by Rudy Rucker
When Frek thought to look down again, he noticed Yessica twining her arms about Carb’s neck, rubbing herself against him like a spider spinning silk around a captured fly. How could his father prefer a dumb, pushy woman like that to Mom?
Right about then Frek was distracted by a little Unipusker the size of his forearm smacking into him. “You’re ugly and you stink,” gurgled the child alien, parroting the insult Frek had delivered to Hawb back in the saucer. Word spread fast on Unipusk. The little creature spread his shell-head wide open to emit the wet creaking noise of Unipusker laughter.
“Prepare to alight,” said Angawl.
“He means we get off at the next branch,” said Renata. “Your room’s out at the very tip.” She grabbed Frek’s hand and shoved him away from her. The reaction sent her out of the negative gravity column, and as she fell, she pulled Frek after her. Frek caught hold of Gibby and Gibby grabbed Wow. It almost looked as if they’d fall straight back down to the floor, but some smart rickrack ropes swooped into position for them to grab. Renata caught hold of one, and Frek did, too. The elastic tendrils slowed their fall, and swung them into one of the hollow side branches of the great rickrack tree.
A gingerbread-man army of young Unipuskers went pounding down the long branch with them—well, actually some of them were more than waist high. Every single one of the Unipuskers wanted to tweak Gibby’s tail, to ruffle Wow’s fur, to feel Renata’s soft skin, to sniff Frek, and to pipe, “You’re ugly and you stink.” What made it even worse was that Angawl let out the exact same gurgling chuckle each time one of the children said the tag line. If one Unipusker thought of something interesting to say or do, all the others had to say or do the same thing. And none of them ever got tired of it. Hawb had said they were unoriginal.
The horizontal branch was a series of dorm rooms, separated by soft walls with slits in them that you could easily push through. Unlike the great room downstairs, the dorms were sparsely furnished, with little more than dome lamps on the ceilings. Upon the floors were disk-shaped pools of muddy slurry, grown right into the flesh of the rickrack tree, three or four pools to a room. These were the dark spots Frek had earlier thought might be rickrack spores.
Seeing some of the little Unipuskers comfortably lying in the puddles, Frek understood that these were their beds, and that the sculpture of Hawb and Cawmb in the great hall was of the couple about to sleep together. The smell from the beds was rank; it was the very essence of what was unpleasant about the smell of Unipuskers.
Frek felt uneasy about pushing farther and farther into the branch, through room after strong-smelling room. As they got farther out, the Unipuskers in the rooms got larger and more intimidating. “I’d rather be closer to the middle,” he complained.
“They want you out on the very tip,” repeated Renata. “For security. Mom and I live on the tip of the branch directly across from yours, by the way. And Hawb and Cawmb sleep at the rickrack tree’s top. Like this.” Quickly she sketched a diagram on her turkle.
“What about my father?”
“He usually sleeps on a couch in the main room,” said Renata, marking the spot with an X. “The Unipuskers don’t mind, so long as some of us are out on the tips being hostages. Carb doesn’t like it up here. And Mom’s not good at getting in and out of the shaft, particularly if she’s drinking moolk, so she stays downstairs a lot, too. The nights when they both make it upstairs, I get to go and sleep downstairs myself. The air’s better down there. But don’t worry, the tipmost rooms don’t smell that bad. How do you like my mom? Are you going to help us get out of here?”
“I hate to say,” said Frek, focusing on the second question. Too late he realized that it might sound to Renata as if he didn’t like her mother—which was true, but obviously it wasn’t the right thing to tell her, even if she herself didn’t like her mother. Immediately Renata grew distant and cold.
Just then they reached the sealed green door to their room. Unlike the other doors, it didn’t have a simple entrance slit, only a pinhole at its center. Angawl patted the door with a rapid and subtle series of gestures and the pinhole spread open to make an entrance hoop.
Renata stiffly watched Frek, Gibby, and Wow climb into the green conical tip of the long branch. Frek would have liked to talk to her alone some more, but Angawl was impatient and in any case Renata too seemed in a hurry to go. She said a quick good-bye and then Angawl tapped the door closed.
