by Rudy Rucker
At some point I dropped off to sleep, pillowing my head on the soft flesh of this throbbing musical plant. I entered a looping dream wherein I reviewed my exchanges with Charles Howard, polishing and editing the memories—gradually honing them towards an explicit plan of action. I was at one with Atum’s Lotus.
I awoke to Charles shaking my shoulder. The roof overhead had been torn away. Atum’s Lotus was broadcasting a solemn mantra overlaid with shrilling strings. A flowing river of light was etched against the sky. It took me a moment to realize that this was a giant jiva feeler. It was the Earthmost Jiva, avidly probing into our hideaway.
“Here comes the bully beet,” said Charles. “The long-expected surprise attack. I’m ready. And Atum’s Lotus is done.” He was standing beside me, glaring up at the cruel tendril. “You’ll vanquish them, Jim. You’ll save the world. You and the surfer girl.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll shuffle off my mortal coil and be reborn a squalling babe. As you say, the heaven beyond heaven is our original home.”
The Earthmost Jiva’s tendril slapped up against Charles. Atum’s Lotus pulsed a massive drum-beat in sympathy. Charles’s resident jiva popped out and scurried off like the cowardly parasite that she was. But the man himself stood firm in the face of his fate. The glowing tentacle forked and branched, sending roots into each part of my friend’s hearty frame. Charles laughed, as if welcoming his physical annihilation.
In seconds, the Earthmost Jiva had drained Charles down to an idiosyncratic sprinkle which was the refined essence of the man’s soul. I saw a hypnotically tumbling shape that was covered on every side with flickering, mutating hieroglyphs—perhaps spelling out the sequence of archetypes that had been Charles’s life story.
The Earthmost Jiva would have liked to devour this darting sprinkle as well—but Charles invoked the perfected power of Atum’s Lotus. The great shape pulsed out a rhythmic chant that was the sought-for ladder-mantra.
Seized by the wave of sound, Charles’s sprinkle spun in the air for a moment, and then he shot upwards and disappeared, presumably on his way to the core of Flimsy. And perhaps from there he’d pass on to the heaven beyond heaven which is Earth.
Enraged by losing her prey, the Earthmost Jiva thrust her tendrils the deeper into Atum’s Lotus. In her fury, she was strip-mining scars into the exquisitely articulated hills and vales. But still the great Lotus’s supernal ladder-mantra could still be heard.
Spitefully the monster jiva’s tendrils wrapped around me. Should I ride the mantra to Flimsy’s core? But Mijjy was puppeteering me from within, holding me back. And now the Duchess came onto the scene. I glimpsed her outline against the blazing curve of the bulbous jiva.
“Go back to being a sun!” she yelled at the Earthmost Jiva. “Do it, you stupid, greedy beet! This Lotus is our personal stash, okay? It’s fine that you killed Charles Howard, but Jim Oster is the guy who’s gonna deliver your eggs! Leave him the fuck alone.”
“Jim traitor secret plan jiva gun!” blustered the great jiva. But she released me nonetheless.
The Duchess looked into my mind, and quizzed Mijjy. Fortunately she had little to reveal. My conscious mind held only an inchoate wish to shoot a jiva with a bazooka.
“Acting all weird and sly won’t get you off the hook, Jim,” said the Duchess, landing at my side. “You’re still making that delivery to clear our debt to the Bulbers. We’ll have the eggs for you this afternoon.”
Overhearing that, the Earthmost Jiva teeped something about the difficulty of making so many eggs on short order.
“That’s what you’re frikkin’ supposed to be doing!” screamed the Duchess. “Instead of trashing our property. How would you like it if I invite a gang of yuels here to sing lullabies in your nest? I want those motherfucking eggs!” Her voice softened just a bit. “And maybe then we’ll see about getting you some scraps of Atum’s Lotus.”
The Earthmost Jiva backed away. She really was a little afraid of the Duchess. Meanwhile the great wobbly blossom of Atum’s Lotus was healing itself, all the while playing symphonic variations of Charles’s ladder-mantra, endlessly elaborating her sounds and her forms. And the great gall on the side of the stem was sealing its roof back over.
“Come with me now, Jim,” said the Duchess. Once again, a pale white mat of geranium vines formed beneath our feet. Bathed in the bright, hostile light of the Earthmost Jiva, the Duchess and I rose towards the geranium’s uppermost leaf.
