by Rudy Rucker
“I sensed something along those lines,” said Dad. “Very peculiar. For a minute there, I thought I was dying. Higher world and all. I thought maybe I was talking to angels. But with hillbilly accents.”
“What did they say to you?” I asked Dad.
“Hard to be sure,” said Dad. “They were like a man and a woman. But kind of—stupid? I got tired of them, and then I began trying to perceive what’s between our two worlds. I was seeing it as a living void, dark with light. Like the spaces between my thoughts.”
“I’m feelin’ this!” said Carlo with a whoop. “It’s so good to be qwet. I was never this ripped at breakfast before.”
Upstairs something was bouncing. But none of us was in a mood to go up there and look.
“When I’m ready, the oddball will come for me too,” I said.
“So you’re ready to see Fairyland?” said Loulou.
I’m ready to call Jane, I thought, but I kept that to myself.
The moment’s freaky energy dissipated when my still rather awkward dog Jericho came gyrating into the kitchen. He poked my thigh with his snout, begging for chow.
“You still don’t have that poor nurb’s legs right,” said Loulou while I fed Jericho. “Not that I like to nag.”
“Hell you don’t,” I snapped.
“Rrrrowr!” she said.
“I’m not a photorealistic guy,” I told Loulou. “Okay? If you’re so smart, why don’t you and I have a nurb crafting contest?”
“We’d need equal amounts of nurb-gel to work with,” said Loulou, liking the idea of a showdown. “So the contest is fair.”
“Here,” I said. I focused on Jericho and biomodded him in such a way that he fissioned in two. I added two new dog legs to the rear of his front half, and turned his back half into a cartoon version of an oversized lobster—with big claws and long, waving antennae. “You take the lobster, Loulou.”
“Oof,” said Jericho’s front half. He was unsteady on his new feet. You had to feel a little sorry for this misbegotten mutt.
“We’ll do this like a Levolver match,” said Loulou. “Set a target animal, and we both work for ten minutes. Making a series of biomods and refreshing our critters’ bodies as we go along.”
“Fine,” I said. Somehow I was more and more impatient with Loulou. “I’ve already made a godly dog and a blobby lobster,” I continued. “So let’s shoot for something new.”
“Make two cute little whales,” proposed Weezie.
“How will the whales get around?” I asked.
“That’s for us to figure out,” said Loulou. “Ready, set, go!”
“Down boy!” I told Jericho, and turned the poor dog into a lump, but leaving his woebegone personality intact. Carefully sculpting his genes, I tapered Jericho into a cone, forking his thin end into flukes. I had a solid mental image of my target whale. Cute and spunky, with a white belly and a blue back.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Loulou’s lobster take on the form of a garden slug. “A default Levolver start-up shape,” she said. “I won’t be imposing top-down shapes at all, Zad. They’ll be emerging from bottom up morphogenetic processes. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”
“Gooble gobble,” said Joey. “One of us!”
“Do you ever think it might be evil to biomod nurbs?” asked Reba. “Anti-life? Against nature?”
“Nothing evil about cute little pet whales,” chided Weezie. “You youngsters are such goody-goodies.”
I kept on revising my nurb, paying particular attention to the curve of the new Jericho’s back and to the shape of his flukes. I was totally cosmic and quite high. If I made Jericho’s underside slippery enough, he could beat his flukes and slide himself around. Special rough spots on his belly would help steer him left and right. A jet-like blow-hole on top could set him to bouncing like a basketball if he pulsed the puffs right. His long, wriggly, lipless mouth could do the work of hands. Yes, yes, this was going to work.
Meanwhile, Loulou was evolving her own nurb, modding and refreshing at a rapid pace. Her blob changed from a slug to a snake, then thickened into a lizard. The feet morphed into claws, then back into fins. The tail turned into feathers that fused together and became a meaty stub that slowly broadened and curved into, oh joy, whale flukes. Loulou’s nurb chirped, chittered, growled and boomed—as if giving a real-time commentary on its progress.
“Time’s up!” called Weezie, enjoying the show.
“Jericho the toy whale!” I said. He rocked back onto his flukes, waggled his side flippers, bent his long mouth into a winning smile—then fell over on his side and struggled to roll back onto his tummy.
