by Rudy Rucker
“I’m going to let you out here, Bob.” It was impossible not to use his first name. “But answer my question first.”
“What question was that, Felix?”
“Why the Godsquad? Why the Gestapo tactics?”
“For beings like you,” he said simply. “I don’t even know that you’re human. You don’t come from the Dump. I know there’s other parts of the afterworld. Good parts and…evil parts. I have to protect my people.” I stopped the car and Teeter concluded, “I have nothing against you personally, Felix, but you’d better go back where you came from. I can’t vouch for your safety.”
I picked up a pistol and got out to open his door. “Keep it up, and you’ll crucify Jesus one of these days.”
He unfolded himself and looked down at me unflinchingly. “You’re not Him.”
I got in the car and drove another couple of blocks. The Godsquad was going to be coming soon, and Teeter would tell them where to look. I had to get rid of the car. I spotted a bar that looked a little flashier than the others and pulled up next to it. It was called the Gold Diamond. There were two women in miniskirts and halters leaning against the wall.
I slid the .38 into my jumpsuit’s big pocket and walked into the bar. I had my book in my left hand and the machine gun in my right.
Inside it was mostly black guys in sharp clothes. I squeezed a burst of machine-gun fire into the floor and the room fell silent. I hoped no one would shoot me. I held my gun level, sweeping it slowly back and forth.
“Who wants to buy this machine gun?” I shouted.
When the import of what I had said sank in, a few of them started laughing. A long, skinny man in an outsize red cap waved me over. “Come here, you bad muthafukka.”
He introduced his friend, who had a shaved head and totally white eyeballs. “This here Orphan Jones. What you want for the piece?”
I wasn’t sure what the values here were. “I don’t know. Couple hundred bucks?”
Orphan Jones nodded, and the skinny man said, “Right on time.” Conversation at the other tables had resumed.
“One other thing,” I said. “I’ve got a car outside. It’s hot. Godsquad. I need someone to drive it off.”
Orphan jones stood up and spoke in a deep raspy voice. “Key in it?”
“Yes. But…”
“I can see,” he said, anticipating my objection. “And I can drive. Good God, can the onliest Orphan Jones drive.” He walked rapidly across the room and out the door. He took the machine gun with him, and flicked off a burst as he stepped outside. “Kill, kill, kill,” he rasped in a rising intonation. And then I heard the car-door slam and the tires squeal.
“He gone,” the Orphan’s partner said to me, then added, “They call me Tin Man.”
“Felix,” I said extending my hand. We shook and I remembered to slide past the handshake into the brotherhood clasp. But Tin Man had added further embellishments to his handshake, and I ended up feeling honkie just the same.
“Where you from?” he asked.
“New York.”
“I’m from the South Side.”
I nodded. He still hadn’t given me the $200. “What kind of dope do they have here anyway?” I figured if I got the right stuff I could white out of Truckee.
“Dip and dab?”
“I don’t think so. Weed?”
“White boys. You go see Speck. Speck fix you up.” He lapsed into silence and leaned back in his chair. He stared vacantly across the room and began slowly working his jaw from side to side.
“Well I guess I’ll go,” I said uncertainly. “But you’ll have to… to give me the money and tell me where to find Speck.”
“Speck everywhere.” He continued to move his jaw. His eyes were glazed with disinterest.
I took the .38 out of my pocket and laid it on the table with the muzzle pointing at him. “Come on, Tin Man. I don’t have the time.”
He pulled two hundred-dollar bills out of his pocket without taking his eyes off the bottles behind the bar. “Forty-three One-ten,” he said, as if to himself.
I thanked him and walked out of the Cold Diamond. The sky outside was bright. It was hot. I heard an engine roaring towards me; I darted around the corner of the building. A Godsquad car sped past. Vince was driving and Carl was riding shotgun. He didn’t look any the worse for wear. I was ready and willing to kill him again, if it came to that.
The street I was on was 128th Street. I went over a few blocks and started walking back downtown towards 110th. If I’d understood Tin Man right, I’d be able to get some weed there.
