back with her beer.
Haresh was doing a little Egyptian dance, his arms held out in that funny hieroglyph way. Kevvie sat on a low bed on one side of the stage looking kind of amused. She slid out of her robe with broad, theatrical gestures. And now she put her hand between her legs, supposedly gazing at Haresh as if he were a huge turn-on. She kept losing her focus and zoning out, then suddenly remembering to keep the act up. But now things got serious. Haresh turned toward Kevvie, with a stiff dark penis shape rising from his midsection. Kevvie feigned surprise and placed one hand over the O of her mouth.
“Don’t do it, Kevvie,” called Babs, but Kevvie went ahead
and lay down on her back with her legs wide open. She gave her pelvis an encouraging wriggle.
“Go for it!” shouted a man off to the right.
The Egyptian bird-god took another step toward Kevvie.
“Stop it, Haresh!” shouted Yoke. “You’re too good for this!”
At that, Haresh turned his head, peering out at the crowd and spotting them. “I am agreeing entirely, Ms. Yoke,” he said, his penis going soft and then disappearing back into the mass of his belly. Ramses’s nose horn went limp and his music drooled off into silence. “This show is nonsensical,” continued Haresh. “Kevvie and I have already simulated a sex act today. I find it ridiculous to repeat our unnatural congress in search of some unlikely satisfaction. If your shoddy Earth time were properly parallel, then we could have explored every variation within the span of one single act, but—”
“Oh maaan,” moaned the frustrated Randy. “Goin’ off about our time again?”
“Put it to her!” shouted another man. Kevvie had lifted her head up and was looking around. She drew her knees together. More people were yelling. Kevvie sat up and began putting on her robe. “Don’t go!” someone else shouted. “You’re supposed to fuck the moldie!” Kevvie smiled, shook her head, wrapped the robe around herself and stepped down off the back of the stage. Haresh joined her, and the two walked off into the darkness together, laughing and talking like good friends.
“We’ll take an intermission now,” said Ramses from the stage, talking loud to drown out the grumbling. The curtains to the bar pulled away, letting in light and music. The spotlight above the stage stayed lit. “And feel free to ask any moldie you see for a date,” continued Ramses. “The next round of refreshments is on the house, and meanwhile enjoy the zany antics of our buffoon blimps.” The five blimps drifted down to about twenty feet above the stage and began circling around each other like clumsily flocking birds. “I’ll have a talk with our performers,” promised Ramses. He hopped off the stage and set off after Haresh and Kevvie, just now disappearing through a little door in the hold’s far side. Most people began drifting to the bar, and all the Snooks moldies headed in there too.
“Those are Phil’s,” Babs told Yoke, pointing to the blimps. “Those are the ones he wanted to show you last week.”
“Before Kevvie ruined everything,” said Yoke. “She’s really something, isn’t she? What could Haresh possibly find to discuss with her?”
Just then Ramses came flying back out of the door at the far side of the hold. Someone had shoved his head up his ass so far that he looked like a wowo. It took him a minute to get himself unknotted, and when he did, he took off toward the bar, probably looking for support.
“Looks like Haresh is on strike,” said Yoke. “We really should talk to him. Or to one of the other Metamartians. We have to get them to tell Om not to allow plutonium.” Now the Metamartians were all following Haresh toward the far door—Peg, Wubwub, Shimmer, and Ptah.
“Did Josef say they’re leaving tonight?” said Babs. “Maybe they’re worried the Snookses are going to hassle them. You’re right, Yoke, we should talk to them about plutonium. But maybe first we need another beer.” Babs was feeling merry. She gave Randy her biggest smile. “I loved the juggling, Randy.”
“You got me in your spell, Babs,” said Randy gamely. “How soon we goin’ back to your place?”
“If you’re not going to talk to the Metamartians, then I will,” said Yoke, about to take off after the aliens. But suddenly her face changed. “Look—”
“Oh God,” said Babs.
Up above the stage the air was looking oddly warped. And the Uffin’ Wowo blimp—good lord, it was swelling up to the size of a refrigerator, the size of an automobile, the size of a house! It wobbled hugely down and then—as in some fabulous stage-magic illusion—the spotted blimp split open to reveal a dog, a thin woman, a plump woman, and—”Phil!” screamed Yoke, running toward the stage. “Ma!” The air above the stage rippled, and then the space of the room was normal again. The shock of the miracle made Babs feel hollow inside. Or like it had shaken loose some deep part of her. Without really knowing why, she was weeping. Randy seemed equally overcome. He threw his arms around her.
“I love you, Babs,” he said into her ear.
“You do?” said Babs. “You do?”
Phil, February 26
Phil woke up late Thursday morning, at peace with the world. Da was dead, yes, but in the end his death seemed to make sense. Phil’s dreams last night had included Da. Da was happy. He was inside the SUN, yet still flying toward it, as if the center of the SUN were unreachable. In Phil’s dream, the SUN was a point of light inside a cloud of glowing butterflies.
Phil’s dream conversations with Om last night had been the best yet. He’d learned to understand the way that Om spoke in glyphs, in concept blocks, expressing many variations of a thought at the same time. He was bursting with new information. Today was going to be a good day.
For once Tempest and Darla seemed sober, and Darla was even dressed—wearing the purple caftan he had made her.