“Presenting the miniature Norwegian hval of Loulou Sass!” declaimed Loulou. Her rather thin whale was lying flat on his belly. “Pet him,” Loulou urged us. I ran my hand across the hval. The nurb had lovely, realistic skin—sandpapery to the touch. His eyes were spritely and alert, and when he smiled, the inside of his mouth was a convincing shade of pink.
“Can he move?” asked Weezie.
“He can fly!” said Loulou, triumphant. A wriggling twitch traveled along the length of the little whale’s body, ending in a beat of his subtly muscled flukes. The hval rose into the air, buoyed, I suppose, by an internal bladder of hydrogen—similar to the ones that the jellyfish houses used.
Loulou was ready to claim her victory—but now Junko intervened. “Smell that?” she said, cocking her head. “Immune system failure.”
“Oh hell,” said Loulou dejectedly. “I put in too many frills.” Coldly I repressed my sympathy for her. Everything Loulou did was annoying to me today.
Her floating hval began to buck and flutter. His body’s internal tensions were destroying his metabolism. The mephitic stench of death filled the room. The dying hval flopped to the floor.
“Open a door to the garden, someone,” said Weezie. “And, Zad, your whale is very cute.” She favored me with a rare smile. “Who says you’re useless?” Thanks, Weezie.
“Want legs,” said Jericho hoarsely. “Want to stand.”
I tweaked his form once more, and now Jericho was a walking whale.
“The classic fish-with-legs archetype,” said Dad. “Very fine. It’s good that the legs look human. Gets deeper into your head.”
“Ong,” said Jericho, his bark gone watery, his mouth comically big.
“So let’s reset Loulou’s smelly hval,” said Junko, staring at the skinny, dead whale. “No sense wasting the nurb-gel.” One touch from Junko’s keen mind, and the wad of gel was as sparkling and pleasant-smelling as before.
“And now I’ll sculpt something,” continued Junko. “It’ll only take a second. A surprise for Reba.” She gave Reba a lingering glance, scooped up the glob of gel and slipped out of the room.
“Look out, Carlo boy,” said Joey. “You got competition!”
A moment later, a new form appeared in the kitchen door, with smiling Junko walking behind it. The new shape was a—blanket? A waist-high blue blanket, balancing on her lower edge—surely the blanket was a “she”—with a stylized happy-face drawing on her front surface. The drawing was an anime-style caricature of Junko. The blanket had a shiny satin edge. A crib blanket. Before we could properly react to her, the blanket did a bellyflop onto the floor and humped rapidly towards Reba.
“What is this?” cried Reba, pulling up her feet.
The blanket was fast. Reaching the kitchen couch, she reared up, mounted the cushions, flowed across Carlo’s lap and plastered herself against her target. Reba’s lap.
Unexpectedly, Reba released a luxurious sigh and leaned back. Carlo clawed at the insistent blanket, trying to pull her off his partner, but his fingers slid through the nurb’s shiny edges as if through water.
Reba was slumped against the couch’s arm, quite overcome—as if by cozy nostalgia. And Junko stood to one side, smirking like a proud puppeteer.
“My blankie,” murmured Reba, holding the shiny border of the thing against her cheek. “My little-gir
l baby blankie is back. So cozy. Thank you, Junko, thank you for teeping my deep emotions. Tell blankie to cover me, yes. Wrap me tight. I haven’t felt this good in years.”
The outré scene lasted for a minute or two, with the rest of us watching in silence—like bewildered peasants and shepherds around a crèche.
“I think Junko can start sleeping in bed with us,” Reba told Carlo, breaking the silence. “If she brings blankie.”
“But—” began Carlo.
“Oh, you can let me into bed with you and her,” said Junko. “You big bristly man. I won’t bother you. I just want to be warm. Part of the human tribe.”
That afternoon Lief Larson phoned me on my wristphone. And that ended my fantasy that I didn’t have to worry about the police.
“So your rat Skungy ran off and he’s with you at the Roller mansion,” said Lief, his face hovering before my eyes. “Why didn’t you file a report?”
“I, uh, I was going to. Yes, Skungy’s here. He’s hard to control.”