I was still wearing my jumpsuit, but I had left my shoes at Ellie’s. There were spots of sun-softened tar on the cracked sidewalk. They felt nice under my feet. Cimön has no sun, but the sky was so bright that I began to sweat a little. Now and then an old jalopy would chug past, leaving a thick cloud of fumes. Many of the buildings had no glass windows, only holes in the walls. People leaned out here and there. There was lots of broken glass around, and I had to watch where I stepped.
I ran my fingers across my forehead and tasted the sweat. It was hard to believe that this was only an astral body. A strange idea began nagging at me, an idea I didn’t want to face. I passed a liquor store then. On a sudden reckless impulse I went in to get a half-pint of whiskey.
None of the bottles had seals on them, and many of the labels were torn. I picked a bottle whose contents seemed less cloudy than the others and took it over to the counter. A wiry old lady ran the store. She had white hair and a lot of pink lipstick. “Seventy-eight,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Seventy-eight dollars.” I fumbled out one of my hundreds, trying not to look too surprised.
She smiled as she took the bill, and I decided to ask a question. “Where is this whiskey made? I don’t believe I’ve seen any distilleries here in Truckee…”
She looked at me sharply. “You are a fresher aren’t you?’
“But I’ve registered,” I added hastily. God forbid she should call the Godsquad on me.
She nodded and laid my change on the counter. “My husband works the Dump. He pours together the drops that are in the bottoms of the bottles that pop up. This is real good whiskey.” She looked at me appraisingly. “He could use an assistant, if you’re looking for work.”
I avoided a direct refusal. “Sounds interesting. But does all the garbage from Earth always…pop up?”
She folded her lips in a smile. “Just the things that have a soul. Things that once meant something to someone, but got lost in the shuffle. Bob Teeter says that we’re all here together because of love. Have you picked your temple yet?”
I backed towards the door. “Maybe later. Right now I want to get drunk.”
She nodded approvingly, and sang out, “Come back real soon.”
The whiskey didn’t have much bite. Probably cut with water or worse. But I could feel it hitting me as I padded along the warm concrete. It was hard to believe this wasn’t Earth. Cleveland maybe, or Detroit. A pick-up loaded with furniture tooled past.
Hard to believe I wasn’t on Earth. That was the idea I didn’t want to face, the idea that had driven me into the liquor store. What if I was on Earth…if everything since the graveyard had just been dreams and hallucinations. I thought back carefully.
I had had a couple of beers at the Drop Inn, walked up to Temple Hill and fallen asleep. I’d left my body and met Kathy, flown to Cimön, gone up Mount On, whited out, skied across Dreamland, walked through some tunnels to Ellie’s house. And then I’d walked out of her house to find myself in this city.
But what if. What if I had just gotten dead drunk at the Drop Inn and imagined everything since. Or maybe Mary the barmaid had dosed me…put STP in my beer. It wasn’t impossible. There was a Trailways bus stop right outside the Drop Inn. Maybe I had stumbled into it and was just now coming to in Cleveland.
I took another slug of the thin whiskey and realized I’d killed the bottle. I threw it high into the air a
nd watched it break on the street. It was pretty the way the shards of glass caught the light. I wanted a cigarette. I felt in my pocket. There was just the .38 and a hundred dollar bill. I’d left my change on the counter at the liquor store. No wonder she’d been so friendly when I left.
I realized I was carrying something in my left hand and looked to see what it was. Oh yes. The book. Seeing it, I couldn’t decide if I wished I were on Earth or not. In any case here was the proof. I flipped it open and scanned down a page to see if it really had alef-null words.
But I couldn’t read past the fiftieth line. From there on it was just a blur of ink. My heart sank. I realized then how much I didn’t want this to be Earth. I didn’t want to lose what I’d been through, didn’t want this to turn into just another crazy trip. It had to be the whiskey clouding my vision.
I craned up past the buildings at the sky. It was bright, but there was no sun to be seen. No sun in Cimön. “There’s glory for you.” I said it in a deep, Humpty-Dumpty voice. It sounded so funny I had to laugh. Since my head was tilted way back, the laugh came out a silly gurgle. I laughed harder, and a lot of mucus ran out of my nose – which made it even funnier.
