"That's stupid. Daddy doesn't understand teleology." She waved her hand at the world out the window. "Everything's going to where it's supposed to end up."
Uncle Dave asked, "What happens when things reach the place they're going?"
Muffin made an exasperated face. "They end up there."
"They stop?"
"What else would they do?"
"All the planets and the stars and all?"
"Mm-hmm."
"People too?"
"Sure."
He thought for a second. "In perfect frozen moments, right?"
"Right."
Uncle Dave leaned his head against the window like he was tired and sad. Maybe he was. The sun was coming up over the housetops now. "Bus drivers driving their buses," he said softly, "and farmers milking their cows…the whole world like a coffee-table book."
"I think you'd like to be in a church, Uncle Dave," Muffin said. "Or maybe walking alone along the lakeshore."
"Maybe." He smiled, all sad. "Who are you, Muffin?"
"I'm me, dummy," she answered, throwing her arms around his neck and giving him a kiss.
He left us in front of the warehouse by the lake. "I'm going to walk down to the Rowing Club and back." He laughed a little. "If I do get back, Muffin, I'll have your parents ground you forever!"
"Bye, Uncle Dave," she said, hugging him.
I hugged him too. "Bye, Uncle Dave."
"Don't let her do anything stupid," he said to me. We watched for a while as he walked away, but he never turned back.
Up on the warehouse roof, there was a monk waiting with a McDonald's bag under his arm. He handed it to Muffin, then kneeled. "Bless me, Holy One."
"You're blessed," she said after looking in the bag. "Now get going to the temple. There's only ten minutes left."
The monk hurried off, singing what I think was a hymn. We got into the plane-boat and I helped Muffin strap herself into one of the big padded seats. "The thing is," she said, "when the earth stops turning, we're going to keep on going."
"Hey, I know about momentum," I answered. I mean, Dad is a physicist.
"And it's going to be real fast, so we have to be sure we don't run into any buildings."
"We're going to shoot out over the lake?"
"We're high enough to clear the tops of the sailboats, then we just fly over the lake till we're slow enough to splash down. The monks got scientists to figure everything out."
I strapped myself in and thought about things for a while. "If we go shooting off real fast, isn't it going to hurt? I mean, the astronauts get all pressed down when they lift off…"
"Jeez!" Muffin groaned. "Don't you know the difference between momentum and acceleration? Nothing's happening to us, it's everything else that's going weird. We don't feel a thing."
"Not even wind?"
"The air has the same momentum we do, dummy."
I thought about it some more. "Aren't the buildings going to get wrecked when the earth stops?"
"They're going to stop too. Everything will freeze except us."
"The air and water freeze too?"
"In spots. But not where we're going."
"We're special?"
"We're special."
Suddenly there was a roar like roller-coaster wheels underneath us and for a moment I was pressed up against the straps holding me down on the seat. Then the pressure stopped and there was nothing but the sound of wind a long way off. Over the side of the boat I could see water rushing by beneath us. We were climbing.
"Muffin," I asked, "should one of us maybe be piloting this thing?"
"It's got a gyroscope or something. The monks worked absolutely everything out, okay?"
"Okay."
A long way off to the right, I could see a lake freighter with a curl of smoke coming out of its stack. The smoke didn't move. It looked neat. "Nice warm day," I said.
After a while, we started playing car games to pass the time.
The sun shone but didn't move. "If the sun stays there forever," I asked, "won't it get really hot after a while?"
"Nah," Muffin answered. "It's some kind of special deal. I mean, it's stupid if you set up a nice picture of kids playing in the park but then it gets hot as Mercury."
"Who's going to know?" I asked.
"It's not the same," she insisted.
"How can we see?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, is the light moving or what?"
"It's another special deal."
That made sense. From the way Dad talked about physics, light was always getting special deals.
The water below us gradually stopped racing away so fast and we could sometimes see frozen whitecaps on the peaks of frozen waves. "Suppose we land on frozen water," I said.
"We won't."
"Oh. Your turn."
"I spy with my little eye something that begins with B." Right away I knew she meant the Big Macs, but I had to pretend it was a toughie. You have to humor little kids.
