The Big Aha

by Rudy Rucker

  “You’ve certainly made yourself interesting again,” said Jane. She held me out at arm’s length, examining me. “That flashing Mr. Normal nurb you made—I noticed him. He’s good. A strong, simple concept. He would sell.” Again I noticed Jane’s black eye, and she sensed me seeing it. “So did you kill Whit?” she asked, trying to sound casual and tough.

  “I tried. I got the dirtbubble wormhole to swallow him. That thing almost got me too. Its slime is some kind of anaesthetic. I’m thinking the wormholes might just paralyze people—without actually killing them. Like a spider wrapping flies in silk. Whit could still come back. And Reba, too. And your Mom. Maybe we can bring everyone back.”

  “And Loulou?” said Jane, still jealous about the other woman. “Seeing her get swallowed was the only good part about tonight.”

  “Oh, can’t we get past Loulou, Jane? Can’t we start over?”

  She sighed, rubbed her face, and sat silent for a awhile. “Oh, why not,” she finally said. “I mean, this could be the end of the world, right? Let’s love each other like we used to. We were happy then.”

  “Dear Jane.” We hugged and kissed some more. Jane had the same old pleasant smell. Salt and honeysuckle. The two gubs were in this hidden chamber with us now, alternately nosing at my leg and at Jane’s. Not even bothering to try and analyze their mental imagery again, I just nudged them away.

  The oddball wanted us to move along. She was inching our cave towards the Fairyland end of her tunnel.

  And then, whoops, we slid out. The spotted gub popped out with us, and the subtly shaded green gub as well. The four of us were standing on the bulging pink body of a giant clam within a pair of wavy shells. A little like Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.

  The top shell was open, and a soft, dimpled pearl rested upon the clam. The pearl was the oddball, and the pearl’s mouth was puckered shut. That’s where we’d come from. The upper half of the clam’s shell rocked forward, nudging us. We stepped onto the wooden floor; the heavy shell swung down.

  It was night up here, and we were in an empty ballroom that looked very much like the one in the Funhouse. A pair of four-foot-long dragonfly people were sitting in arm chairs, studying us. Their bodies were thin and leathery, their faces small and wry. They had fuzzy antennae on the tops of their heads, and long, gossamer wings that hung over the backs of their stuffed chairs. Each of the creatures had four arms and two legs. Their hands were clad in little white gloves, and they had rounded yellow booties on their feet.

  “How-do,” said one of the Fairylanders. “I’m Stanky, and this here’s my man Jeptha. We’s talkin’ down-home style to put you at your ease.”

  “I’m quite sure that’s not necessary,” said Jane, very proper. “We’re not hillbillies. We’re Jane Roller and Zad Plant from Louisville.”

  “Don’t need to put on no citified airs,” said Stanky. “We’re plain folks like you.” Her voice was low and raspy, and she vibrated her veined wings as she talked. She had a shiny nut-brown face with a thin-lipped mouth, up-turned nose, and almond eyes.

  “Right pleased to meet you two,” put in Jeptha. “Hold on.”

  At the first sound of Stanky’s voice, the green gub and the spotted gub had begun moving across the ballroom floor towards the outer door. They proceeded in little hops, pushing off with their stubby legs and bouncing a few feet at a time. They weren’t exactly scared—it almost seemed like they were deliberately baiting the dragonfly creatures into an attack.

  And then, with a sudden snap of his long body, Jeptha launched himself from his chair and skidded face-down across the ballroom’s wood floor with his wings trailing. I guess you’d call it a pounce, not that there was anything graceful about it. Be that as it may, Jeptha had snagged the lackadaisical gubs. The little creatures gave out some of their wild, complex squeals—to no avail. But, as I say, it wasn’t clear that they really wanted to get away. Perhaps the squeals were a kind of laughter. Jeptha clamped the spotted gub under an arm, presented the green, botanically-minded gub to Stanky and crawled back to his chair.

