by Rudy Rucker
“I don’t trust Unipuskers anymore,” said Carb flatly. “None of them.”
“I’m—I’m with Dad,” said Frek after a moment’s thought. Yes, Gawrnier had saved his life and taught him a wonderful skill, but there was no telling about Evawrt. And once they got back into a Unipusker flying saucer, who knew but whether Hawb and Cawmb might not be able to influence it.
While they were talking, the red and white brittle starfish who’d waved to them appeared at Nefertiti’s side, unsteadily walking upright upon two of his thin, writhing legs.
“I am introducing you to Firooz,” said Nefertiti, rippling her yellow frond. “My husband.” Firooz held out one of his wriggly, bumpy arms as if for a handshake, but he didn’t say anything. “The suns are rising very, very soon,” continued Nefertiti. “And then we are going on our way. We will gladly be taking all seven of you wherever you wish. This is what I have been expecting to happen after I was passing the door combination to your dog.” She wriggled the long fine hair of her fronds. “It was a simple matter to be probing such information from the thuggish Gawrgor as he was sampling the pleasures of the Taz.”
“My father and I want to go to Orpoly,” said Frek. “And you should take Yessica back to her asteroid near Earth.” He wasn’t yet clear about where Renata, Gibby, or the dogs should go, and for now nobody was saying.
“Come then, we are leaving immediately,” said Nefertiti, floating up off the floor. “Although we have been remaining ignorant of Earth’s location, I’m sure your presence will be helping us to find the way.”
“Not so fast,” interrupted Renata. “Not to seem rude, Nefertiti, but how do we know you aren’t a branecast producer like Hawb and Cawmb? How do we know you don’t plan to kill Frek and send another one of us to the Planck brane to make a deal for you?”
“We have always been despising flickerballs,” said Nefertiti primly. “My people will never be having an interest in branecasting. I am offering you this transportation for the sake of promoting harmony between our peoples.”
With no sign of a mouth or of eyes on her, it was hopeless to try and read the red-and-blue sea cucumber’s expression. But Frek was inclined to trust her. The fact that she wasn’t interested in flickerballs boded well.
“All right,” began Frek, glancing at Renata and Dad. “If it’s okay with you two—”
“At least talk to Evawrt,” said Renata.
“We are hewing to a tight schedule,” pressed Nefertiti, hovering in the air at their side. Apparently her body had built-in antigravity.
“We’ll be right back,” said Frek. He and Renata headed across the room to the table where the two Unipuskers sat.
“How were things with your father?” asked Renata as they walked.
One of the crab aliens rushed toward them just then. The last thing Frek wanted at this point was another offer to worry about. He took out Gawrgor’s blaster to make the crab back off.
“Things are okay with Dad,” said Frek, as they circled around the alien’s outstretched claws. “At least for now.”
“Lucky you,” said Renata a little bitterly. Frek could tell she wasn’t too happy about Yessica being nodded-out on the couch.
“Greet Frek,” said Gawrnier. He was toying with a bar snack, a handful of live squid in a dish of brown ink. “Report that I observed a bit of your escape via a flickerball tuned to Yessica’s mind. Commend you upon your growing skill at blocking out the espers. And at kenny crafting. Marvel that you learned so fast.”
“Greet Frek and Renata,” echoed Evawrt, exhaling a violet-scented plume of rickrack blossom smoke. “Query again if you’d like a ride in my saucer. Inform you that I’m taking Gawrnier to one of our colony worlds, lest Hawb and Cawmb punish him for helping you escape.”
“Well, I’m thinking we’ll go with those Radiolarians instead,” said Frek, hooking his thumb toward Nefertiti and Firooz across the room. “Nefertiti says they aren’t even interested in branecasting. Carb doesn’t think we should trust Unipuskers. Not even you two.”
“Casually accept your decision,” said Evawrt in his high mocking voice. “Jokingly remark that perhaps your father is right. Confirm that the Radiolarians don’t use flickerballs. Suggest, however, that the familiar devil can be preferable to the unknown one. Add that I truly don’t care if you travel with us or not.”
