by Rudy Rucker
“You grew up here?” said Joey.
“Yeah. And my dad has his studio in the barn. I was his apprentice after high school, you know. Until I switched to nurb-paint. Dad didn’t want to make the change.”
“I dig using nurbs for art,” said Joey. “But they can be bombs or snails or mirrors or floaty bubbles. Why just paint forever? I’ve had hella many ideas since gettin’ with the quantum wetware.”
“Your mental regress points at infinity,” I said. “I’d like to use one of those in an art nurb.”
“Do what you gotta do. And give me a goddamn show.”
“If I ever get my gallery back. Meanwhile we have to get Loulou out of the oddball.”
“I don’t understand where she’s even supposed to be at,” said Joey. “I keep thinking this is one of her head trips. Funky fantasies that she’s teeping us. Her father was cold and uppity. So he was like a leathery dragonfly with glittering eyes, yeah. And Loulou didn’t dig her younger brother and sister. So they were like pesky little gubs who want too much attention. Being different is important to Loulou. It kind of figures that she’d say she’s up an oddball’s ass and halfway to—wherever.”
“But I think we do have to admit she really is inside the oddball,” I said. “That’s why we only see a little bit of her face.”
“Maybe.”
We’d reached the barn. Dad was moving around in there, talking to himself, rehashing his argument with Mom, banging into furniture. For sure he was drunk now. No rush to go inside. For all I knew, Loulou might be as likely to find us out here.
“What if Loulou’s so-called Fairyland is a hidden reality that parallels the mundane,” I suggested. “The same furniture as our world, but with different creatures in it. Freaky, strange fairies with nothing sweet about them.”
“Fairyland’s just a word that Loulou claims she heard,” said Joey, doubting everything.
I thought some more, trying to piece a story together. Thanks to being in cosmic mode, my emotions weren’t all that involved. I was enjoying the play of cosmic logic. Loulou said the oddball was inside something like a big shell on the other end? What could I do with that?
“Suppose the oddball is like a tube from a parallel-world mollusk that’s hovering above our space,” I proposed. “The oddball tube is sucking up whatever it finds. Extracting sand fleas from the sand.”
“You’re scaring me, qrude,” said Joey. My image had gotten to him. He threw back his head and hollered. “Loulou!”
“Wheenk,” came a little voice from the dark. It was that same spotted gub who’d crashed out through the living-room window. He was broadcasting a series of off-kilter web glyphs, stuff like sheaves of curves and galleries of faces. And at the same time he was gazing into the air above us, rapt with attention. He was sensing something we didn’t see—
“Gub gub gubby,” said Loulou’s voice, trying to sound both brave and perky. A patch of her face was visible again. Her lips were dark, her eye was bright. “Save your woman, boys. Those dragonfly people are yelling into the clamshell like they’re calling a hog. I’m afraid they’ll crawl into the other end of the oddball to come after me. And this end of the tunnel is still pinched tight. It’s like the oddball is pursing her lips.”
“Force your way out,” advised Joey. “You need a jolt. How about you kick yourself in the butt? Like you kicked this here spotted gub.”
“How would I bend my leg that far, you idiot?”
“You can do it,” I said, getting into Joey’s idea. “Cosmic mode yoga. Like Joey had when he put his foot onto his shoulder at the pond. Maybe just fold back your leg at the knee and let your heel kick you.”
“Put your mind into your leg and let the leg think about a leg, and go into a leg regress,” jabbered Joey. “Visualize a bull’s eye on your sweet cheeks!”
“Wait.” Loulou’s face briefly disappeared and then it was back. “Those leathery people are actually crawling down the tunnel from Fairyland. Insect eyes and extra hands!” She disappeared again, leaving only a dimple in space, but we could hear her muffled voice. “Get away! No!”
I snatched up the spotted little Gloucestershire-pig thing at our feet and shoved him towards the puckered spot in space. “Swallow the gub instead of her,” I yelled to the unseen dragonfly-people. I forced the plump little creature into the oddball’s tunnel with Loulou.
“Kick!” yelled Joey to Loulou.
I heard a thump and an eeek, and here was Loulou, panting, flushed, her curly hair in disarray, her sly eyes bright. Our Fairyland fox. Her leg was still bent back; she straightened it out. My pet nurb dog Jericho backed off, his yellow quills bristling.
