by Rudy Rucker
This creature was the biggest jiva yet, a mega-monster that was surely linked into a few of the jiva suns, and, via the suns, into any number of lower level jivas as well. I wondered if there might be some roundabout chain of tendrils leading from this behemoth all the way to me. I sincerely hoped not.
And more than that, I hoped that its fans of tendrils hadn’t captured Val.
Durkle’s jerky gestures showed him to be as spooked as I was. Exchanging a frightened glance, we arched our backs and leaned into the current, bidding it sweep us faster. Slowly the titan of the deeps faded behind us.
Durkle tugged at my arm, bringing me back into the moment. Battlements of submerged cliffs were rushing past—we were drifting past the edge of Flimsy’s land mass and closer to this world’s bounding shell. Durkle’s feet had fanned out into fins. We kicked hard, steering ourselves away from the sullen knots of stone.
And then the gulf thinned down to a shallow sea—or no, it was an encased wall of living water. Accompanied by untold numbers of sprinkles, we were drifting up inside the wall of living water that bounded the air bubble of Flimsy’s atmosphere. The great wall was something like a hundred meters thick, with smooth rubbery surfaces on either side. The outward view was a jumbled haze, but peering inward, I could see the nighttime landscape of Flimsy, gently lit by the sprinkles’ glow.
I strained my eyes, staring up ahead along our passage—but I saw no sign of Val. What if the leviathan jiva had eaten her? But, no, Val was smart and strong. Surely she’d made it this far. But perhaps she truly didn’t want me to find her. Something thing she’d said popped into in my mind.
“I might let the Dark Gulf ’s current carry me away. They say it leads to heaven. Or to the goddess of Flimsy. She gives you a clean slate.”
So eventually maybe I’d go to the core of Flimsy too. But not yet. The thing was—with a jiva inside me, I didn’t have free will. And at this point Mijjy wouldn’t allow me to go to the core. I could sense that very clearly. If I thought too much about hurtling onward, I felt an unpleasant constriction in my throat.
The jivas had other plans for me. Mijjy, in particular, was obsessed with my promise to be at the Duke’s castle by noon tomorrow.
And for now I was okay with that. My reunion with Val hadn’t worked out at all like I’d hoped. Why not find out what Weena had in store with me? And, rebuffed as I felt, I liked the thought of spending more time with Ginnie. She had a sharp tongue, but at least she didn’t hate me.
Durkle and I guided ourselves closer to the inner side of the wall and looked down at the landscape of Flimsy. In the middle distance, we could see a shaggy structure—perhaps the castle of the Duke of Human Flimsy. And beyond this was a hole in the ground, brightened by a subterranean glow—this would be the Earthmost Jiva’s burrow.
I sensed the vibes of the monster beet. She was content with her attack on Bart’s party room. And, even in her somnolent state, she knew exactly where I was and what I was doing.
Durkle gave me a sharp nudge. We were passing above the great conical monster pit where we’d begun this wild ride. It was time to break through the sky’s skin.
Easier said than done. At the rate we were moving, there was no easy way to gain purchase upon the slippery inner wall. Fortunately I had Mijjy to help me. My jiva’s tendrils sank into the rubbery border of the living water, and hung onto Durkle as well. With Mijjy holding on tight, we were anchored against the current’s urgent flow. We bobbled back and forth like seaweed bladders.
Using our bare hands, Durkle and I pried open a long, jagged crack in the sky’s skin. We slithered through the gelatinous stuff. The slit snapped shut behind us—and we went plummeting downward like rag-wrapped stones.
Mijjy was prepared to teleport me to the ground, and presumably Durkle could have teleported himself too. But, just for kicks, I had Mijjy fashion us two sets of zickzack hang-glider wings. Much more dramatic. Durkle and I got into the harnesses, and our tumble changed to an easy, spiraling ride. We were having fun again, perhaps a mile high.
Canting my hang glider to one side, I peered upwards at the sky’s marbled dome. I felt oddly unconcerned about Val. We’d found each other once, and we’d find each other again. It was fate. For now I turned my attention downward.
Seeing by the sky’s pastel glow, Durkle and I steered ourselves across the nocturnal landscape. Focusing on the monster pit below us, yes, I could see Ginnie, sitting on the ground near the edge. I sent her a teep signal. She spotted us and waved. We spiraled down to land at her side.
