by Rudy Rucker
“What are they?” Ida asked Frek.
“Shuggoths,” said Frek. “Giant killer slugs. Look, we have to tune away from the news and watch some toons. The Goob Dolls and the Skull Farmers. I want to talk with them.”
“Watch toons!” exclaimed Lora. “Have you lost your mind? Come upstairs and grab whatever you want to save, Frek. The news said we have to be out of here in five minutes.”
“Mom!” shrieked Geneva. “I can’t find my nupearl necklace!”
“Calm down!” yelled Lora, running upstairs. “You lent that necklace to Amparo.”
“Put on the Goob Dolls,” Renata urged Ida.
“Okay,” said Ida in her deep little voice. She and Renata had become pals.
Meanwhile Frek dashed upstairs and fetched his Skull Farmers urlbud. Lora and Geneva were each in their rooms, frantically packing—for now they ignored him. By the time Frek got back down and slapped his bud onto the family room wall, the three Goob Doll characters were already active. And now Soul Soldier sprang up at Goob Doll Judy’s side.
“Frek wants to find the Magic Pig,” Renata told the toons. “We only have a few minutes.”
“Let’s try the alley where he disappeared this morning,” said Goob Doll Judy, batting her eyes at Soul Soldier. “We can go there with this big strong Skull Farmer.”
As usual Soul Soldier was toting a heavy-duty machine-gun. “Ready for pig-huntin’,” he said, opening his bare, blackened jaws to return Judy’s grin.
“It’s so nice to see you, Leroy,” said Goob Doll Judy.
“Don’t call me that,” said Soul Soldier, shaking his head. “Only my mama call me Leroy. If the other boys hear you say that stuff, they gonna—”
He broke off as Strummer and Gypsy Joker appeared.
“Niiice,” said Goob Doll LingLing, elbowing Tawni. “Dates for us girls, too.” She stepped forward and plucked a string of Strummer’s guitar, then gave a little flip to the lapel of his cape. “I love musicians.” LingLing’s glasses were pointed like flirty cat’s eyes.
“I’ll sing about you,” said Strummer. “Take you right on board.”
“We stalkin’ that pig?” Gypsy Joker asked Tawni. She nodded. He cocked his toothy jaw in something like a leer. “Lead the way, pretty mama. I’ll be right behind you.”
“Heel,” said Tawni.
“Are you packed, Frek?” shouted Mom from upstairs. “Ida? The shuggoths are only a few blocks away!”
Up on the family room wall, the Skull Farmers and the Goob Dolls were racing down the same curlicued pastel street as this morning, and once again they ended up in an alley’s dead end. With no Magic Pig in sight.
“He ain’t gonna hide much longer,” said Gypsy Joker, taking one of the dice from his dangling earring. “Back off, boys and girls.”
He tossed the ivory cube at the spot on the ground where the Magic Pig had wheenked away this morning. With a disorientingly rapid reverse zoom, their viewpoint sped out from the alley and up into the blue sky, well past some cute puffy Goob Doll clouds. A thermonuclear mushroom bloomed from the alley below, flattening every building in the Goob Doll’s home town.
“Oops!” said Judy in a cheerful tone.
Making a sound like a squadron of dive-bombing jets, the Skull Farmers and the Goob Dolls flew down into the heart of the cloud, with Soul Soldier laying down a withering barrage of machine-gun fire, complete with rhythmic muzzle-flashes and the sight of shell casings flying by.
Inside the cloud was a vague glow. But then, yes, they found a round hole in the ground right where the Magic Pig had disappeared. Strummer unlimbered his guitar and struck a fierce arpeggio of notes. The sounds echoed down into the hole—was there a response?
“Sooey sooey sooey, pig pig pig!” sang Goob Doll Tawni.
“We you coming to get!” added LingLing, and burst into giggles. “Kill the pig!”
Strummer plucked his strings again. There was definitely an answer from the hole. A faint wheenk.
“Go in there, Judy,” said Ida. “Bring him out. He has to talk to my brother.”
Squaring her slender shoulders, Goob Doll Judy took a deep breath and dove into the hole. One cartoon moment later she was back, firmly grasping the Magic Pig by one of his floppy ears. He didn’t seem able to break free of her grip. His teeth were chipped yellow stumps. With his white bristles and wrinkled eyes, he looked pitifully decrepit. But maybe that was on purpose.