  As he reseated himself, Jeptha gave me a friendly, comfortable wink, as if he were a burgher hoisting a stein of beer. “The gubs and us does this all the time,” he said. “The spotted fella’s been comin’ around for a year. We call him Duffie. He’s got an interest in Jane and you.”

  “And that pretty green one comes here to play with him,” said Stanky. “They’s more important than they looks. Duffie’s in love with the green gub. But he’s got a rival. The dark gub. He tryin’ to win the green gub for hisself.”

  Uncurling a proboscis from beneath his tongue, Jeptha sank the tube into the spotted gub. Stanky did the same with the forest-green one. The gubs sat unprotesting on their captors’ laps, dwindling like leaky balloons.

  Somehow oblivious of all this activity, Jane was sniffing the air and peering into the hallway off the ballroom. “You’re sure it’s safe to breathe here?” she asked me. As if I knew. “I don’t understand why this place is an exact copy of my parents’ house. Stanky and Jeptha are—bugs?”

  “We ain’t bugs,” said Stanky, smacking her narrow lips and wiping off a milk-mustache of creamy gub juice. “Use your noodle. We live in Fairyland, and we’re fairies. Or dragonfly goblins, you might could say. And you folks are what we call bumpfs. Two worlds. The green gub tells us it’s easier to make two universes than just one. Start with nothing and make a plus one and a minus one. So we’s the minus and you’s the plus. You the roots and we the flowers. We don’t never break a sweat. Down there you bumpfs do all the work.”

  Jeptha emitted a wet buzz that might have been a laugh.

  “Is my mother here?” asked Jane.

  “She’s inside that dang myoor thing out there,” said Jeptha. “Swallowed up. In storage. Like she’s asleep.”

  Finished with the spotted gub for now, Jeptha cast him aside. Far from being weakened, the drained gub was livelier than before, his mind awash with higher-dimensional shapes and outré patterns of numbers. He bounded towards the terrace door. Stanky released the plant-obsessed green gub, who caught up with the spotted one. Duffie. The gubs paused at the threshold, exchanging their weirdly intricate squeals, as if having a lively discussion.

  The unseen myoor outside bleated and made a noise like the opening of a large, wet mouth. Once again I felt a touch of teep from the myoor’s mind. Like a fermenting vat of living organisms. The gubs tittered like school children hearing a dirty joke and then—they disappeared, vanishing from tail to head, off into the Nth dimension or some such place. All was calm.

  Jane had further questions for Stanky and Jeptha. “This place looks just like my family’s house,” she said. “I know you said Mom’s inside the myoor, but is there a fairy copy of me that lives here? A Jane who looks like a bug?”

  “No call to keep saying we’re bugs,” said Stanky. “We’re folks like you.”

  “You’re not,” cried Jane, her voice breaking. “You’re gumpy and fubbed.”

  Jeptha made more of the damp, grating sounds that stood in for laughter. His long wings quivered in bumpkin glee. Our situation was so outlandish that I almost felt like laughing myself. Picking up on this, Stanky pointed a thin arm at me.

  “Zad’s horrible and gumpy and fubbed,” she said, twisting her body in mirth, and making that wet hiss of fairy laughter.

  “You fairies don’t look like us one bit,” insisted Jane, as if reassuring herself.

  “Bumpfs and fairies don’t have no kind of one-to-one match a-tall,” Jeptha reassured her. “It’s the rest of Fairyland that’s a copy of Earth. The glens and dells, the snails and shells, the homesteads and the country hams.”

  “Yeah, but our ballroom is trashed, with broken glass and spattered blood,” said Jane petulantly. “Not like yours.” She had a way of getting very stubborn and precise when she was upset.

  “The Fairyland version of Earth do have some lags and what you’d call discrepancies,” allowed Stanky, cocking her head
in an odd way, as if she had extra joints in her neck. “But looky thar! Them window panes is melting away. And, yep, I see jaggies of glass blooming on the floor. Might be the update is spotty and slow on account of the myoor being outside.”