We splashed down within sight of a city on the far side of the lake. It was a really good splash, like the one on the Zoomba Flume ride when you get to the bottom of the big long water chute. Both of us got drenched. I was kind of sad there was no way to do it again.
Then I thought to myself, maybe if we were getting a special deal on air and water and light and all, maybe we'd get a special deal on the Zoomba Flume too.
We unstrapped ourselves and searched around a bit. Finally we found a lid that slid back to open up a control panel with a little steering wheel and all. We pushed buttons till an inboard motor started in the water behind us, then we took turns driving toward shore. Every now and then we'd see a gull frozen in the sky, wings spread out and looking great.
We put in at a public beach just outside the city. It had been early in the day and the only people in sight were a pair of joggers on a grassy ridge that ran along the edge of the sand. The man wore nothing but track shorts and sunglasses; the woman wore red stretch pants, a T-shirt, and a headband. They each had Walkmans and were stopped midstride. Both were covered with deep dark tans, and as Muffin pointed out, a thin coat of sweat.
I wanted to touch the joggers to see what they felt like, but when my finger got close, it bumped against an invisible layer of frozen air. The air didn't feel like anything, it was just solid stuff.
Down at one end of the beach, a teenage girl was frozen in the act of unlocking the door into a snack stand. We squeezed past her and found out we could open the freezer inside. Muffin had a couple of Popsicles, I had an ice cream sandwich, and then we went swimming.
Lying in the sun afterward, I asked Muffin what was going to happen next.
"You want to go swimming again?" she said.
"No, I mean after."
"Let's eat," she said, dragging me back toward the boat.
"You can't wiggle out of it that easy," I told her. "Are we the only ones left?"
"I think so."
"Are we going to freeze too?"
"Nope. We got a special deal."
"But it seems pretty stupid if you ask me. Everything's kind of finished, you know? Show's over. Why are we still hanging around?"
"For a new show, dummy."
"Oh." That made sense. "Same sort of thing?"
"We'll see."
"Oh. Where do we fit in?"
Muffin smiled at me. "You're here to keep me company."
"And what are you here for?"
"Everything else. Get me a sandwich."
I reached into the basket and pulled out the sandwich on top. It was inside a plastic sandwich bag. "Didn't we wrap these in waxed paper?" I asked.
Muffin laughed.
The Children of Crèche
"And so it's good-bye to New Earth and
Inter-World Vac/Lines is such a mind-slogging Mom-And-Pop outfit that they think their good-bye/hello trick is cute. Halfway through the welcoming spiel from the burstingly mammalian Coffee-Tea-or-Kama-S
utra Flight Hostess…and speaking of sexual pandering, Inter-World, must we be so heavy-handed with the airborne pheromones in the cabin? I for one am more comfortable buckling up the seat belt when I don't have a pointlessly throbbing erection…halfway through the opening monologue with all its openly oozing female fecundity, they hit the cabin stasis field, and
No, you probably can't, you pitiful geckos.
It was with this lapse of taste in my mouth that your intrepid Art-Critic-cum-Role-Model-cum-Provider-of-Vicarious-Savoir-Faire donned the traditional leather jacket of his profession and sallied forth into the Vac/Port for a first recce of the fabled planet of Crèche. I was not entirely surprised to find that a Vac/Port is a Vac/Port is a Vac/Port, all of modern semiotics notwithstanding. You have your usual gaggle of tourists from the colony one star system over, the ones with no particular idea why they're here, except that they just had to get off-planet or go mad, and this place was cheaper than Morganna's Semen-Sea Whack-Me World; and you have your traditional traders from your favorite alien culture that doesn't see in the visible spectrum, blundering around with incomprehensible accents, asking humans to read the signs to them; and alas, you have your mass of parochial flibberties who shouldn't be allowed to read our dear old Mind Spurs Weekly but do anyway, who have pilgrimaged to the V/P to maketh the Big Embarrassing Frenzy of Gratitude that J*O*N*N*Y! T*H*E! S*C*A*L*P*E*L!, Knower of Taste and Taster of Knowing, has deigned to descend upon their terraformed little Nowhere to partake of their pathetic drippy lives and report same to the Cosmos at Large (i.e. You, Devoted Reader, currently feeling superior to such hicks, for reasons that are more obvious to you than to Yrs Trly).