The oddball was hovering nearby, her size pulsing from a pinpoint to the size of a cantaloupe, glowing lavender, with that same conical mouth. The two gubs within the oddball let out a series of excited squeals, greeting each other, the squeals very modulated and intricate, almost like words. And, then, for a horrible instant, I seemed to see a leathery face come pushing out of the mouth. A bug-like head from Fairyland, complete with feathery antennae.
“Go away!” screamed Loulou, and blessedly the head withdrew. And now the oddball darted off on its own, heading who knows where. All was still. Just Loulou, Joey and me beneath the mundane moon. Loulou turned away from Joey and gave me a special hug.
“Workin’ the crowd as per usual,” said Joey, sounding jealous. “Who’s it gonna be, Loulou? Zad Plant or me?”
“Don’t be a bellowing moose,” said Loulou quietly. “Don’t butt and lock antlers.”
“I’m teeping that Loulou wants us to fight,” I murmured. All our emotions were on the surface.
“But she only wants a little fight,” agreed Joey. “To show that we care”
“Maybe I’ll keep both of you,” said Loulou. “Two artists at my beck and call. Why not? I’ll be your shared muse. Everything’s going to be different now. Qwet teep will be a huge fad. And this oddball trip I took—wow! I’m so glad I’m back. Is it late at night?”
“Eight or nine,” I said. “Why don’t the three of us lie down and do some heavy teep, Loulou. So we can soak up the vibes of your adventure. Whatever it was. I never saw Jane’s oddball act so lively before.”
“She’s changed,” said Loulou. “As soon as I saw her in your apartment, I had the feeling she was watching. And waiting for—I don’t know what set her off, really.”
“Let’s go into the barn for the night,” I suggested. “Lots of couches and rugs in Dad’s studio.”
“Better than our tenant-farmer grown home on Gaven’s farm,” said Joey. “The cops are watching that place anyway. But tell us more about the oddball killing Gaven, Loulou. You sure it wasn’t my picture what did it?”
“The mirror picture freaked him out, yes, but it was more complicated than that,” said Loulou. “First of all, the dirtbubble was trying to eat the oddball as soon as I got there, but the oddball was too smooth and fast. Gaven was yelling he wasn’t going to pay me unless I slowed the oddball down. I got mad at him, and I showed him the magic mirror—I’d brought it from our cottage just in case. And then Gaven’s staggering back, and he’s shouting that the dirtbubble is gonna eat me.”
“He was asking for it,” said Joey.
“Yeah. And he got it. But not quite yet. First of all the oddball banged into the dirtbubble really hard. Took a nip out of it, sent it squealing out the door. And then air started rushing into the oddball’s mouth like water down a drain, and she swallowed me. Like a snake gulping down a mouse head-first.”
“What then?” I asked, fascinated.
“Inside the tunnel I could see a dim yellow light from the walls. The oddball squeezed me up higher till I was in a round place where I had some room, like I said before. And down below me, back towards the mouth, I could hear Gaven having a big struggle. I heard his voice really clear—his head was inside the oddball now. But then the oddball was flexing on him, and he got quiet. The oddball suffocated him and she spit him out.
”
“You didn’t go back down there and look out the oddball’s mouth?” I asked, trying to figure out what I might tell the cops.
“I was too busy. Those two gubs inside the oddball would pop up out of nowhere and start touching me. And their thoughts are so drifty and strange. Anyway, like I was telling you before, instead of going back towards Earth, I crawled a little way further into the tunnel, where it got narrow again, and then my head popped out into another world from a giant clam, and I saw the two dragonfly people sitting in a ballroom, and they said it was Fairyland.”
“Loulou’s web of wonder,” said Joey. “Stranger than truth? You decide.”
“You should be more sympathetic,” cried Loulou. “You wouldn’t even care if I did get eaten by hillbilly dragonflies from another dimension.”
“All I know is you’ve been scaring us half to death,” said Joey. “Gaming us like rubes. Hiding behind bends in the air. Throwing squiggly pigs.”
“You’re the pig,” snapped Loulou. “Always mistrusting me. That oddball is magic, I tell you. A tunnel through higher space. Gaven had some other name for the oddball—I forget what. Geek gibberish.”