23: Lights Out
The top leaf contained the private Ducal residence—a somewhat smaller space than the great public hall I’d visited yesterday. The lounge was appointed with gilded sculptures of animals, a gently twitching shag rug, pastel murals of flowers, gilded antique furniture, and a pool of living water in the center of the room.
The fat little Duke was snacking on kessence lizards by the water’s edge, with Weena and a very attractive ghost woman at his side. This new woman had flowing blonde hair and long, flexible limbs. Her puffy lips curved in a reckless grin. Somehow I felt like I’d seen her before.
“What’s become of Charles?” keened Weena, running up to us. She must have seen the big jiva’s attack. By now I was cynical enough to suppose that, whatever true grief she might feel, Weena was milking the tragedy. “Where has my lover gone?”
“He flew into the sky,” I said shortly. “The Earthmost Jiva chewed him down to a sprinkle. You know that Charles was dreaming of a trip to the center of Flimsy. The new ladder-mantra works. So you might say that Atum’s Lotus is done. But it’s still evolving anyway. Even though the big jiva tried to eat it.”
“You’re an idiot,” said Weena tearfully. “I hate you.”
“I think this guy’s totally hot,” said the new woman from across the room. What was her story?
“This is Janie,” said the Duchess, walking over to fondle the lissome form. “And, Janie, this is Jim. Janie teleported in from Yuelsville last night. The yuels sent her to repay us for letting them nab Ginnie. Ginnie had some piece of information that the yuels wanted. And, at our end, Weena didn’t want Ginnie around. I think she was jealous.”
“Oh, shut up!” yelled Weena. “Why is everyone against me?”
Janie laughed and looked pleased. “I thought it’d be interesting to see how you jiva-freaks live.”
“Janie’s a pistol,” interjected the Duke. “I hope she stays with us for good. I’m ready for a new assistant.”
“You big silly,” said Janie, giving the Duke a playful slap. She rose to hug the Duchess, and favored Weena with a spiteful boo-hoo poor-you moue. In the midst of all this posing, Janie managed to give me a discreet wink as well. I didn’t quite understand why.
“Doesn’t anyone care about Charles?” wailed Weena. “How will I survive without him?”
“I care about paying Charles’s debt,” said the Duchess. “That’s for sure. We’ve got a meeting with Boss Blinks in half an hour.”
“Weena’s been nagging me for a commission on the Earth tax,” added the Duke, in an equally callous tone. “I guess that’s what she means by survival.”
“The question isn’t whether you get a commission,” the Duchess told Weena. “It’s whether we kill you.” Weena tried to say something back, but the Duchess cut her off with a menacing frown. “For now, you’re to escort Jim to Monin’s farm, okay?”
“I’ve told Janie to go along too,” said the Duke in a studiously casual tone. “I told her I’d pay her extra.”
“Yes,” said the Duchess, giving the Duke a look. “Janie can take care of Weena.”
“Have I lost your trust?” protested Weena. “Why burden me with this newcomer?”
“Why is everyone so uptight?” interrupted Janie. “That’s my question. Why can’t we all be friends?” She struck a cheesy, pouty pose. “Good friends.”
“Not now, Janie,” said the Duchess. “I want you meet Boss Blinks Bulber now—so you’ll fully understand the Weena problem.” She said this even though W
eena was right there. Evidently Weena’s feelings didn’t matter anymore. “And, Jim, you come to the meeting too,” added the Duchess. “It’s time to start showing some goddamn team spirit.”
“Blinks will be here any minute,” said the Duke.
“Top-thecret wred alert,” said Janie with a sarcastic lisp. She was acting as giddy as a high-school kid.
The Duke led us to a different lobe of the hollowed-out leaf—this was his so-called situation room. It had a straight wall along the inner side, and a rounded outer wall that followed the leaf ’s edge. Looking out through a long, low ribbon-window, I could see the monstrous, glaring Earthmost Jiva, the rolling meadows of Flimsy, and faraway glints from the Dark Gulf. For the thousandth time, I wondered if I’d find Val at the center.