Still and all, the Crèche mob of droolies were a touch outside the normal run: old as dry beavers, the lot of them. Of course This Reporter was aware of Crèche's famed shortfall in the production of mewlies and pukies; but you don't snugly plug into the reality of a child-poor world until you wander into a Vac/Port expecting the usual horde of training bras, only to find that their ecological niche has been filled by the saggy-sack set. At least these post-menopausal minks weren't packing those sharp little tissue-sampling spatulas that the gigglers bring to scrape off souvenirs. (Honest-to-Boggie, kids, if you really want to impregnate yourselves with my DNA, break down and shell out the bucks to one of the fine mail-order houses that advertise in this very magazine. You get professionally-prepared guaranteed-viable sperm, a certificate of authenticity, and a hyper-sincere form letter produced by a state-of-the-art computer that fakes my signature better than I do; and I get to have an epidermis that doesn't look like a land-use map. Bargains all 'round.)
For all their greysies, the Raging Aging were still cut from the typical Scalpel-worshipping mode—each and every one of them was waiting to be discovered. Crèche's idle idolizers came unto me bearing their children that I might bless them…said children being sketches and sculpture, mosaics and masks, tapestries, filigrees, etchings on flasks, holograms, cameos, prints wet and dry, ceramics and beadwork and oils, oh my!
Cherished Reader, perhaps you have recently heard Crèche lionized in song and cinema as the Mecca of all artistic perfection. Mine own ears too had been visited by paeans to the planet's sublime accomplishments, which is why I felt it incumbent upon me to visit said colony-sized cathedral to Aesthetic Excellence and there do homage. Nevertheless, in those moments when I was besieged by the untalented Crechian unwashed waving their pathetic attempts at self-expression under my nose like whores who want you to smell their panties, it came to me that we must never forget every cathedral is surrounded by pigeons screaming for crumbs and crapping on the architraves. Thus endeth the gospel according to Jonny.
I was saved from the gaggle of gleanies by my contact on Crèche, one Phillip Leppid, PhD, PhD, PhD (in Music History, Art History, and Pharmacology—the Three Graces). As those who claim to be au courant with the Contemporary Art Scene should know, the good Doctor-Doctor-Doctor is the man who first brought Crechian objets d'art to the attention of Those-Whose-Opinions-Are-Thought-To-Matter, in a gala showing last year at Buddenbrooks & Bleaks. Since that time, he has made himself buckets of booty huckstering the work wherever empty lives and full wallets are found. He is not Crechian himself—he hails from the hinterlands of a world named after some bottom-of-the-barrel Greek god who wouldn't have rated a pico-asteroid in the old Sol System—but Leppid is Crèche's foremost Advocate-Slash-Publicist-Slash-Pimp, and therefore was the natural choice to serve as my Sherpa during my Ascent to the Peak of Human Ahhh-tistic Achievement.
When he sighted me foundering on the shoals of a blue rinse ocean, Doc Leppy (as I never heard him called the whole time I was there) waded in with heroic disregard for his own ship of taste, scattered the minnows with the indiscriminate barging of his 300+ pounds, and dragged me to the safety of his waiting Lava Cruiser Deluxe. To be accurate, the cruuz was a cherry red Ourobouros Devourer 4.3BSD from the Wildebeest Motor Works, with manual steering, a logarithmic tachometer, and two dangling wires where the anti-collision computer used to be. The upholstery was taut white, covered with the bleached hide of an endangered species that I probably shouldn't name here because it would earn Leppid a visit from ecological guerrillas with a nasty How-Would-You-Like-To-Be-Tanned-And-Sat-On attitude. Ah, what the hell, it was an alligator. (Sorry, Phil—the Public's Need-to-Know wore down my resistance. Anyway, what have you done for me lately?)