Immediately Frek had an urge to run after Renata to try to clear things up, but by now the door had stiffened, and it wouldn’t let him through. They were locked in for the night.
So Frek, Gibby, and Wow settled down on the sloping green floor as best they could. The room had neither beds nor a lamp, but some light filtered in from the Unipusker dorm room next door. The rickrack walls were soft to the touch, with a fresh plant smell, faintly scented with violets. With the door sealed off like this, the room was fairly pleasant.
“I’m beat,” said Gibby, comfortably curling his arms around his head. He looked very small. “That flickerball stuff, Frek, it was goggy. Fella could get hooked on that thing. I was a tiger, and a bird, and a—some kind of jellyfish. And then I was climbin’ a tree. What a day.”
“I have no idea what’ll happen tomorrow,” said Frek uneasily. Part of his defense against the espers was to resist forming opinions before he had to. And even if he had known his exact plans, telling his companions would be tantamount to telling the Unipuskers.
“You’ll know what to do,” said Gibby. “Don’t worry.” He wrapped his arms a little tighter and shut his eyes.
“I’m glad you’re here, Gibby,” murmured Frek.
There were some air holes on the walls, like windows the size of Frek’s fist. He peered out a hole for a minute, staring at the other lit-up rickrack trees, and at the glowing ships and warehouses upon the field of the spaceport.
“Woo gone,” said Wow, standing next to him, reaching his nose up to catch some of the window’s air.
“Why did she run off?” Frek asked the dog. “Do you know?”
“Sweet whistle called us,” said Wow.
“From the other ship? That barrel thing with the tentacles?”
“Sweet whistle,” repeated Wow. “Wow stay with Frek. Wow miss Woo.”
“Good boy, Wow. Maybe we’ll get Woo back soon.”
And then Frek lay down with his companions and fell asleep.
In the night Wow woke him up.
“Woo,” Wow creaked into his ear. “Woo barking. Lift Wow up to smell and listen.” Though Frek’s ears weren’t sharp enough to hear any barking, he held Wow up to one of the air holes for a minute, letting Wow thoroughly sniff the air, all the while cocking his ears, turning his head, and wagging his tail.
And then Wow did some barking of his own, which set the four nearly-grown Unipuskers in the next room to hissing and gurgling in excitement, until one of them called out, “You’re ugly and you stink,” and then they all had to yell that, and then one of the Unipuskers thought of pounding on the wall separating them, and then they all had to do that, and then of course Wow had to bark back.
“Good barking,” said Wow when things quieted down. “Woo know Wow here. Wow know Woo there. Woo know Wow know. Wow know Woo know.”
In the morning Renata came along with Angawl to get them. The first thing Frek saw when the door irised open was the hurt expression on Renata’s face.
“I’m sorry about last night,” he said, not entirely sure why he was apologizing, but having a sense that it was expected.
“You weren’t very nice about my mother,” said Renata, slowly swinging her pigtails.
“Oh, she’s fine,” said Frek. “For a grownup. I’m nobody to complain about parents. Look at Carb.”
“I’d rather not, a lot of the time,” said Renata with a little smile. “He and Mom just went to bed in our room about an hour ago. Up all night. They woke me up. I’ve been waiting for Angawl to come get you. Killing time floating in the g
ravity shaft and chasing vigs.”
“Well, please don’t be mad at me,” said Frek and then, before really thinking about it, he leaned forward and kissed Renata’s sweet cheek.
“Yee haw!” exclaimed Gibby, which was enough to end the moment.
“You’re staying here today,” Renata told the Grulloo with mock sternness.
“Confirm this information,” said Angawl.
“Huh?” said Gibby. What with spending yesterday evening staring at the flickerball downstairs, Gibby had missed out on most of the plans.
“You and Wow are supposed to be hostages today,” Frek told him. “To put the pressure on me.”
“I doubt if this overgrown horsetail plant can hold me,” said Gibby, thumping the floor with perhaps more bravado than he felt. “You go and do the right thing, Frek. Don’t never mind about us.”