Frek paused, looking around the room at all the aliens. Something had been bothering him, and now it came clear. “What are these different races doing here anyway?” he asked Evawrt. “They wouldn’t be trading physical cargoes—I mean what would they ship? Thanks to kenny crafting, you only need the design for something and you can make it yourself. So what are they doing here?”
“Reveal the answer within your question,” said Gawrnier. “Most of our visitors are trading information. Add that tourism is a motive as well, the desire to see other beings and other worlds. Summarize that aliens visit Unipusk to come to the Taz Spaceport Bar both to barter information and to enjoy each other’s presence. Warn, however, that some are prospectors, in search of talent races like humanity to exploit.”
“Like the Unipuskers,” Frek couldn’t resist saying. “With their branecast productions and their zoo. Though not you, of course, Gawrnier. I’ll be grateful to you for as long as I live.”
“Come on, Frek,” called Dad, gesturing from across the room. He was having a little trouble holding onto Gibby, who was struggling to make another dash at the cowloon. Nefertiti was bobbing around like an impatient balloon, with the five-legged Firooz floating at her side.
“We’ll go with the Radiolarians,” decided Frek. “I think that’s the right thing to do.”
“Whatever you say,” said Renata doubtfully. “I’d feel better about them if they had eyes. I wonder if I can count on them to take me home.”
“Offer one last bit of advice about kenny crafting,” said Gawrnier as Frek bid him farewell. “Never work with kenner that tries to fight your will.”
Nefertiti had joined Dad in calling for Frek, filling the whole room with her warbling voice. It was time. A few minutes later the seven Earthlings were outside, Frek holding Gibby under one arm, Yessica leaning heavily against Dad, and Renata with the dogs. The horizon was glowing pink, and the great disk of Jumm had slid halfway out of sight.
As they loaded themselves back onto the hoverdisk, Renata again asked Nefertiti about her motives for helping them.
“You don’t run a zoo, do you?” she demanded. “And you’re not planning to eat us, right?”
The blue-striped red Radiolarian sea cucumber gracefully vibrated her yellow fan, repeating that she only wanted to help them because her people wanted a pleasant association with humanity. And she insisted that they should hurry.
Maybe it should have told Frek something that Nefertiti was so pushy. But it had been a long, tiring night. And he didn’t want to look weak by changing his mind.
It was hard to concentrate anyway, for Yessica was awake again, wanting to argue about everything, even though she barely grasped what was going on. Her obnoxiousness was coming on line just in time to replace that of the moolked-out Gibby, who was drifting into sleep.
Once they were all on the hoverdisk, Carb hunkered over the stubby control stick. He did a creditable job of flying them across the field to the Radiolarians’ ship. Nefertiti the sea cucumber and Firooz the starfish sailed through the air at their side, buoyed by their internal antigravity.
The first of Unipusk’s twin suns peeked over the horizon as they arrived at the barrel ship. The ship was less imposing than Frek had remembered, little more than five meters tall. She seemed to be a sea cucumber something like Nefertiti, only larger, and with plainer colors—mottled sea green, with five vertical black stripes. Her oral fan was a delicate lavender.
At their approach, the ship extended her fan to the maximum, the forked lavender tentacles rising up to perhaps two times the length of the ship, and then, branch by branch, she laid the feathered tendrils down
upon the field.
Two more Radiolarians were to be seen perched among the tentacles. Everything was very bright and clear in the light of the rising suns.
“You are meeting Mother Atmen and my two sons, Tutankh and Smenkh,” said Nefertiti. “As soon as you guests will be taking your seats in Mother’s branches, we are flying on our way.”
Tutankh was a starfish of the snaky brittle star type like Firooz, with his arms striped green and white like mint candy canes. Smenkh was more like a sea lily, that is, like a feathery-armed starfish. His arms were iridescent, shattering the morning light into all the colors of the spectrum.
Frek felt more and more uneasy. Were they to travel packed inside the stomach of a giant sea cucumber? And what about spacesuits for them just in case? He began trying to vaar some kenner from the air. But as before, it was slow going, and it didn’t help to have Nefertiti rushing him, insisting that they wouldn’t need suits, that Mother Atmen would fill herself with air.