Ginnie kissed me, her mouth cool and dry. It felt good.
19: Offer Cap
"We had an awesome trip,” bragged Durkle. “We fell into some living water at the bottom of the pit. Then Jim and I fought our way to the bottom level of the underworld and escaped into the Dark Gulf—it’s this cosmic sea of that fills the whole bottom half of Flimsy.” “We saw the Earthmost Jiva’s nest,” I added. “And a much bigger jiva in the Dark Gulf.” I didn’t mention anything about Val.
“You two were way down under Flimsy,” said Ginnie, trying to put together the pieces. “So how’d you end up gliding down from the sky?”
“We were riding this totally savage current of the living water,” said Durkle. “It runs from the Dark Gulf and all across the heavens—all the way to the goddess of Flimsy. She’s in a glowing waterfall that drizzles from the sky at Flimsy’s core.”
“I don’t like when people talk about gods and goddesses,” said Ginnie. “It means they’re about to rip me off. Let’s stick to the facts.” Durkle gave her a sly, longing look. “Do I get a kiss for facts? Here’s one—jivas are bulbous tubers that leech onto everything in sight.”
My jiva, Mijjy, didn’t like this kind of talk, and I’m sure Ginnie’s jiva didn’t enjoy it either. Meanwhile, Durkle had puckered up his mouth and was leaning close to Ginnie.
She gave the wriggling boy a perfunctory peck. “I’m a puff of kessence wrapped around some jiva-folded scraps of space,” she said. “Big frikkin’ deal.”
“A Flimsy kind of girl,” said Durkle, smacking his lips. “If only you’d lose your jiva.”
“Then what?” said Ginnie in a flat tone.
“Do you know about flim sex?” said Durkle. “Conjugation? Maybe you’re not right for me, Ginnie, but I’d like to tangle my crotch feelers with Swoozie, that’s for sure. Flam’s so lucky. Even though he’s an idiot. Where did those two go anyway?”
“They ran off with our cruiser couch,” answered Ginnie. “Flam said he’d won the couch fair and square.”
“Well, that’s true,” I said. “Remember? Durkle here made a bet. Mr. Incoming Pit Master. But I can always make another couch.”
“Garbage couch,” teeped my jiva just then. “Hop Duke castle. Earthmost Jiva command.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Ginnie irritably. She’d picked up the jiva’s teep as well.
“It means the Earthmost Jiva is impatient,” I said. “As usual. Look, Mijjy, your boss said tomorrow would be fine. Right now, I’m weak and hungry. I lost a lot of my kessence down there.”
“I’m hungry too,” said Durkle, casting around for food. “Oh, look, here’s another patch of pigpops.”
We cooked them up and I ate until I was back to my previous size. And now I was tired. “Let’s make up some beds,” I suggested to Ginnie.
“My jiva and I already made us a bed,” she said, gesturing towards a pale rectangle on the ground. “I figure we don’t need a tent. It’ll be fun to sleep under that wild light show in the sky. But, yeah, let’s make a separate bunk for the kid. Not too close to ours. He’s a horn-dog, talking about conjugation. Who even wants to know?”
So I made Durkle a bed that was a hundred feet away from us—and then Ginnie and I got between our sheets together, just like last night. Pinheaded male that I am, I insisted on trying to make love.
“Did you see Header’s ghost down there?” Ginnie asked, pushing me away. “I’m sc
ared he might bother me again.”
“I didn’t see him, no,” I said. “There’s more ghosts in Flimsy than you can imagine. And a lot of them get eaten by the others—or swept off to some glowing light at the core.”
“How about your wife?” persisted Ginnie, teeping deeper into my mind. “You saw her, didn’t you? Val.”
“I did see Val, yes,” I admitted. “There’s, like, some kind of synchronicity that brings married couples together here.”
“I’m worried Header might bother me again.”
“I seriously doubt that we’ll ever see him again. It’s not like you two were really a loving couple or anything.”
“No,” admitted Ginnie. “But tell me more about Val.”
“Val’s mad at me. I think maybe now she’s headed for that light at the core.”
“Don’t you want to go after her?”