“Let me go,” grunted the Magic Pig.
“No,” said Judy, giving Rundy a shake. Far from letting him go, she fastened onto his other ear as well, waving him around like a piece of laundry.
“Tell him, Frek!” exclaimed Ida.
“I have to get to the branecasters, Rundy,” said Frek. “I want to terminate the Orpolese production deal.”
“Business opportunity!” exclaimed the Magic Pig. He followed this with so long and shrill an oink that Judy had to drop him and slap her hands over her ears. But rather than running away, the Magic Pig struck a pose, letting an update ripple across his image. His straggly bristles shortened, his teeth whitened, his careworn wrinkles smoothed away. His body itself grew rounder, his aura brightened to a healthy glow.
“I’m at your service,” continued the Magic Pig, bowing with a sweep of his immaculate trotter. “We have three problems to solve. (a) You can’t terminate a production deal without picking a new producer. (b) You have to go to the Planck brane in person to contract for a new producer. And (c) there is no branelink hookup between your plane brane location and the Planck brane.”
“Oh yeah?” said Soul Soldier, poking the Magic Pig’s smoothly curved stomach with his gun. “How’d you get here then?”
“I’m a projection,” said Rundy. “An information pattern like you. Shooting me would mean nothing. So don’t do it, bonehead.”
“Frek!” exclaimed Lora, coming down the stairs with a bag in each hand. “What was that horrible squealing? We have to go!” She glanced back up the stairs. “Hurry, Geneva! The shuggoths will be here any second!”
Frek began talking to the wall skin very fast. “(a) The Unipuskers can be our new producers,” he told Rundy. “(b) I’ll go to the Planck brane right now. And (c), I bet you can bend a branch of the brane link tree down to touch our space here. Make it lead to—to the pantry in our kitchen.”
“That’ll work,” said the Magic Pig after the briefest of pauses. He was enjoying himself. “It’ll be good theater. The Unipuskers can use it in their sign-up ads. I happen to know the Unipuskers haven’t withdrawn their offer. Here comes the link.”
A whump sounded from the kitchen, and a clatter.
“The shuggoths!” screamed Lora, who hadn’t been paying attention to the toons at all.
“They’re still fifty meters off,” yelled Geneva from upstairs. “I’m coming, Mom. Do you realize that stupid Frek and Ida haven’t packed a single thing?”
Before Lora could say anything, Frek and Renata ran into the kitchen and flung open the pantry door.
There was no sign of the shelves of food you’d expect to see in here. Instead some wavering pinstripes twitched in the air just beyond the doorframe, sketching a picture of an arched opening—Frek recognized it as the entrance to the Pig Hill branelink tree, as seen from the inside.
And beyond the tree hole was the Planck brane world, with the branecasters standing there posed as if for a formal portrait upon a green hilltop, with more hills rolling away in the background. Chainey, Jayney, Bitty, Batty, Sid, and Cecily—with the Magic Pig cozily nestled in pink-jowled Cecily’s ample arms. He was, after all, her father.
“Hang on to me,” said Frek, taking Renata’s left hand with his left hand. “I’ll go in. Be ready to pull me back.”
Renata braced herself in the door frame, and Frek stepped through. Ida put her arms around Renata’s waist, just in case.
Right away Frek could see the Planck brane had changed a lot. A year’s worth of renormalization storms had come and gone, six or sev
en yugas. Today’s Planck brane was flatly rendered, tinted in beautiful unnatural shades, and detailed with masses of photorealistic texture. Objects were juxtaposed in striking ways that ignored the constraints of physical size. It was a world of artful photo collage. The cityscape of Node G had become rolling hills with curious monumental structures on their peaks.
What made the scene especially surreal was that, although the landscape was lit as if by warm afternoon sun, the sky was dark and blue-black, sprinkled with five-pointed stars and hung with a full moon.
Frek’s first thought was to look up into the branches of the branelink tree for Dad. While the tree had once looked like a great dead oak, now it was wholly flat and simple, a giant oval leaf, with its trunk transmuted into the leaf’s stem. The veins in the leaf echoed the structure of the former branches.
Craning his head so far back that his neck hurt, and pzooming his view across the tree’s surface, Frek finally spotted something upon the skyscraping leaf. A puff of white fiber, like a spot where a spider tacks down a surplus fly. Could that be Dad?