I used my wristphone to comb through the web possibilities, and I started making suggestions. Finally I hit on a winner.
“An Einstein-Rosen bridge—what they call a wormhole?” I said. Loulou nodded, and I kept going. “Gaven might say the wormhole leads to—the Higgs plateau? Or he maybe he called it a brane?”
“A wormhole to another brane, yes,” said Loulou. “That’s what Gaven said. Two parallel worlds. And the oddball’s tunnel runs in between. In a way I liked it inside the tunnel.”
“You were screaming for help,” pointed out Joey.
“Okay, I was scared, but it was loofy. It wasn’t dark in there. It was like seeing through yellow stoner glasses. I just didn’t like it when that green gub would glue her sticky little body to me and run her snout up my thigh. I had this weird feeling she was looking at my body’s individual cells. Like a genemodder does.”
“I surely do relish this happy horseshit,” said Joey with a grin.
“Me too,” I replied. We started laughing.
“Whoop it up, boys,” said Loulou, riled by our glee. “I could have died! And now I’m hungry and beat. Let’s go in the barn, yeah. And let’s forget about Fairyland if you’re going to be all sarcastic and ignorant.”
“Jane’s still going to want her oddball back,” I said. “Especially if it’s alive. Did you hear that Reba thinks the oddball and the dirtbubble are sex nurbs?”
“Sex is all Reba knows about,” said Loulou dismissively. “Gaven said the dirtbubble is the first wave of some big attack. It’s a tunnel too, and he’s been talking to something at the other end. The dirtbubble voice is promising Gaven power and money.”
“Money is all Gaven knows about,” said Joey. “Maybe it was my picture that made him stop breathing, but it didn’t happen till his head was inside that tube?”
“Don’t keep trying to hog the credit,” said Loulou.
“It’ll be a drag if Gaven rises from the dead,” I said.
“I’m waving on this action,” said Loulou. “We’re on the far edge. Qwet teep, qrudes.”
* * *
7: Flying Jellyfish
“Junko wants to set up a qwet teep commune,” Joey told Loulou as we prepared to go into Dad’s barn for the night.
“I know,” said Loulou. “We’re imagining an old-school psychedelic hippie scene? I guess you guys know that it’s Jane’s family’s house that Junko wants. The Roller mansion. Junko was going to work on Jane tonight. Try and make Jane qwet.”
“How come you always know so much?” I asked Loulou.
“Everyone trusts me and thinks I’m small,” she said with a tart smile. “People don’t realize what a sly-boots I am.”
The thought of Loulou being a sly-boots zapped me with a pulse of lust. “The Roller mansion is in fact standing empty,” I said, wanting to help. “Except for a bunch of nurbs gone wild. Mr. Roller’s dead, and old Weezie moved into the gate house. The crap that lives in the big house was creeping her out.”
“Jane’s brother Kenny lives in a house balloon tied to the mansion’s tower,” put in Joey. “With his boyfriend Kristo. Kenny’s a wild guy. I used to sell him axelerate buds.”
“Like Kenny needs something to amp him up,” I said. “Like he’s not already a loon.”
“Axelerate always cools me down,” said Joey. “Helps me keep up with my head. Guys like Kenny and me—we’re too smart for our own good.”
“Too smart,” echoed Loulou. “Sure you are, Joey. That’s your big problem. Too smart for a job, especially. At least Zad here owns an art gallery. Another reason to keep him around.”
“You’re out of the news-loop on this one, babe,” said Joey. “The Department of Genomics locked up Zad’s store. He’s a homeless bum. But he don’t have no practice at it. He’s signing on as my bum apprentice.”
“My dad could talk to old Weezie Roller,” I mused aloud. But I didn’t feel all that good about this particular idea. It seemed disloyal to Mom. On the other hand, living in a commune of teepers in luxor Glenview—
“The wacker, the slacker!” said Joey.
“Means what?” I had to inquire.
“One of Joey’s slogans,” said Loulou. She put on a sarcastic documentary-narrator-type voice. “In saying this, the ascended master J. Moon meant that the more frenzied his surroundings became, the more relaxed he would feel himself to be. The wacker, the slacker. Words to live by.” And now she switched back to her jaded wife mode. “But Joey, yesterday was wack—and you were so far from slack that they hauled you to the clinic and misted you with nod pods.”