The golden glow of the alien espers had been around Frek as soon as he woke up, and it had taken a few minutes’ effort to carry out the three exercises he’d started calling sky-air-comb for short. First, phase the glow from intense spotlight into a brightness of the sky; second, offer so little resistance to the peekers that he was as untouchable as air; and third, restore his natural mental processes by running a virtual comb of ghostly fingers through the tissues of his brain.
After all that, Frek didn’t feel free to think very concretely about the events to come. “You’re a pal,” was all he said to Gibby.
And then Angawl, Frek, and Renata pushed their way through about a hundred stinking dorm rooms, and swung on a series of vines to reach the ground floor. Hawb and Cawmb were waiting on one of the couches. Seeing Frek and Renata approach, Hawb called out a command. The garage set into the room’s wall opened its door, and their chauffeur, Gawrgor, came riding out on the hoverdisk.
“Greet Frek,” said Hawb, ushering Frek and Renata up the hoverdisk’s brass steps to lean upon its velvet railings. “Announce the start of our little tour. Predict you will love Unipusk. Mention that we’ll pick up Carb and Yessica later, right before we proceed to the branelink. Bid farewell to Angawl.”
They rose into the air and Gawrgor poked the control stick to make the hoverdisk trumpet the same three notes as before. The hall’s great round door swung open and they were out in the fresh morning air. It felt wonderful. The two suns were a handbreadth above the spaceport on the left, with half of Jumm bulging up above the right side of the horizon like the world’s largest mushroom. In the morning light the rickrack trees were a gentle shade of green. Their long, pointed branches rocked and whispered in the breeze, now and then bumping together to make musical booms.
Far beyond the trees Frek could see the bright line of the transport tube arcing down from Jumm to the surface of Unipusk. That’s where the branelink would be. The morning suns lit up a large high yellowish cloud beside the transport tube. This was the leftover spill of Jumm stuff, slowly drifting away.
To begin their tour, the hoverdisk circled among some of the nearby rickrack trees, with Hawb and Cawmb pointing out the dwellings that they most admired. As Renata had said, all of the Unipuskers living near the spaceport seemed to be pilots, kenny crafters, or producers of branecast channels. To Frek’s eye, the ornamentation-encrusted rickrack trunks soon began looking much the same. And it was hard to get over the fact that rickrack was the one and only kind of plant in sight.
“Show him the suburbs and the farms and the kenny crafters’ studio, Gawrgor,” put in Renata. “That’s more interesting. Look Frek, I made a map. Show the map, turkle.” Her turkle’s back flashed a colorful little diagram, with the spaceport in red, the rickrack mansions in yellow, the suburbs in purple, and the farms in green. The kenny crafter’s studio was a deep blue splotch.
Gawrgor kicked the stubby control stick. The hoverdisk heeled over and sped out to a zone where the rickrack homes were smaller and their decorations less intense. Unipuskers were out and about: trading stuff with each other, attaching fresh adornments to their houses, gossiping, playing with their children, and walking their vigs. The vigs rocked along on their stubby leg-bumps like high-speed inchworms. When two pet vigs met, they’d usually rub their eye stalks together in a friendly way, though a few of them were prone to varking.
Frek could see all this because Gawrgor had slowed the hoverdisk to the pace of a walk, the better to show Frek the ambience of suburban Unipusk. Everyone had time to stop and stare at Frek, often calling out, “You’re ugly and you stink.” Frek noticed a large number of flickerballs in use; the buzzing sound was pervasive, and every window seemed to pulse with the ragged light. The flickerballs seemed more aggressive here among the lower classes. The fat part of the market. Some of the Unipuskers were using flickerballs to watch through Frek’s eyes even as he passed; they alternated between looking at him directly and looking at the flickerball view of what he saw. He sky-air-combed his mind to keep his personal thoughts his own.
The ride got embarrassing when, in a burst of creativity, one of the Unipuskers had the notion of yelling, “Kiss Renata again!” Apparently the espers had observed the tender moment on their flickerballs.
“Kiss Renata again!” repeated the next Unipusker. And then, in typical Unipusker fashion, each and every one of the others had to parrot the little witticism. When Frek shook his fist at one of them, that immediately became something that all the Unipuskers had to do too. At his approach, they’d yell, “You’re ugly and you stink,” shake their fists, yell, “Kiss Renata again,” and burst into Unipusker laughter, making the exact same wet creaking noise every time.