The situation room was dominated by a pair of imposing thrones. The Duke and the Duchess ascended to their perches. Weena, Janie and I found seats on a rubbery sofa that ran along the rounded wall. I felt uneasy about Janie. She was a puzzle. I couldn’t quite decipher the levels of betrayal going on.
In the center of the room, a transparent ball was suspended in the middle of a stalk that grew from floor to ceiling.
“See the model, Jim?” said Weena, pointing . Her voice was shaky; she was truly upset about Charles—and unnerved by the hostility of the Duke and Duchess. “You’ve inquired about Flimsy’s geography,” continued Weena, forcing a brave, bright tone. “Isn’t this lovely?”
Grown by the geranium, the ball was a model of the afterworld. The upper hemisphere with filled with air, and the lower hemisphere with water—the Dark Gulf. A twinkling green ledge ran along the gulf ’s outer edge—the fields of Flimsy. Layered structures and hanging stalactites lurked beneath the fields—the underworld. The gloomy waters at the very bottom were a-jiggle with linked beets and radishes—the mega-jivas. A glowing haze drizzled from the domed sky’s center into the heart of the Dark Gulf. The shifting column of mist represented the abode of the fabled goddess of Flimsy.
“Where are we right now?” asked Janie, for the first time sounding interested.
“I wonder if a stupid little tramp like you can grasp that this isn’t drawn to scale,” said Weena, glaring at her. “It’s more along the lines of a cartoon. The band of green along the edge breaks into a septillion slots—so of course you can’t see where we are.”
As if to contradict Weena, the responsive display illuminated a hair-thin slice of the model’s edge—and proceeded to zoom in on it. The narrow slit of light expanded into a trapezoid that filled the ball, a toy landscape with hills and a swamp and even a little model of the giant geranium plant itself. Along the left edge of the trapezoid was a bluish zone with tiny blimps—some of our alien neighbors.
A sudden pooting noise distracted me—a snub-nosed Bulber was pushing in through an iris-like door in the situation room’s outer wall.
“Hey there, Boss Blinks!” called the Duke from his throne. “We’re getting our act together right now.”
The Bulber circled the room, fouling the air with sulfur, then came to rest. He was about five meters long. He had at least twenty eyes on his pebbled mauve hide; the eyes were wobbly like fried eggs. Boss Blinks studied us for while, and then he made a blubbery sound that my teep transformed into colloquial speech. He sounded like a Chicago gangster.
“A deal’s a deal,” the Bulber was saying. “Me and the boys are gonna be stripping you clean tomorrow if you ain’t paid up in full. You got a lotta nerve, thinking you can bullshit your way outta this, Duke. I notice that your jiva sun was trashing your Atum’s Lotus, you dumb shit.”
“We’ll start paying you tomorrow!” shrilled the Duchess. “But it might take a little time until the full amount is—”
“Paid in full tomorrow,” repeated Boss Blinks. “That’s what the contract says. Weena wrote it up and you signed it. Once you’re in default, we’ve got a legal right to loot the joint. Clause twenty-two.”
“We’ll pay you double what we owe,” implored the Duke. “Just give us the chance to finish paying you.”
“Maybe,” said Boss Blinks after a pause. “I’ll think it over. Depends on what kind of kessence we see coming in. And I mean starting early tomorrow.”
“Our agent is leaving in a few minutes,” said the Duchess, gesturing at me. “We’re almost set.”
“Heard that before,” said the Bulber. He swam menacingly around the room once more, then wallowed out through the door he’d entered, leaving a smell of broccoli and ammonia.
“Way wack,” said Janie in a subdued tone. She gave me a look that was almost sympathetic.
“Guards!” yelled the Duke right about then. Four sturdy ghosts trooped in from a side door and seized me by the legs and arms.
“The eggs are ready,” explained the Duchess. “Take it like a man, Jim.”
The room’s leafy ceiling began to glow. Through a window I glimpsed a fiery tendril from the Earthmost Jiva, coming for me once again. The sky-beet was going to inoculate me with ten thousand jiva eggs—perhaps some of them had been passed up from the mega-monsters of the Dark Gulf.
With the guards grasping my limbs and Mijjy inside my body, I had no hope of fighting or running away.
The jiva-root poked through the same aperture that Blinks Bulber had used. Her tip swayed left and right, sniffing around. And then—gradually, gloatingly, gracefully—the glowing tendril encircled my neck. I wanted to thrash and kick, but Mijjy had me paralyzed.