“Hello,” said someone, drawing Frek’s attention down. It was bald, gray-skinned Chainey, his mouth, as usual, a humorless slot. He and the others were impeccably dressed, with lots of gold jewelry. Chainey’s thin-lipped spouse, Jayney, was leaning on his arm, her head cocked at just the exact polite angle to indicate she was attentively listening to what everyone said. “Rundy says you want a new deal,” continued Chainey.
“Yes,” said Frek. From the Middleville kitchen behind him came the sound of Wow barking. No time to interrogate or bargain. Earth needed instant relief. “Please switch us to the Unipuskers right away.”
“Orpolese went crazy on you, hey?” said Sid, twisting his thick lips. “We’re more than happy to change the deal. The Unipuskers have a very nice package on the table. We can see you’re in a rush, so no need to go over the details. Right, Bitty?”
“I double-checked the figures,” said rumpled Bitty, leaning on a pencil the size of a walking-stick. She opened her mouth and waggled her tongue with its heavy gold stud. “We love it!”
“You can be the one to start the deal this time, Batty,” said Jayney.
Twitchy, hunched-over Batty lurched toward Frek, holding out a big-knuckled veiny hand for Frek to shake. But first Frek glanced back at Renata and tightened his grip upon her warm hand—lest Batty try and judo-flip him, or worse. And then he shook with Batty.
“Your Orpolese espers are gone as of now,” said Batty, fixing Frek with his glittering eyes. “You’ll meet Hawb in your home town to finish the deal.” He released Frek’s hand.
Back in the real world, Wow’s barking was rising to a crescendo, joined by Lora’s cries of alarm. Frek cast a last wistful glance at the motionless tuft of spider silk stuck so high upon the flat tree, and then stepped back through the arched opening in the trunk.
As he left the Planck brane he heard a low squeal from the Magic Pig followed by a rumble of laughter from Sid, as if to say, “Screwed them again, eh?”
In the kitchen everything looked golden bright. Espers were definitely watching through Frek’s eyes. Probably the Unipuskers. But he had no time to focus on his sky-air-comb routine.
“Hurry!” Mom was shouting. “We can still get out the back door.”
Wobbly surfaces of gray and green were visible out the front door. Shuggoths. Wow had taken a stand beside his dog house, baying at the intruders.
“Move it!” called Geneva, already out in the back with her carry-pod at her side. Mom, Frek, and Ida ran to join her.
Glancing toward the side yard, Frek saw something wonderful. The shuggoths were lying still, barely trembling. And their Orpolese haloes were gone.
“Help me, Frek,” said Geneva, wrestling with her heavy carry-pod. “Stop staring at those icky things.”
“We don’t have to run!” exclaimed Frek. “The shuggoths are dying.”
Wow made so bold as to dart over and nip at a crooked goat-leg that dangled from the nearest shuggoth. A split appeared in the beast’s side. Another tug from Wow and the gray shuggoth skin broke open like a wet paper bag. The connective slime oozed away and the shuggoth’s components lay revealed: bushes, tree limbs, deer, rabbits, worms, a goat, mushrooms, grasses, fish, and a woman.
“It’s Shurley Yang, the tailor,” exclaimed Mom. “Can we wake her up?”
“I know first aid,” said Ida. Frek’s brave little sister picked her way through the smelly debris of the shuggoth and leaned over the comatose Shurley Yang. With quick motions, Ida cleaned out Shurley’s nose and mouth, and then she crouched down to give the woman artificial respiration. Even Geneva had to stop yelling and watch.
A few minutes later, Shurley was coughing and sitting up among the tangled mapine branches.
“Bless you, Ida,” said the tailor, rubbing her face. “I was working with a turmite mound and—it was like the sky fell onto my back. One of those things—” She gestured toward a nearby shuggoth. “It swallowed me. An Orpolese player was running it, holding us together and thinking our thoughts. Ow.” She leaned over and rubbed her legs. “I got pretty banged-up in there. Like a doll in a purse.”
Frek walked over to the next shuggoth and gave a hard yank on one of its lifeless tentacles. It, too, split open.
“I’m down with this, too,” said Renata, and they moved around the neighborhood, helping to dissolve the shuggoths into their component parts. All across town the shuggoths were dead and decomposing. People were picking around the melting shuggoths, clearing the debris away. Those who’d lost their homes were loosening the soil, preparing to plant fresh house tree seeds. There was a feeling of calm, as after a great storm.