“Kind of. Yeah. I mean, Val has a right to be upset. And she is the love of my life—and shit like that. But it’s a moot point. My jiva won’t let me to anything but go to the Duke’s castle tomorrow. So, uh, we might as well fuck.”
“How romantic. How suave.” She paused a moment. “Oh, why not. It’s not like anything matters. I’m dead.”
Ginnie’s limbs were chill as marble, and so were mine. Once I accepted this, her touch felt fine. In short order I had an erection. I was fondling the slit between her legs, and I was beginning to feel a slight ooze of kessence. The equipment worked, but—
“What’s wrong with your dick?” Ginnie asked, feeling along the length of my penis.
My organ was taking on a strange form. Little feelers were branching out from the tip, like tentacles on a sea anemone. And the shaft was discouragingly flexible. Meanwhile the aethereal flow from Ginnie’s crotch had increased, forming a low, glowing mound with its own set of anemone feelers.
Bizarre as this was, we were both quite excited. Sex is, after all, largely in the mind. We engaged our alien genitals. Rather than lying on top of Ginnie, I stayed on my side facing her. The branches of my penis entwined with the tendrils of her vulva. The surfaces smoothed over, and now we shared a pulsing, slightly gnarled tube which connected our crotches.
We bucked our hips, feeling exquisite tingles of sensation. The orgasm, when it arrived, was a powerful bright flow, deliciously oozing up my kessence spinal cord to flower within my zickzack skull.
“Oh yeah,” said Ginnie as we lay there afterwards, calming down. Our crotches were slowly disentangling themselves.
“Conjugation,” I said. “Like paramecia do. Durkle was right.”
“I was worried we’d just be good friends,” said Ginnie. “That’s always the worst, isn’t it?” She laughed comfortably. “Not that I’m looking for a heavy relationship with a flaky mailman whose body’s in a coma in a basement back in Cruz.”
“In real life, I’d never make it with a girl as hip as you,” I said. “I’m thrilled.”
“I appreciate that,” said Ginnie. “It feeds the dark gulf of my self-esteem.” She yawned. “Funny that ghosts get tired, too.”
“It might be okay here,” I said. “And we can stick together for awhile. I’ll help you.”
Ginnie nestled up against me. I held her till she dropped off.
Not ready to sleep myself, I lay on my back, staring up at the pale, flowing sky, thinking about Val. This stuff with Ginnie was just a diversion, and we both knew that. Not that my friendship with Ginnie was something I’d want to explain to Val. Whew. Val had really gotten worked up about Weena. But there, of course, she had a point. Basically it was Weena’s fault that Val was dead.
I thought of a time when Val and I had been over at our friend Pete’s house, and he’d been playing Pixies and Nirvana songs on the piano and we were all singing along, especially Val. She’d been standing in front of me, swaying to the music and occasionally turning, still singing, to grin at me, full of juice and life. Could I ever get us back there? Back to the old life? What was waiting at the center of Flimsy?
A scrabbling noise interrupted my thoughts. I sat up and stared into the darkness, sending Mijjy’s tendrils out towards where I’d heard sound. But we couldn’t pinpoint the source. Really I had no idea what kinds of creatures I should be worrying about here in this strange land.
I sat up for awhile longer, listening into the night. Overhead the glowing sky flowed on. It was hard to believe I was actually here, in the land of the dead. How had it all happened? I reviewed the sequence of events in my mind.
Weena sent a special sharp STM tip my way and I popped an electron—whatever that really meant. Something nasty came through and infected Val—probably it had been a jiva egg. Weena got hold of my thin-walled electron and sent through a border snail from Flimsy. And then she guided me to the magic door in basement of the Whipped Vic, and she came through. A yuel bud popped out of Header’s nose. Weena fed me sprinkles and I had my brain attack. Weena moved in with me, and showed me the jiva that lived inside her.
And then...the yuel came for us, and we went to that crazy party at the Whipped Vic. We killed the yuel with the help of some new-hatched jivas. Ginnie and I swallowed jivas of our own, and they buffed us up. Weena murdered Header with an axe. We found another yuel in Header’s skull and we killed that one too. Weena talked me into leaving my body and traveling to Flimsy. Ginnie came too. And over here in Flimsy, I was supposed to deliver something for a Duke. But on the way to getting my orders, I’d made a trip through the lowest level of Flimsy and I’d found Val. And now Val had fled across Flimsy’s living water sky.
