Jim and the Flims

by Rudy Rucker

  A few ghosts in curbside booths seemed to be working as prostitutes, that is, they were massaging the tails of yuels. I didn’t see any of the tail tips actually popping, but I did see some yuel spores go drifting by.

  Like the jiva egg that I’d seen at Monin’s, the yuel spores resembled glowing balls with tiny, dark shapes at the center. But the yuel spores were blue instead of yellow, and they had a swooping style of motion that was quite dissimilar from the jittery hunting of the jiva eggs.Yet again I thought of the jiva egg that had floated into our bedroom on the night of the lightning strike—the jiva egg that had infected and killed Val. And now, somewhere deep inside me, I myself was carrying dormant jiva eggs. How horrible.

  I tried to calm myself, remembering the goddess of Flimsy’s suggestion that I might somehow melt the eggs. And then I was supposed to go to Earth, drive out any jivas or yuels that I found, close down the tunnel, return to Flimsy, and make my way to the core. How was all that going to work?

  “Poor Jim,” said Ginnie, seeing the tension on my face.

  Gritting my teeth, I started walking again, following after Rickben. Turning down a side street, we passed a half-finished house. The air around it was alive with glinting, darting sprinkles. These well-fed sprinkles were like masons using millimeter-sized stones.

  We passed a vast barn where the guardian elephants had broken apart into individual soldier yuels. They sat at a long table, feeding upon troughs of kessence. Indentured human ghosts brought the food, and sponged off the soldiers after their meals.

  Rickben led us up a little slope, and we came to a stop before a yuel-built mansion with slitty windows and arched doors. Misshapen balconies adorned the sides, and a crooked tower had sprouted from the top, complete with a flying buttress. Rickben pounded on the house’s crooked door. It swung open to reveal a pale, slender ghost with calculating eyes. He was swathed in a sumptuous and velvety cape of kessence.

  “Hello, Graf,” said Ginnie, not missing a beat. “This is my friend Jim.”

  “I’m glad you are returning, Ginnie,” said the Graf in an old-world accent. “And of course we all know of Jim. The mailman who made the hole for Weena’s tunnel between the worlds. You are creating interesting opportunities, Jim. Normally the border snails’ tunnels are but fanciful rumors. Never in the human zone of Flimsy have we freely accessed such a tunnel before.”

  “I didn’t mean to make it,” I said. “I was just playing.”

  “Perhaps you don’t know your own powers,” said the Graf with a piercing gaze. “You opened the tunnel—and within you lies the power to close it. But please come in and take your ease. And then we are talking.”

  The Graf led us into his great hall. The windows held something like stained glass, although the images were alive and flowing, a little like the petals of the Atum’s Lotus. A great bank of stalagmites grew along one wall, with a keyboard in front of them—it was like some old-school church organ. Ginnie skipped over and struck a few chords on the keys. The undulating rumble made Rickben the yuel howl with delight.

  Ginnie, the Graf and I settled into leather armchairs before a roaring fire in a stone hearth. Some other musical instruments rested on the mantelpiece. Rickben stretched out on a thick rug, curving himself around so he could lick his butt.

  “So you’re glad to see Ginnie?” I asked the Graf.

  “This girl and I have a bond,” said the Graf.“We met death together. Weena was very furious that I had been going through the tunnel before her. But of course I was doing what seemed right. My long-term goal, you must understand, is to have no yuels or jivas on Earth at all, and to see your crazy tunnel being closed.”

  It surprised me to hear the Graf say this. Weena had always described him as a conniving villain. From the sound of it, he wanted more or less the same outcomes as me. Of course I could never be sure when a flim was lying.

  “Your soul bounced right back here after Lover’s Bluff?” I asked wanting to keep the conversation going. “Your kessence body was completely gone?”

  “Not quite,” said the Graf. “Weena’s thugs burned most of my kessence, but some pieces were left over. A hand, I believe, and a leg. Perhaps I could have made myself a meager body from these scraps. But I left them for our dear Ginnie. And thus I became wholly insubstantial.”

  “So your sprinkle had to bail,” said Ginnie.