With Leppid at the wheel, we peeled out of the Vac/Port at a speed that didn't quite break the sound barrier but opened a hair-line crack or two, and one exit ramp later we were spattering through the local lava fields fast enough to throw up a peacock tail of molten rock directly behind us…except that it wasn't directly behind us all that often, because Phil was weaving like a tripped-out spider: hard to port, hard to starboard, through our own wake of stony slush, one grade A skidding doughnut that bid fair to roll us Ass-Over-Teacup o'er the burning plain, one six-G deceleration that buried our nose so deep in volcanic phlegm I found myself wishing I'd brought a periscope…and finally, I had to say, "Phil. Enlighten me. Are we out here taking evasive maneuvers from snipers, or are you just jerking around?"
"Come on, Scalpel," he grinned as he gave the wheel a twist that heeled us over far enough to scorch the door handles, "I read that piece you did on the Overdrive Overlords of Omicron II. They drove around like maniacs and you wrote the most glowing review of your life."
"It seems to have escaped your attention, Phil, but what the Overdrive Overlords were up to was performance art," I told him. "They did not drive like maniacs, they drove like artists. The distinction may be subtle, but I like to think it's important."
Leppid snorted as if he knew what I really meant to say.
"If you recall any fragment of the article," I insisted, "from the moment they made their commitment to Art, it became the most important things in their lives. They made sacrifices, Phil. They were willing to bleed for the Cause. Need I remind you that the couple who drove the Ballet of the Sand had abstained from Vigorous-Convexity-In-Voracious-Concavity for six wanking months because they thought the yearning would make the performance more poignant? And even though I am not of the school that believes celibacy is a non-consummation devoutly to be wished, I must confess that there were tears in the Scalpine Big Browners as I watched them dance. Yes the dancers were driving cars across salt flats, and yes they were smashing fenders and sideswiping each other at velocities most speedometers only dream of; but they were expressing deep things, Phil! Two souls locked inside metal hulks, trying to make contact, trying to come together, turning near collisions into ballet, and eventually using the cars themselves to make soaring gentle love…. Magic! Art! Spirit, Phi
l, greatness of spirit! The material is immaterial, the artifact is arbitrary. The heart, the soul, and the life of Art is the spirit. Is any of this sparking neurons, Phil, or am I just impersonating a tree falling in a forest?"
"Come on, Jonny, I know what you really want is to get a little wild."
I sighed deeply. The difference between a Sensitive-Critic-Known-Respected-And-Feared-In-All-Corners-Of-The-Galaxy and an Opportunistic-Boor-Who-Might-Have-Three-Degrees-But-Doesn't-Know-Titian-From-Turds is that one of us has eyes that see and ears that hear, while the other has an assortment of prejudices he waits to have confirmed. "Phil," I told him, "you are getting wild, the car is getting wild, and the lava is getting positively livid. I, on the other hand, am sitting here passively, save for the occasional reflexive jerk to prevent my skull from making forceful contact with the dashboard."
Leppid laughed loud and long at that, all the while playing Jiggle-Me-Juicy with the steering wheel. The world is divided into two groups: the people who listen to what you say and ponder it deeply in their hearts; and the people who think every word that issues forth from your mouth is utterly facetious, and can even write down your clever turns of phrase and quote them in articles, for Bog's sake, without it ever penetrating their brains that you are trying to make some kind of statement.
So Leppid pursued his attempts at wooing me by wowing me, until Crèche's sun moseyed off to see if there was anything doing on the other side of the planet and the stars showed up to see what had changed since they left. At first glance, lava leaping in a cruuz looks even better after dark because of the weaving strips of black and flame, the fountaining of sparks, the gouting arcs of hot planet blood…but all that brucey imagery loses its charm damned fast if the smoky shadow you drive into turns out to be a jag of recalcitrant bedrock too pigheaded to melt. At last, even the good Triple-Doc had to admit that further monkeyshines in the magma were just a shade closer to suicidal than good taste allowed, so with tears in his eyes he called it a night.
Gravity Wells (Short Stories Collection) Page 3