“Shut your crack.”
“So witty, my husband,” said Loulou. “Such a gentleman.”
“Let’s talk to Dad,” I suggested.
We went in through the stable where the roadspiders were resting. Jericho came in too. At my command, he curled up on the floor. Dad’s studio occupied most of the barn, a lively space with couches and a day-bed, fine carpets spotted with paint, hanging plants, a long bar, a gallery’s worth of unsold paintings, a couple of heavy-duty easels with works in progress, and the air fragrant with oil paint. Dad lay face-down on a rumpled day-bed, out cold. I laid a tartan-plaid blanket over him.
Joey, Loulou and I chatted a bit more, still feeling out the possible contours of our three-way relationship. And then we bedded down for the night—Joey and Loulou on couches, and me with some blankets on the floor. Loulou gave each of us a warm good-night kiss. Joey took this in stride. Right now, my main interest was in sinking deep into the cosmic state and spending the night merged with Loulou’s mind. Cosmic merge wasn’t as good without sex—but even so it was brand new.
We had a wonderful night of teep there—Loulou, Joey and me. It lasted nearly twelve hours. As usual, the teep was oblivious, meaning I couldn’t have reliably told anyone what I’d experienced. But I awoke feeling good, and very fond of my two teep partners.
My newly gained mental images of Loulou’s experiences with the oddball were surely incorrect in detail, but perhaps they were accurate in vibe. In addition, the long teep session had given me an intuitive understanding of Joey’s regresses and of his points at infinity. I had a feeling I could turn Joey’s ideas into powerful creative tools. I wanted to try this soon—before my inspirations faded into fog.
Looking around the room, I saw that Joey had made his way to Loulou’s couch. Lucky bastard. The two of them were a soft, warm, sleeping lump. A married couple.
Sensing that I was awake, Jericho padded over and hopped onto my stomach. I studied him, purring some fresh mods onto his genes and refreshing his form. A little more red in his spots. A saddle-shaped patch on his back. His legs less ungainly. A nice upward curve into his tail. Floppier ears. A dignified grizzle of white on his snout. Stretch out his body a bit.
Maybe I really could switch
from being a painter to being a nurb modder. But at this point it was still like I was only putting makeup on Jericho. For true art, I’d need to dig deeper.
My thoughts wandered back to Loulou. I felt wary of her. She’d gamed me rough yesterday—stealing my roadspider and Jane’s oddball. And then that whole drama about Fairyland—could it possibly be true? Be that as it may, I was intoxicated by my two nights of teep with her. I could accept sharing her with Joey, if that’s what it took. A second mule in Loulou’s stall.
It might seem odd that my primary thoughts were of such mundane and sensual things, what with so many serious problems in play. Day before yesterday I’d become a qwettie, and I still needed to sort out what that meant. Yesterday the oddball had swallowed Loulou and had shown her a tunnel to another world. Gaven Graber was lying dead in a stasis hammock, and I’d been charged with killing him. The cops were planning to harass me until they found out what qwet teep was all about. But, as high as I felt this morning, I was focused on the upsides.
My friends and I were telepathic. We could flip into cosmic ecstasy whenever we liked. We could biomod nurbs with our minds. I just needed to straighten out my sex life with Loulou. And, eventually, to work things out with Jane.
The thing was, I already knew that my affair with Loulou would be short. She was a rocket ride, a jump off a cliff, an explosion in the sky. Not to mention being very manipulative. And married. I was happy she’d turned up during this footloose interval when I was separated from Jane—but even while I was chasing after Loulou I knew Jane was the haven to whom I longed to return.
I wondered if Junko had met with Jane last night, and if she’d gotten Jane to go qwet.
My eyes wandered past my father’s paintings to the blanketed hump of the man himself. I visualized a medieval hill city, with Dad a sleeping giant beneath the hill. A mythic archetype. In some measure my father and I were the same. I spiraled into a vision of me inside Dad inside me inside Dad inside me. And then, Joey-Moon-style, I let the snaky regress swallow its tail and become a wheel, rolling to the horizon and dwindling to a painter’s point at infinity.