There was a sudden jolt and I fell down. I’d walked into someone from behind, an old man with a cane and a heavy overcoat.
He stood up stiffly, and I yanked at a corner of his coat. “Take that coat off, man. That’s nonsense.”
“Get your hands off me,” he cried, knocking my hand loose with a blow of his cane. He walked off.
My whole face was squeezed shut in laughter. My stomach was cramping. “Wait,” I managed, “What I wanna know. What I wanna. Wawa. Wawaw. Wawawawa…”
It was interesting to feel my jaw moving. I kept moving it and letting noise come out of my throat. The vibrations from my voice-box resonated in my sinuses. More mucus ran out and I began to giggle again, lying there on the sidewalk.
“Pig spit,” I said. I got hung up on the last vowel. “Spispi, Spispispispi…” I made the sound higher and twisted it into pig squeals. I knew I could stop any time, but there really wasn’t any reason to. No reason at all.
No. 19
Canoy Hearts
It was the sidewalk that woke me up. “BUZZ OFF,” it said, bouncing me up and down. I sat up with the feeling that some transcendent revelation had been cut short. Or waking up had been the revelation. Something about the One and the Many… I couldn’t catch it. My pants were wet. It was still daytime…or daytime again. Late afternoon.
I assessed the damages. My money and the .38 were gone, of course. My book was still there. It muttered, “PIG BOY,” when I picked it up.
I stood unsteadily and looked around. Something had definitely changed while I was gone. Everything was alive. I don’t know exactly how I could tell. It still looked pretty much like the same old Truckee. But everything I looked at reminded me of a face…even blank walls.
“HOO DOO,” the wall next to me said firmly.
“I go,” I muttered, and started walking. Tin Man had said Speck was at 43 110th Street. Maybe Speck could help me get my head back together.
An empty bottle winked up at me and sniggered, “U BET.” I walked on. The sidewalk was soft and billowy. It was like walking on a water bed.
There was a steady buzz of conversation from all the objects around me. I was pretty sure that this wasn’t Earth.
I felt loose and shaky all over. That stuff I’d drunk must have been drugged or even poisoned. Maybe that old woman had poisoned me so she could steal my gun and my hundred dollars. “Real good whiskey.” I felt like I had flat-out died on that sidewalk.
What had happened after the pig squeals? Spiralling, spiralling through a dark red tunnel lined with T.V. screens, each one with a different face talking, talking, talking. And then I’d been out in the light, the White Light. There was something I had realized just when the sidewalk woke me up…something important…
“DO TELL,” the signpost next to me remarked. I looked up. 110th Street.
“Which way to Speck’s?” I asked the post. “He lives at 43.”
“NO DICE,” the post responded. I gave it a kick and turned right. Now and then a car chuffed past, but I hadn’t seen anything of the Godsquad since I’d left the Gold Diamond. Maybe they didn’t even exist in this revised Truckee I’d woken up in.
After a block and a half I spotted a three-story building marked 43. “BOMB SHELL,” the steps said as I walked up. When I pushed the doorbell marked Speck it said, “DREAM MALE.”
There was a clatter and a wheezy voice to my right called, “Who’s there?” I stepped back onto the steps and saw a fat guy with greasy hair leaning out the window.
“SHOW ME,” the steps said, and I added, “Tin Man sent me.”
“That crooked son of a bitch.” Speck looked me over. “Just a minute.” He disappeared and I could hear him walking heavily to the front door.
“Come on in,” Speck said, and I followed him into his apartment. A tall, skinny guy with a walrus mustache and balding black hair was slouched in a battered armchair. On a blue couch shiny with grease sat a girl with wavy hair. She had round cheeks with faint acne scars. “This’s S-Curve and Kathy,” Speck said.
“I’m Felix,” I said, sitting down next to the Kathy, “SHE DOES,” the couch said matter-of-factly. Speck sat down on a folding chair and leaned over a low wooden table.