  “Quite so. As is natural in these cases, my denuded sprinkle jumped across to the Dark Gulf of Flimsy, just like the soul of an ordinary Joe Shmoe. And then I am fighting my way up through the underworld. A tedious and difficult journey.”

  “If you’re really for saving Earth, I don’t see why you wanted to import yuels,” I put in.

  “Yuels are the lesser of two evils,” said the Graf with a shrug. “Knowing Weena so well, I was anticipating her scheme to flood Earth with jivas. So it seemed prudent to put some yuels in place to guard against a jiva invasion.”

  “And then what about the yuels?”

  “Yuels are easier to handle than jivas. It’s possible to enchant them with the powers of song.” He sang a few notes and immediately Rickben looked up. “You see? Anyway, once Weena had told me how to find Monin’s farm, I hid Rickben inside my body. I bribed Monin’s wife to open the tunnel door on the Flimsy side. And I teeped Ginnie to open the tunnel door on the Earth side.”

  “How does Skeeves fit in?” I asked.

  “Our executioner,” said the Graf shaking his head. “Weena’s cats-paw. Is he still alive?”

  “He’s staying in the Whipped Vic,” said Ginnie shortly. “The border snail’s shell. I’d like to get even with him for what he did. But, just now, Graf, you gave me the chance to do something almost as good.”

  “You took care of Weena?” said the Graf. “Everything went well?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  “Good girl. I am hoping you come to like it here in Yuelsville. You’re welcome in my home for as long as you wish.”

  Rickben thumped his tail. It was getting a little thicker at the tip.

  “See that, Ginnie?” said the Graf, with a puckish smile. “Rickben is stimulated by the sound of your voice. I knew this all along. The yuels are needing to be in the right mood to pop a pod of spores, you see. And I wanted Rickben to pop his tail and create a yuel army to defend against Weena’s jivas. When you and I were romancing in that car, Rickben was almost at a climax. His pod was poking from my mouth like a tongue. But then came Skeeves and Header with the axe. Rickben failed to reach orgasm.”

  “Disappointments all around,” said Ginnie dryly.

  “But—why didn’t Rickben ever get excited when Header was with Ginnie later on?” I said. “Rickben must have been watching from inside Header’s skull. Why didn’t he pop his spores then?”

  Ginnie gave me a pitying look. “Header and I didn’t have much of a sex life, Jim. I was dead, and Header was a stoned zombie.”

  “Rickben did manage to pinch off a Rickben Junior,” said the Graf. “But Junior’s antics with the sea lions led nowhere—he was too young to pop a pod.”

  “Just as well,” I said. I sat there staring at the crackling fire with its flames licking into the heavy chimney.

  “You are in turmoil,” observed the Graf. “I think there is something you are wanting to tell me?”

  “I have ten thousand jiva eggs inside me,” I admitted. “I wonder if you can help me get rid of them?”

  “I think this might be very easy,” said the Graf. “Rickben!”

  With a low grunt, Rickben seized me and—threw my whole body into the fire.

  25: Down to Earth

  I sizzled and burst into flame. Curiously, I felt little pain. Unlike a flesh body, a kessence body wasn’t overzealous about sensory feedback. Clearly I knew I was burning to a crisp, and my body wasn’t going to belabor the point. My hope was that the eggs were burning away too.

  Quite soon I was nothing but a sprinkle, a crimson, seven-sided prism of a gem-like substance immune to flames. I
floated up from the fire and ashes, borne on the hot currents of air.

  As a sprinkle, I had very odd visual input. It was as if I were seeing through a wide-angle lens the size of a pinhead. The warped perspectives swept wildly as I moved.

  Observing that I had some slight control over the direction I was drifting in, I steered myself away from the fireplace. Gaining confidence, I began buzzing around the perimeter of the Graf ’s den, tracing loopy, undulating curves.

  The Graf peered up at me. He was weirdly foreshortened by my insect-like vision. He set to work opening a trunk or chest.

  So far as I could tell, every bit of my personality was still here. It was kind of great to be so small and agile. Even so, I was feeling an urge to spiral down through the floor—down into the Dark Gulf. That was where we naked sprinkles belonged.