The wonderful thing was that, for the first time in a year, all the citizens were free of alien control. But perhaps not for long.
The unyunching saucer of Cawmb and Hawb appeared in the evening sky like a thunderhead—huge, gray, flattened, with a bump on top and a round window on the bottom. As it shrank toward Middleville, the shape grew smoother and shinier, more clearly saucerian. Soon it was floating right overhead, a two-hundred-meter UFO, its chromed surface broken by a dozen gleaming feelers.
Any minute now Hawb and Cawmb would emerge to finalize the deal by shaking Frek’s hand. And then people would be wearing Unipusker halos and living out their days as actors in these new aliens’ game.
“I can’t let it happen again,” Frek told Renata. He kept thinking about poor, angry Stoo.
As if called up by his words, the orange donut of Tagine appeared, flying low across Middleville. Vlan’s dark, iridescent tentacles waved from the side of the Orpolese craft; a bolt of energy shot toward the Unipusker saucer.
Moving with negligent ease, one of the saucer’s feelers sketched a space warp that reflected the blast up into the heavens. The Unipuskers had learned from their last encounter with the Orpolese.
Six or seven chromed snakes lashed out from the saucer, uncoiling so rapidly that they managed to seize Tagine and Vlan. Vlan launched a cascade of energy bolts. The saucer absorbed these, growing larger and brighter. Tagine spat out a blinding cannonade of fireballs. The miniature suns scattered off the saucer like hailstones, digging smoking craters into the ground where they hit.
The end came quickly. Boluses of energy wobbled out along the Unipusker’s gleaming feelers, inflating the Orpolese into a wobbly pumpkin/cuttlefish balloon—which exploded into scraps of black and orange. Just like that, the fight was over. The fragments that had been the Orpolese fluttered through the air like dead leaves, dissolving into nothingness as they fell.
The great round window in the Unipusker saucer’s underside shuddered. Hawb and Cawmb floated through, then rode smoothly down upon a tractor beam, their thick-plated brown skins glinting in the setting sun, bright highlights flashing from the gold covers on their stubby tails. Their clawed feet dug into the soft soil of Frek’s backyard.
Hawb’s flat clamshell head opened one edge, showing his yellow-lined
mouth. “Greet Frek. Request that we close our deal.”
He stepped forward with his thick three-fingered hand extended, his pale blue eyes bouncing on his eye stalks as he came.
“Just a minute,” said Frek, edging back toward the kitchen door. “I’m not ready.”
“Demand immediate satisfaction,” said Cawmb, close on Hawb’s heels. “Inform you that Unipusker gold has already been transferred to the Planck brane. Warn of grave actions from the branecasters should you fail to honor your commitment.”
“Um—that’s just it,” said Frek. “I kind of rushed my deal with the branecasters. They didn’t tell me what we’d get in return. We got the elixir for signing on with the Orpolese, but what are we getting for signing on with Unipusk?”
Over by their turmite-paper garage, Lora and Geneva were staring at the Unipuskers with their mouths agape. Ida and Renata were at Frek’s side. If Ida was scared of the Unipuskers, she didn’t show it.
“Extol the fabled Unipusker organizational skills,” said Hawb, twitching his eye stalks to shake off some gnats. “Promise that we will conform your behaviors to the Unipusk Branecast Code. Guarantee that we will prune down the species of your overly diverse biome. Shake my hand.”
In front of the house, crows were noisily picking over the remains of the shuggoths. The flowers in the backyard were bobbing in the evening breeze. Starlings swooped about in the twilight, catching moths. At Frek’s feet a puppy was nosing a glow worm.
“Go inside and start up the toons,” Frek told Ida in a quiet tone. “Put a whole lot of them on the kitchen walls.”
“How are your children, Cawmb?” said Renata by way of distracting the aliens. “I hope none of them have ickspot?” She couldn’t quite suppress a giggle.
“Express anger that you dare to gloat over your wicked ruse,” said Cawmb, slapping the curious Woo away from his gold-covered tail. “Marvel that none of our children perished in the collapse of our dwelling. Deny your right to make further jokes.” Ida had slipped into the house.
“So how many children do you two have now, Hawb?” temporized Frek.