On the table there was a fat lit candle, a mound of green leaves on a sheet of newspaper, a red plastic bong, a wind-up car with a spring sticking out, several empty matchbooks, a flimsy tin ashtray full of burnt matches, a big pair of tweezers, a kitchen knife, five empty beer bottles, and a wrapper from a pack of Twinkies. Everything was covered with fine gray ash. I’d come to the right place.
“We’re gonna do a tune,” S-Curve said to me. “You in?” I nodded and my book said, “A-OK.”
Speck was processing a few of the leaves. They were like fern fronds and seemed to be pretty tough. He would cut off a piece with the knife and then hold it over the candle until it dried out a little. He was making a little pile of the dried-out bits. The girl next to me continued to stare at the candle. She hadn’t even glanced at me yet.
“I came to Cimön with a girl called Kathy,” I said to her.
“Felix Rayman,” she crooned in a far away voice. “Felix Rayman.”
“DIG IT,” the couch exclaimed, and the table added, “ONE TOO.”
“Kathy!” I said, laughing in pleased surprise. “Is it really you?”
She took her eyes off the candle then and looked at me with a smile. “It worked,” she said.
“What?”
“I just made you appear. I pulled you out of the flame.” “BIG FISH,” the candle added. Kathy patted me on the knee. “I got here a while ago,” she said. “I was hoping you would show up.”
“Reunion,” S-Curve said. He got up and put on a record. They had a tiny record player and three scratched records with no jackets. This was side two of Exile on Main Street. The familiar music filled me with well-being. “And I hid the speed inside my shoe,” sang Jagger.
Speck had charged up the bong and gotten it lit. He left the bong sitting on the table and leaned over it, sucking in the smoke. As he started to exhale, his body outline blurred and brightened.
He shrank together into a ball of white light which hovered motionlessly for a few seconds. Then colors bled into the light, the ball grew projections, the intensity dimmed, and it was just Speck again, standing there with his yellow teeth showing in a loose smile.
“BE MINE,” said the bong, and I leaned over it, fitting my mouth into the opening. I sucked in the smoke. My sphere of awareness rapidly shrank to a point. There was a mandala in front of me. I buzzed back and forth as I fell towards the nectarladen center. I hung there for an instant, and then came a silent explosion. I was rushing out the center, filling up like a nipple- end prophylactic, squeezed in…
“YOU WHO,” the couch called as I fell back into it.
There had been an instant, right when I touched the center…an instant when I had been able to see the One, the Absolute, to grasp that YES is the same as NO…that Everything is Nothing…
And then I’d come back. Just like that. There was something about the shift from total enlightenment to ordinary consciousness that seemed to be the real core of the experience. Something about moving through the interface. The interface between One and Many, between being and becoming, between death and life, between c and alef-one…
Kathy took a hit off the bong, contracted into a ball of light, bounced back. Then it was S-Curve’s turn. He was clearly a heavy user. He inhaled for a long time while the little pipe-bowl glowed and hissed, “HOT DOG.”
S-Curve was a blob of light now, but more dumbbell-shaped than spherical. When he snapped back there were two of him. He was so skinny that both of him fit into the armchair.
“God damn, S,” Speck said. “One of you’s gonna have to leave. I ain’t turning both of you on.”
“Be cool,” the one S-Curve said. “We’ll make a run tomorrow,” the other added.
“LET’S GO,” the bong urged. The bowl had burned out.
“What is this stuff?” I asked.
“They call it fuzzweed,” Kathy said. “It grows all over that mountain…Mount On?”
“There’s a tunnel about fifty miles from here,” S-Curve said in his slow, inflectionless voice. “Nice big field of the stuff. All you have to do is drive there and walk through.”
“Does the Godsquad bother you?” I envisioned the usual growers vs. federates scenario.
“The what?” Kathy and S-Curve looked like they didn’t know what I was talking about.
“You know. Bob Teeter’s personal army?”
Speck laughed his wheezy laugh and hawked up a marbled gob of phlegm. “Those douchebags. Ain’t but about ten of them.”