“That’s a problem with the qwet nurbs,” said Lief. “Slygro is too small a company to handle them. The Department of Genomics wants to give United Mutations an exclusive license for anything pertaining to qwet. You’ll be helping our cause if you can provide negative testimony regarding Slygro and your friend Junko Shimano.”
“Like what?”
“Unreliability, malfeasance, lax protocols, false intellectual property claims—like that.” Lief had completely lost the mildly humorous tone he’d been using before. Serious as a heart attack. Biz and big money involved.
“Maybe I can help,” I said, playing for time. “I’ll see if I can get Loulou and Junko and Joey to talk. I’ll record what they say. I’ll snoop around.” Would I really sink that low? Probably not.
“Just don’t try to out-think me, Zad. I can schedule your trial as soon as I like. Did you know we’ve stopped using human juries? United Mutations sold us a jury nurb last week. Like a twelve-headed dog with a Joe or Jane Shmoe personality in each head. And I can get our judge owl to raise your charge to murder one. A death rap. Sooner than you think. Our system’s highly optimized.”
“Why not just have Grommet come out here and shoot me?” I snapped.
“We’re thinking of that, too,” said Lief, every trace of amiability gone. “Resisting arrest. Either way you’ve got two more days.”
Not knowing what else to do, I rode my spider over to Gaven’s farm with Skungy in my pocket. Hoping to dig up an exonerating clue. Pin the murder on the oddball.
Loulou and Joey came along. Like I’ve been saying, I was tired of Loulou, or embarrassed or something. I would have preferred going to the farm alone. My third night with Loulou had been too much. It had pushed me over some kind of edge. Like eating too much of a tasty food. Be that as it may, Loulou wanted to be in on whatever I discovered at Gaven’s—and Joey didn’t want to let her go off with me alone.
We had our first surprise going up Gaven’s driveway. A heavy roadhog limo was pulling out—Whit Heyburn’s rig, with the same chauffeur/bodyguard as before. Whit had the passenger compartment’s windows set to dark.
“Do I see someone else in there too?” asked Loulou a little cattily. “Is it Jane?”
“Musical chairs,” said Joey. “The fuckers and the fuckees.”
“Go to hell.”
The roadhog made a sound like a blaring horn and accelerated, as if to run us down. Our roadspiders scattered. Whit’s limo sped away.
“Can’t believe I used to work for him,” said Loulou.
“Do you still?” asked Joey. “That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Don’t be so suspicious!”
“Let’s see if Gaven’s still in stasis,” I said.
It was dark and quiet in the gray stone smokehouse with the good bacon smell. The stasis cones were turned off; the hammock was empty.
“Whit Heyburn took the body?” I suggested.
“Gaven’s risen from the dead,” said Joey. He dug at the earthen floor with the toe of his shoe. “See that teensy ant? They used a colony of med-ants to patch the man, sure enough.”
I bent over to examine the nurb ant. She was pale gold with surgically precise mandibles. Her antenna were elegant helices. Half a dozen tinier ants sat perched on her back and, for all I knew, these riders carried yet tinier ants for sending inside human arteries and veins. The graceful, purposeful ant was making her way towards a crack in the wall, heading back to her ant hill. Amazing.
“Deep down I didn’t really think Gaven could come back,” I admitted.
“With a trillion dollar biz deal in the air?” said Loulou. “That’ll wake a guy like him for sure.”
“So Gaven rode off with Whit,” I said. “Alive. Gaven was the other person in the car, Joey.”
“Maybe there was three people in the car,” said Joey with a lewd chuckle. “Some folks likes a three-way real good.”
“Shut your crack!” I yelled, grabbing hold of Joey and shaking him. Skungy started shrieking at us to stop. If it came down to it, the rat might take Joey’s side.
“Boys!” said Loulou, savoring the drama. “Control yourselves.”
At this point we were still in the smokehouse. I stepped out into the sunlight and ran my hands across my face. It wasn’t a tenable situation to be sleeping with Loulou and Joey. I sincerely wanted to stop, even if it meant no more Loulou. I felt like a dog who’d been rolling in rotten meat. Nor was it tenable to have the cops wanting to execute me. I needed to find a clue on this damned farm. I needed to understand the meaning of the oddball and the dirtbubble.
“The oddball isn’t here,” said Loulou, peering into my mind and picking up my subvocal mutterings. “And I’m not rotten meat, you ungrateful jerk.”