“Hold him really still,” the Duchess instructed her stooges.
“But what are you doing to him?” asked Janie, actually seeming upset.
Nobody answered aloud, but within me, Mijjy was singing joyful hymns of thanksgiving and praise.
My neck began to tingle as a zillion root hairs dug in, feeling for the deepest crannies of my soul. And now the transmission began. Pinpoints of energy caromed through my kessence. I was a pinball machine with ten thousand balls, a coal-chute funneling a city’s worth of fuel. The eggs rattled through me, finding their way to their goal. I sensed a faint smell of musk and burning rubber. My neck was aflame with pain. It was like being choked and burnt and stabbed—all at once.
And now as the last few eggs straggled in, the sensation transcended pain and became a crazy kind of ecstasy. Mijjy within me was exceedingly agitated, and I felt an urgent sexual shudder from the Earthmost Jiva.
And then, quite suddenly, it was over. The now-limp tendril flickered, uncoiled and withdrew.
“Great,” said the Duchess, leaning over me. “Just perfect. And, look, Duke. Jim’s got a boner. He’s into this—right, Jim?”
“Let him go,” said the Duke to his guards.
My astral dick went limp. I raised my trembling hands to my neck, expecting to feel some rank, rubbery ruff. But my kessence skin was smooth, cool and bare.
“They shrank way down inside you, Jim,” said Janie. “How nasty.”
“Don’t bum him out,” said the Duchess sharply. “Remember that you’re supposed to escort Jim to Monin’s farm, too, Janie. Or we don’t pay you at all.”
“Fuck your threats,” said Janie, unexpectedly flaring up. “I know you’re welshers. Pay me up front or I’m going back to Yuelsville right now.”
“Here,” said the Duke impatiently extending a long tube from his body to pour a pile of kessence at Janie’s feet. “Eat this. And then do as you’ve been told.”
“More like it,” said Janie, wading into the kessence mound, soaking the stuff up. Her statuesque body seemed to grow a size or two larger. She grunted with pleasure, flipped her blonde hair, and gave me a veiled, amused look, as if there were some joke I still wasn’t getting. Once again she winked.
Finally it clicked. Janie was Ginnie in disguise. The yuels had given Ginnie a new body, and she’d come here as a double agent. Before I could consciously articulate this realization, I pushed it into my subconscious, lest Mijjy and the others see.
“Stay with them until Jim goes through the tunnel,”
the Duke was telling Janie. “And then you close the deal.”
“Yeah baby,” said Janie, her voice hard and tight.
“I still don’t see why she has to—” began Weena.
“Get going now,” said the Duchess coldly.
A mat of geranium tendrils swept the three of us to the field where I’d landed before, the field where the yuels had kidnapped Ginnie.
“Very well, then,” said Weena, expecting to take control. We were standing in the grass, and the geranium tendrils were gone. “I can link us to Monin’s farm. Your jiva will follow mine, Jim. You don’t have to do a thing. And as for you, Janie, can you find a way to tag along?”
Very abruptly, Janie changed her form. Once again she was visibly Ginnie—with her warm brown eyes, her punky dark hair, and her lithe frame. She wanted Weena to understand exactly who she was.
Janie/Ginnie seized Weena by the shoulders and sang a yuel lullaby louder than I’d ever heard one before. Instantly Weena’s jiva crawled out of her mouth. I felt a nasty wriggling in my throat as my own jiva left me as well.
Without a jiva in place, my zickzack skeleton collapsed. I was a wispy ghost, barely able to stand on my feet. Ginnie was still singing. My jiva and Weena’s jiva went flying off, although I had a sense that those ten thousand eggs were still inside me. If anything, Ginnie’s yuel lullaby made the eggs burrow the deeper.
Weena was fighting back, but feebly—she too had lost her skeleton, and she’d been taken by surprise. Ginnie gave Weena’s body a vicious twist and—oh my god—tore off both her arms. She bit into one of the arms and threw the other to me.
“You eat too,” said Ginnie. “You need the strength. It’ll tide you over until we upgrade you to a primo yuel-built body.” And now Ginnie continued tearing at Weena, gobbling down her kessence like a cannibal zombie.