“I dreamed Om said she’s putting us back today,” said Darla. “Did you dream that too? Tempest can’t remember.”
Seeing Tempest reminded Phil of what she’d done to his face, but when he felt around his eyes, yesterday’s scabs were gone. As well as remembering the dream Darla was asking about, he remembered that in one layer of his dreams Om had been healing him.
“Yes, I did dream Om is going to put us back,” Phil answered Darla. “She had us inside her so she could figure out our circuitry—and now she’s done. She said from now on she’ll just watch people through their allas. She’s going to set us back down.”
“Anywhere she drops us is faaahn with me,” mewed old Tempest. “Why you lookin’ at me so funny, Phil?”
“You don’t remember trying to claw my eyes out?”
“We—We was fightin’ over a doll?” said Tempest, glancing around for Humpty-Dumpty, who was, of course, nowhere to be found. Tempest looked strung-out and querulous. “Young fella like you shouldn’t of been pickin’ on a naahce ole lady like me.”
Phil didn’t bother answering that one. “Om said she’d home in on Da’s wedding ring,” he told Darla. “She likes to have a specific thing to go for.”
“Kurt’s wedding ring?” said Darla. “He wasn’t wearing any in here. You know where it is?”
“I do,” said Phil. “It’s inside a pet DIM blimp I made. I called it the ‘Uffin’ Wowo, not that it really is a wowo, it’s just a blimp. It’s aboard the Anubis, which is beached in the mud at San Francisco. A bunch of moldies use the Anubis for a nightclub.”
“Stuzzy,” said Darla. “I’ve never been to San Francisco. Your father’s wedding ring, huh?” She paused for a second. This morning her expression looked composed and intelligent. “You know, Phil, there’s something we should fab about, especially since you’re such a good friend of Yoke’s. It’s—the gunjy way I’ve been acting in here—I mean with your father and everything—Phil, you have to viz that I flat out thought we were dead, so—”
“I can forget it,” said Phil.
“Especially don’t tell Yoke,” said Darla. “She’d flame me. My little darling does have a temper on her. If she found out that when I met her boyfriend I was lifted and naked and—” Darla broke off, laughing. “I’m glad we fabbed about this.”
“And you say good things about me to her too,” said Phil.
“You are good,” said Darla. “But, no, I won’t praise you to Yoke or it might turn her against you. I’ve always had to handle that girl with kid gloves. You know how it is. Your dad felt a little the same way with you. He was wonderful. His sacrificing himself like that—I bet that’s what turned Om around.”
“Where is Kurt?” wondered Tempest. She was sitting on the oak trunk holding Planet and tremulously trying to light a cigarette.
“He jumped out of Om’s hole to fly into the SUN yesterday,” said Phil flatly. “You helpe
d him.”
“Don’t blame me. Hell with you.” Tempest clammed up and looked away, squinting her eyes against her tobacco smoke.
Phil turned back to Darla. “I had so many dreams last night, Darla. I saw Da, and then Om was talking to me about him. She says she didn’t urge him to jump at all, that you and Da just found that idea in your own heads. But, yes, in a way, Da jumping really did make Om decide to set us down. It impressed her, and made her feel sorry, and—I don’t know—it was such an intense moment that now Om feels like she knows what makes us tick.”
“Whiyun we supposed to land?” whined Tempest, hunching over something in her lap.
“I think tonight,” said Darla. “It’s just coming back to me. Om showed me this previz flash of how we’d come down. Something about a dark room. A stage? And don’t you be getting spun again today, Tempest, I see that wine. Give it here, cruster. That’s xoxxin’ right, I’m pouring it out. Whirl, whirl, whirl, Om’s magic rays are turning it into air. We’re not gonna come knuckle-walking out of here tonight like Shasta ground sloths, you wave?”
While Darla kept an eye on Tempest, Phil went to peer out of Om’s flaw again. Sticking his head out, he remembered something else Om had told him. The flaw was one of Om’s “fingernails.” A shelf sticking out of the smooth curve of the powerball fingertip that contained them.
Phil looked ana past the vast, curved pink forms of Om’s body, visualizing the SUN’s bright orb as a cloud of winged souls. Da in there too. Hi, Da. Looking kata, Phil once again studied the three pairs of tendrils running from Om’s body kata to the Earth. Two gold-colored, two silvery, two coppery. He and Om had talked about those tendrils in his dreams last night. What Om had said about the tendrils had been esoteric, but Phil had been able to follow it. Having Da say Phil was smart had loosened up Phil’s old mental block against mathematics. The tendrils were in pairs because they were loops. Each pair was a loop like the handle of a coffee cup—with Om the cup, and the loop a handle that had been stretched like taffy, stretched all the way kata to touch the space of Earth. The tendrils were “hypercylindrical vortex threads”—like four-dimensional smoke-rings or tornadoes. The big new insight was that where these threads intersected the space of Earth, they looked, to the Earthlings, like cylindrical tubes: one gold, one silver, one copper. And these three tubes were allas: Yoke’s gold alla and, according to Om, two additional allas that she’d recently allowed the Metamartians to make. A silver alla for Babs and a copper alla for Randy Karl Tucker. The vortex threads carried energy and information back and forth between Om and the allas.