Meanwhile Yessica was pacing around, compulsively running her fingers through her tangled greasy hair, querulously demanding where she was supposed to go to the bathroom.
Frek had only finished one spacesuit when Dad yelled, “Look out!”
He was pointing out across the spaceport field toward the crumpled stump that had been Hawb and Cawmb’s mansion. Two, no three, hoverdisks were coming for them. It seemed foolish to stay here and fight it out.
Hoping for the best, Frek tucked his suit under his arm and waded into the tangle of Mother Atmen’s tentacles. He’d have to make the suits for the others while they were underway. Nefertiti, Firooz, Renata, Carb, Yessica, Gibby, Wow, and Woo quickly took their places amid the sticky lavender branches. A blaster bolt from the approaching Unipuskers crackled past.
And then, faster than the time it takes to tell it, Mother Atmen lifted her branches skyward, drew her passengers into her body, and lifted off.
Pressed in on every side by the ship’s dark, feathery innards, the exhausted Frek postponed any attempts at struggle and dropped off to sleep.
10
Orpoly
Frek dreamed he was back in Middleville. Mom had kissed him good night, but he couldn’t sleep. He crawled out of his window, climbed down the house tree, walked over to an open patch of the yard and stared up at the sky, Wow at his side. In the dream, he looked at the sky for so long that he got a crick in the nape of his neck, a sharp ache that seemed to drill right in. Frek tried to look down at Wow to ease the pain, but when he did that, his dream switched back to when he’d first walked over to the clearing and looked up at the sky. It was one of those loop dreams where you do the same sequence over and over. He’d look at the sky, get a neck ache, look down, and there’d be a little glitch and he’d be back to staring at the sky—really focusing on it, trying to see each and every star.
Outside of the dream loop something was happening that made his stomach feel hollow and sick. With a rising whine the dream loop spun faster.
The sound of voices woke him; everyone in the ship was talking at once. Frek realized something horrible. His neck hurt because Atmen had grown hair-fine tendrils through his skin and into the base of his brain. Just like the peeker uvvy that Gov had used on him.
Frantically he jerked his arms, wanting to tear out the connection. But his arms were bound fast by the great sea cucumber’s feathery tentacles.
“Wake up, Frek,” Gibby’s voice was repeating, as if from inside him. The Grulloo’s moolk madness had worn off. “She’s trying to pick our brains! Block her off like you did the espers!”
Yes, the Radiolarians had been driving Frek’s dream of looking at the night sky, dredging up his star memories. How creepy to have aliens manipulating his simple dream of home.
“We screwed up,” groaned Dad. “She’s got us strung together like beads. They want to invade Earth. Don’t think about the stars, Frek, she still doesn’t have a good fix on the location.”
“Mother Atmen?” Yessica was saying over and over. “Can we talk?”
“Do something, Frek,” wailed Renata. “We’re about to yunch!”
It was pitch dark inside the ship. Presumably they were well out in interplanetary space, far from Unipusk and her binary sun. All eleven passengers were tangled up in Mother Atmen’s tentacles. The connecting tendrils made everyone’s voice seem to come from inside Frek’s head.
A memory of the home sky seen from his backyard flashed through Frek’s mind yet again. He seemed to see Wow and Woo standing beside him, muzzles raised to the heavens, barking. But now he could feel the probing inhuman intelligences—Atmen, Nefertiti, Firooz, Tutankh, and Smenkh—feeling through his mind for star sightings, working to find the route to defenseless Gaia.
Unlike with the espers and their golden glow, the sky-air-comb routine seemed to be of no use in blocking the Radiolarians. Frek strengthened his will and redoubled his efforts.
Acting on instinct, he thrust a blazing sun into the sky of his mental landscape, blotting the stars from view. He visualized Atmen’s connection to him as a tunnel in the ground, a tunnel leading both to his sly enemies and to his friends. He made six mental copies of the Sun and hurled them down the tunnel toward Renata, Dad, Yessica, Gibby, Wow, and Woo, hoping to cover over the star images in his companions’ minds. It must have worked, for now Atmen’s tentacles twitched, giving him an angry shake.