“They’re idiots,” Frek whispered to Renata.
“I know,” said Renata, shaking her head. Even so, she was smiling and in a good mood.
They flew above some fields filled with very small rickrack plants and orange, grazing vigs. Although the rickrack plants were indeed a pleasant shade of green, Frek was getting sick of the color. There were absolutely no other plants but rickrack on Unipusk. And no other animals but vigs. This was the ultimate result of the policies NuBioCom had set for Earth: one plant, one animal. Frek redoubled his resolve to fetch a biome-restoring elixir. Fetch the elixir and save Earth from the branecasters. The vastness of the task was daunting. Yet for some reason Frek felt sure he’d find the way.
Most of the farm vigs looked peaceful. Frek noticed one letting her eye stalks flop down limp in contentment as she munched her food. He saw a farmer milk a calm vig by rubbing his hand along a spongy spot on the beast’s belly. The gray milk drizzled down through the farmer’s fingers into a little trough leading to a bucket. Yet a few vigs had a wild side; Frek saw a Unipusker vig herder step into one fenced field where the vigs aggressively opened up their long mouths and charged.
Meanwhile they were drawing closer to the all-but-endless column of the transport tube. The bottom of the tube disappeared into a big open pit in the ground. A steady stream of turbid fluid was traveling down the tube to be processed by the devices in the pit. There were several buildings at the edge of the pit, with messy piles of blue Unipusk dirt all around them. Unlike the dwellings on Unipusk, these structures weren’t rickrack plants. They were of smooth, clear-colored materials that could only be crafted kenner. One of the buildings was a golden sphere standing on legs, while another resembled an enormous model of a Unipusker’s iridescent brown head.
“We’ll go in there first,” said Renata, pointing at the clam-shaped building. “That’s the kenny crafters’ studio. Should be lively today with the transport tube working again.”
The great, glistening structure was complete with long, gently wobbling “eye stalks” and a dozen shorter projections. And just as upon a Unipusker head, the edges on one side of the building were parted in a great horizontal slit: the door. The hoverdisk carried them right in.
The space within the shell was even larger than Frek had expected from the outside; some kind of alien technological magic was at work, akin to Ulla’s shrinking field that made the space inside her seem so big.
<
br /> The effect was that the cavernous interior of the kenny crafters’ studio room seemed to stretch hundreds of meters on every side. Every square centimeter of the domed ceiling had something fastened to it: paintings, models, and full-scale examples of things the kenny crafters had made. Ranged along the edge between top and bottom were flickerballs, all of them turned on, each one showing a different world. And down in the center of the concave floor were a dozen or so Unipuskers fiddling with various objects: statues, couches, lamps, tail covers. They seemed to be studying the objects and, from time to time, doing things to change their shapes. Kenny crafters. Next to each of the kenny crafters was a limp orange cloth tube with one end attached to the floor.
“Give Frek a complete tour of available merchandise,” said Hawb.
“Be very alert for fresh enhancements for our home,” added Cawmb.
“Oh, please don’t do that again,” protested Renata. “It’s so boring! Frek is supposed to see the kenny crafters themselves, not the stupid junk they make. The crafting is the part that’s interesting.”
Hawb’s only response was a grunt. Gawrgor jiggled his foot, steering the hoverdisk up to the very apex of the shell. They began circling the room, spiraling outward, raptly staring up at displays on the ceiling: kenny crafted furniture, art objects, saucers, hoverdisks, eating utensils, grooming aids, garments, toys, and any number of artifacts whose purpose Frek couldn’t fathom. After completing each gyre around the great room, Gawrgor moved the hoverdisk a notch farther out so as to circle a fresh band of goods.
“Order that one,” said Cawmb now and then. “Order that one, too.”
“They always do this,” Renata murmured to Frek. “They love to shop. Viewing the whole display takes over an hour.”
Frek and Renata sat down on the floor of the hoverdisk and let their legs dangle over the whorls and swirls of the hoverdisk’s ornate brassy border. The constant rapid circling was less sickening if you looked away from the goods. Renata told Frek a little more about the kenny crafters working below.