And that’s when my affair with her ended. Loulou didn’t look pretty to me any more, and I didn’t like her voice. Why had she and I gotten so deeply involved?
“The oddball’s hiding in the Funhouse,” said Joey in a neutral tone. “Remember?”
“I know that,” I said, my voice tight. “But I thought I’d have a chance of finding the dirtbubble here.”
“Gaven probably took the dirtbubble with him,” said Joey, reasonably enough. “But if you want, we can go in his house for a look-see. Maybe I’ll see if I can steal something.”
“You won’t find shit,” said Loulou, limp and dejected. “I don’t know why I came over here. I’m remembering Gaven dead in the hallway, and that Fairyland trip where I saw the dragonfly people in rocking-chairs on the porch. And meanwhile Zad’s thinking nasty things about me. What a stupid drag. I hate you, Zad.”
“And I hate you.” My emotions were out of control.
“I’m going to ride my spider over to our old tenant cottage on the hill,” said Loulou gloomily. “I’ll get some of my stuff before we go back to the stupid Funhouse.”
“I’ll meet you at the cottage in a minute,” said Joey, skirting around our argument. “I’ll want to fetch some of my things too.”
Joey and I went into Gaven’s house, with Skungy riding in my shirt pocket. The front door wasn’t even locked. The place had been picked clean. No papers in sight, and not much of anything valuable lying around. But Joey took it into his head to loot flatware from the kitchen. Somehow nobody had bothered with that stuff. It’s not like it was worth much anymore. It grew on plants. But Joey was stuffing spoons and knives into an empty nurb chow bag.
I went upstairs with Skungy and we examined Gaven’s room with the twin beds. I remembered Reba having said Gaven kept his dirtbubble on a little cushion and, yes, here was a pink little pillow under the night table, a pink cat’s bed with a soft dent where something had once sat.
Holding my breath, I stretched out my hand and felt the spot—just in case the dirtbubble was sitting there, somehow invisible. I’d noticed at my parents’ farm that the oddball could pull back into the higher dimensions and shrink down to a tiny dimple. But, no, the dirtbubble wasn’t here. It was with Whit
and Gaven and—Jane.
Fuck it. I called her with my wristphone.
“Hi, Zad. What are you doing?” Sure enough, Jane was in Whit’s car. I could hear Whit talking to Gaven in the background. Everything was bad and wrong.
“I’m lost,” I told Jane. “I feel like I’m going to die. I want you back.”
“Getting tired of Loulou? Reba says you’re sleeping with Joey too.”
“Don’t let’s be tough with each other, Jane. Let’s talk to each other face to face. Or do teep. Have you gone qwet?”
“Can’t you tell?” She laughed softly—and I couldn’t tell if this meant yes or no.
“I—I know where your oddball is, Jane. She’s loose in your family’s old house. She’s not any of the things that we thought before. She’s the mouth of a tunnel that leads to another world.”
“Clear as mud. Gaven and Whit have something like it, you know. The dirtbubble. Gaven’s arguing with it. Or with whatever’s behind it. Gaven’s angry that the dirtbubble didn’t stop the oddball from smothering him.”
“Would Gaven be willing to tell the cops that I didn’t kill him?”
“I doubt it. He doesn’t like you.”
I sighed, trying to sort things out. “And you say the dirtbubble talks?”
“It has a nasty, sputtering voice, almost like someone having diarrhea. I can hardly listen to it. And it stinks like rubbing alcohol and rotten garbage. It keeps telling Gaven and Whit they’ll rule the world. You ambitious little men. Maybe we should get together. All of us. See what happens. Tomorrow night? Till then, Zad.”
The connection went blank and Skungy squeaked a warning. Something was hissing at us. No end of disasters. I saw a furry little creature with a black leathery beak and with spines sticking out of his heels, like a rooster’s spurs. Creeping towards me. Ready to strike. One of the two platypuses containing Gaven’s personality.
“He came out of the closet!” shrilled Skungy. He was on the floor within range of the platypus, but he didn’t yet have the nerve to attack it. The platypus was maybe three times Skungy’s weight. Although his beak wasn’t much of a weapon, those conotoxin-loaded spurs were serious. He could paralyze me and overwrite my mind.