  Ginnie whistled sharply to catch my attention. She was pointing at the limp body at a floppy mannequin on the floor—a human-shaped slug of kessence, vaguely pink. The Graf had taken the figure from his trunk. I understood that this was to be my new body. So be it.

  I flew down and landed on the pinkish humanoid form. Instantly I bloomed into it, and the yuel-built body was mine. I felt powerful and nimble. The body was high-quality kessence, and the limbs had dense cores that took the place of zickzack bones.

  “Looking good,” said Ginnie, watching as I stood up and stretched.

  “Are my eggs gone now?” I asked the Graf.

  He held out his hands to his sides, palm up. “This is hard to be deciding,” he said. “Those eggs had burrowed far down into you and were lying deeply dormant—who knows? Possibly they have been hiding in the naked sprinkle that is your soul. But we are hoping for best. We are moving on.”

  “Okay then,” I said. “I’m going back through the tunnel to Earth. Weena left a jiva named Sukie there. I’ll kill her, and then I’ll figure out how to close the tunnel. The goddess of Flimsy says it has to be me.”

  “I am commending your grit,” said the Graf. “But you are needing a Plan B. What if the result of your noble mission is to infest Santa Cruz with ten thousand jivas?”

  “Maybe then I call in the yuels?” I suggested.

  “Exactly,” said the Graf. He handed me a kind of flute that had been lying on his mantelpiece. “Play this if you need for me to send Rickben and his mating partner. We will hear you.”

  The flute was only a foot long—more like a piccolo. It was of glistening, silvery kessence, and it had an intricate cluster of round keys. I blew across the mouthpiece and tootled a note. I knew how to play from my pre-skater days in junior-high marching band. This particular flute was a sweet little instrument with rich overtones and a buttery sound. I sounded a trill that I remembered from “Winter Wonderland.” Rickben rolled on his back and clawed the air with delight.

  “Get funky!” said Ginnie.

  “The summoning signal goes like this,” said the Graf, humming a simple tune like an advertising jingle, or like an arena-rock riff. I practiced for a few minutes and got it down. The Graf showed me how to open up a slit in the kessence flesh of my leg and stash the flute inside. It was convenient to be so doughy.

  “I’ll go now,” I said, flexing my leg. “Are you willing to help me, Ginnie?”

  “Well—I’ll come as far as the tunnel,” she said. “I haven’t decided about the rest of it. Like I said, I’m starting to enjoy it here.”

  We bid the Graf farewell. “Remember Plan B,” he admonished, wagging his finger.

  Outside it had turned to late evening. In the distance glowed a faint curve of the new Earthmost Jiva. She’d nearly gone back into the underworld for the night. Could she tell whether or not I’d successfully destroyed my load of eggs? There was no way to know. In any case, she was leaving me alone.

  “So let’s hop to Monin’s farm,” I said to Ginnie. “Can you show me how that yuel-style teleportation thing works? I didn’t quite get how you did it before.”

  “It’s yogic,” said Ginnie. “You merge your mind into the whole of Flimsy, and focus on the spot where you want to be. And then you go for it. That part feels like doing a back-flip off a diving board.”

  I stared at the sky and felt down into my new body. Flimsy was all around me. I could sense the goddess at the core. She was willing to help me. The spot where we wanted to go was—over there. I pushed towards it and had the same odd, tumbling feeling as before.

  And then Ginnie and I were together in the rolling green fields near the vertical wall of living water that bounded the edge of Flimsy. I saw no sign of Monin’s farm. Oh, right, the farm was hidden by the space-maze of the border snail.

  It felt a little creepy, the two of us alone in these otherworldly meadows. With the night coming on, I could see the glowing of the sprinkles in the sky and in the huge wall of Flimsy. Looking down at the grass, I noticed a fat little black beetle near our feet. I didn’t like his vibes. I took a step away.

  Meanwhile Ginnie teeped for the mind of the border snail, just like she’d been doing back in Cruz. “Okay, the snail remembers me,” she announced shortly. She started pacing back and forth across the empty-seeming green field. “This way, that way, this way,” she said. I followed close behind.