The whirling sensation of an imminent yunch continued to grow. Soon they’d zoom up to galactic size. And then they’d yunch back down—to where? To the Radiolarians’ home world, or directly to Earth? Perhaps the Radiolarians’ vast minds couldn’t yet pinpoint Earth’s location from the information they’d obtained—but surely they’d soon overcome Frek’s temporary blocks and find what they needed. In his mental image of his yard back home, the brightness was draining from his imagined inner sun—and feathery tentacles were creeping from the tunnel in the ground. Quite soon it would be dark again.
And all the while the voices were talking, the trains of thought overlapping and at cross-purposes, the five Radiolarians and seven Earthlings fighting like weasels in a sack.
YESSICA: “Frek is humanity’s representative with the branecasters. Did you know that, Mother Atmen?”
CARB: “Leave my son out of it, you grinskin. Don’t always be trying to get something for yourself.”
NEFERTITI: “Flickerballs are not attracting us. We are wanting Earth to host a planetary Radiolarian as well. Your people will be living as fruits upon a single vine.”
RENATA: “The sun image you sent me is working, Frek. The aliens keep making me think about the sky, but your sun blots out the stars.”
TUTANKH: “Smenkh is needing more information, Grandmother Atmen.”
GIBBY: “Gaussy. I just pulled the plug outa my neck with my tail. Can’t get my arms free, though. Here you go, Woo, I can reach your plug with my tail tip. That’s it. Claw your way over here, girl, and chew these damned tentacles off my arms.”
WOO: “Yipe! Woo help Wow first.”
FIROOZ: “One dog is being loose, Mother Atmen. She is gnawing the other dog’s connector. I am crawling toward them.”
YESSICA: “You’ll need a Regent, Mother Atmen. A representative to speak to the peoples of Earth. I’m uniquely qualified for this role.”
RENATA: “Don’t start that stuff again!”
WOW: “Wow free. Wow and Woo dig to Gibby.”
MOTHER ATMEN: “We will now be yunching up and down. Who is helping me to find our target location? I am offering rich rewards.”
TUTANKH: “The grotesque dwarf’s brain plug is being severed, Mother Atmen. He may be causing grave disruption very soon. I am crawling to aid Firooz.”
SMENKH: “I have been integrating our route, Grandmother. You must be waiting a bit longer. We are lacking sufficient data points.”
YESSICA: “Look in me, Mother Atmen! I remember the sky from Sick Hindu. I often went to the surface to meditate, I’m visionary that way. There was this blindin
g sun in my mental images before, but now it’s going away. The stars—I see stars.”
RENATA: “Don’t be so geevey, Mom! Everyone’s laughing at you!”
WOW: “Wow chew meat vine through.”
GIBBY: “Good dogs. It’s butt-kickin’ time. I got my knife. First for that striped starfish.”
NEFERTITI: “Careful, Firooz!”
FIROOZ: “I am being dismembered. My arms will not be grasping the ugly dwarf’s neck. Hurry, Tutankh.”
GIBBY: “I’ll show you five-legged brain suckers what ugly is.”
TUTANKH: “They’re rising up, Mother! They will be dissecting me, too!”
CARB: “Get those spacesuits ready for us, Frek!”
FREK: “Use your knife on Atmen, Gibby! Cut her biggest stems!”
GIBBY: “Here’s the bull-goose main trunks of them all! Five of ’em. Yee haw!”
The connection went dead. Frek was alone in the darkness, with nothing to guide him but muffled sounds. The tentacles around his wrists were slack. It was a simple matter to pull his hands loose. And then he ripped the pad off his neck. The pad’s hundred hair-thin connectors made a tearing sound that traveled into Frek’s nerves and into his bones. Ow. He blacked out for a second, and woke to the touch of a human hand.
It was Renata; she’d pushed over to him. Frek could smell her sweet breath.
“Take this,” said Frek, handing her the one suit he’d had time to make earlier. “Get into it fast.” Even as he talked, he was feeling around within his mind to see if Atmen’s intrusion had messed up his memory. But he felt normal.
“The thing on my neck,” said Renata. “It’s in the way.”
“Rip it off.”
“I’m scared to. It’ll hurt.”
“You want me to do it?”
Renata was still for a second.