My true mission was clear. I had to protect the Earth from whatever it was that Weena and her friends were planning to do. And I wanted to bring home Val—assuming this were possible. And assuming that Val wanted to come. I’d been taking that last one for granted. But maybe I was wrong. My backup strategy, if I couldn’t get Val, would be to find a flesh-and-blood woman to live with. After I did cosmic battle to save the Earth, that is.
This scene was batshit. But, in a way, I was loving it. I yawned, feeling the fatigue. There were no more sounds from across the plain. I stretched out beside Ginnie and fell asleep.
In the morning, Durkle woke me with a nudge of his foot. I heard a babble of voices nearby. Sitting up and looking around, I saw something like a pale purple parasol projecting from the ground a short way off. It swayed gently on a stalk that was about the thickness of a man’s leg.
“It’s an offer cap,” said Durkle. “Did I tell you about them? A mobile plant—see those snaky roots at its base? They can walk, a little bit. It must have teeped us here. Like I told you, they live in the swamp, a few miles off. Isn’t the offer cap cool? I’ve heard you can get anything you want from them—if you’re quick enough. Watch how I outsmart it.”
All sorts of desirable objects were dancing beneath the offer cap’s pinky-mauve umbrella. Evidently the offer cap could read my mind, for as I stared, it produced some items that I would have liked right about now: a cup of tea, fried eggs on rye, a map of Flimsy, a bag of pot with rolling papers, and a slice of cantaloupe.
Apparently this odd, alien plant had perfected a type of direct matter control. The objects on offer seemed quite solid, albeit made of kessence. Rocking from side to side, they marched in a giddy parade around and around the plant’s flexible stalk.
It seemed obvious to me that I shouldn’t try grabbing for the goodies, but Durkle either had a plan—or, more likely, he was even more naive than I’d thought. He began circling the offer cap, irregularly reversing his path and curiously flexing his rubbery limbs—as if he meant to bewilder the thing.
Alertly monitoring Durkle’s movements, the plant’s cap made continual slight adjustments in its position. And, as Durkle drew closer, the items on offer changed again. I noticed that the underside of the cap was spongy and damp, as on a toadstool. The thing’s roots gripped the soil, as if preparing for a burst of speed.
Durkle seemed heedless of the risk—his eyes were fixed upon a dust-r
iding board identical to Flam’s, a tasseled orange racing cap, a little chessboard, a short sword, and a pink glob that was forming itself into the shape of—a naked woman, but with rounded off arms and legs and a smooth bulb for a head.
“Stop right there, Durkle!” cried Ginnie, sitting up beside me.
“I know I can beat this stupid mushroom,” said Durkle, glancing back at her. “You want me to get you something too, Ginnie? Offer her something, cap! I dare you.”
Sensitive to our group’s dynamics, the cap added two more offers to its jolly little parade around its base: a steaming mug of coffee and a very fashionable pair of sunglasses in wide tortoise-shell frames.
“Watch me now,” said Durkle, crouching lower.
His erratic skipping motions had brought him near me. Fearing for the boy’s life, I ran forward and seized him around the waist.
“Geeky loser!” he yelled, struggling against me, his limbs flailing like long feelers. “I’m gonna win. You’re jealous that I’m so young and fast! Ginnie wants me, not you!”
Maybe I was a little older than Durkle, but I had a jiva inside me. Durkle wasn’t going to break my grip. But he did manage to knock us off balance. The two of us fell practically into the shadow of the offer cap’s umbrella—a very bad place to be.
Fast as a whip, the thing had its roots around our wrists and ankles. And now an evil-smelling mist began wafting down from its floppy cap. Most of the offers had disappeared, now that the plant was getting down its real business. Its central stalk tilted, maneuvering the mauve umbrella so that it might soon flop down upon us. I felt drowsy, and the spray was stinging my skin. As well as being a soporific, the mist was a digestive fluid.
Suddenly the purple umbrella shuddered—and slumped to one side. Ginnie had used her jiva tendrils to cut the stalk! The offer cap let out a telepathic scream that filled my mind with red and yellow jaggies. Ginnie was circling around, her tendrils lashing at the carnivorous plant.