  Threading the invisible maze took longer than I’d expected, and while we walked, the night fully fell. Soon I couldn’t see the sky anymore, for we were shrouded by the maze’s space-warp fuzz. Finally we reached the ultimate turn and Monin’s mauve domes came into view, with lights glowing in the windows.

  The farmer and his family were in there having supper. I could see Durkle at the table as well, which made me glad. I’d been a little worried about him.

  I would have liked to talk with the boy, but stealth seemed like the way to go. For sure I didn’t want to tell Monin’s family that I was planning to close down their tunnel and, more than likely, to chase their border snail away. My changes would upend the family’s existence.

  “Maybe I go back to Yuelsville now,” whispered Ginnie. “I’m thinking I’ll move in with the Graf. We might start making music.”

  “Don’t leave yet,” I murmured. “I need you. At least help me get the door at this end open. And—and someone has to teep down to Earth and tell Ira to open the door at his end.”

  “Can’t you do those things yourself?” said Ginnie a little condescendingly.

  I tried teeping to the border snail but for whatever reason the alien beast’s tiny, suspicious mind was closed to me. I crept over to the hatch that led to the snail and laid my hand on it. Just as I’d feared, the door wouldn’t open for me anymore. I gave Ginnie a pleading look.

  Ginnie had only to touch the door—and it opened. The insides still smelled of violets and decay. The great snail’s flexible eyestalks came poking out from within. Slowly, slowly she began pushing out her head.

  I tried teeping to Earth to alert Ira—but I couldn’t seem to bring anything into focus. Ginnie had no trouble with this either. She contacted Ira and told him to go into the back yard of the Whipped Vic and to open the snail door there. While she was at it, Ginnie teeped Snaily about the plan.

  “Look,” I begged Ginnie, “I’ll never make it back from Earth without you. Please come.”

  “Mr. Cosmic Mailman,” said Ginnie, gently mocking me. But I had the feeling she was proud that I needed her.

  “We’ll save the world!” I told her, my voice rising with enthusiasm. “And we’ll bring Ira over here too.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Ginnie. Her face turned a little grim. “I guess I’ve got a special errand too. I was almost thinking of dropping it and moving on.” She was talking about settling her score with Skeeves.

  By now the border snail’s head was fully out of the hole, and she was starting to open her mouth. Almost time to go.

  Just then Monin’s main door opened and a figure came out—a youth carrying a sword. Durkle.

  “Hey,” I called to him a low tone. “It’s Jim and Ginnie. We’re about to go back through the
snail.”

  Durkle softly closed the house’s door and walked over. “I thought I heard something,” he said, checking out our new bodies. “Ditched your jivas, huh? Way to go. I had big fun on my way back. I conjugated with Swoozie.”

  “Good boy! And we’re about to save Earth.”

  “Can I come?” asked Durkle. “It’s a drag being home. Mom and Dad treat me like a kid.”

  “Wait here for us to come back,” I said quickly. “It won’t take long. I just have to kill this one jiva named Sukie. We’ll come back here and you can open the door for us. And then I’ll bring you along for the next leg. I have all these different things I’m supposed to do.”

  “Busy guy,” said Durkle, echoing Ginnie. “Mr. Mailman.”

  A sudden thought popped into my head. “Can you give me some of that silvery fertilizer you use in your garden? I forget what you call the stuff, it came from a tube?”

  “Ultragrow,” said Durkle. “Hold on.” He made his way over to another of the domes, which served as a garden shed, and returned with a object the size and shape of a toothpaste tube, with a tight cap on the end.

  “Beautiful,” I said, and stashed the tube inside the flesh of one of my thighs, just like I’d done with the flute.

  “So where’s Weena?” asked Durkle.

  “I killed her,” said Ginnie.

  “Good move,” said the boy. “You two are such outlaws. Tell me more about—” Suddenly his voice broke into a cracked yell. “Behind you!”

  A ragged beetle was scrabbling towards us—the same one I’d seen before, but now he was a foot long. The crooked insect rose from the grass with his wings a-buzz. Durkle slashed at him with his sword—and completely missed.