  “Or haywire from Jane and Zad being here,” said Jeptha. “We don’t normally see live bumpfs in Fairyland. You like two things what crawled out of a carnival mirror, ain’t you?”

  “Not that human beings is unknown to us,” added Stanky. “Should I tell em, Jeptha?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Once in a while my husband and I uses the oddball to sneak down and pilfer doodads,” said Stanky. She held out one of her clawed fingers.

  “That’s my grandma’s engagement ring!” cried Jane. “You stole it? Mom wouldn’t stop talking about it, and I searched for days.”

  “We’re collectors,” said Stanky with a motion like a shrug. “Jeptha’s got Zad’s shoehorn, too. And a couple of old Lennox Plant’s paintbrushes. And one of Zad’s mother’s pottery bowls.”

  “You’re horrible and—” began Jane.

  “You already said all that,” said Stanky. “You’re our guests. So let’s keep it friendly-like.”

  “I ain’t never touched no live bumpfs before,” said Jeptha by way of changing the subject. “When we goes out collecting, we don’t never let no bumpfs get near. Let me have a feel of you, Zad.”

  And with that he flicked his wings and skimmed through the air my way. I flinched, but already he was upon me, buttonholing me with his four gloved hands. He smelled spicy and dry. Like cloves. Gently he ran his delicate antennae over my head, exploring the shape of my face.

  “Having these two up here is gonna turn things all catawampus,” said Stanky. “I could tell Duffie’s happy. Even though he didn’t say nothing.”

  “That spotted gub’s been fishin’ for these two for a year,” agreed Jeptha. “And we helped make it be.”

  “So okay,” I said. “What the fuck are you talking about now?”

  “Wal, last year Duffie talked us to setting out our tunnel clam’s oddball where Jane would find it,” Stanky explained. “Like bait. Tunnel clams is exceeding rare, you understand. Jeptha and me lucky to own one. Can’t collect doodads without no tunnel clam.”

  “Let’s get to the point,” interrupted Jeptha. “That spotted gub has been fixin’ to get you two up here so you’d understand about movin’ the myoor down to your side. For to outfox the dark gub. Too bad Stanky here had to go and blab to the dark gub about the plan.”

  “It don’t really matter,” said Stanky. “Even now that dark gub don’t understand about the two sheets. He thinks you bumpfs are mythical dreams or some such. The universe that the dark gub comes from is flat as a pancake. That gub can’t really think about space at all. But the spotted gub, our Duffie, he knows the score. Even if he do come from a peculiar place that’s like a twisted wad of baling wire.”

  “Duffie’s smart, and that dark gub ain’t,” agreed Jeptha. “He never laughs, won’t listen to nobody, always wants his way. Like a preacher, almost.”

  “He ain’t good enough for that pretty green gub,” said Stanky, sounding almost tender. “And that’s why we’s helpin’ the spotted gub.”

  The two dragonfly creatures looked at us, perhaps expecting a mutter of agreement, but by now Jane and I no longer had any real grasp of what this conversation was about.

  “I expect I oughta back up and tell about the myoor,” said Jeptha with a sigh. “She’s a meat blanket that’s made up special by the green gub. And it’s our bad luck that the green gub set down the myoor right here. The myoor’s sizable, she runs all along the river into town. The first you saw of her was that one wormhole. The one you was callin’ the dirtbubble? The dirtbubble was the myoor’s advance guard. Her scout.”

  “And now the myoor’s pushin’ down wormholes all over your Louisville,” said Stanky. “Swallowing people and paralyzing em, looking for the two special best bumpfs that the green gub’s gonna want for eggs. A myoor’s natural instinct is to collect every single bumpf on a whole planet, just to be sure that the green gub gets the widest choice. Louisville today, and then onto Indianapolis, maybe, or Cincinnati. And New York City, natch. Paris, Istanbul, Rio, you name it. She’ll sweep your Earth clean.”

  “This is about eggs?” I asked, more and more confused.

  “The myoor is the green gub’s womb,” said Stanky. “The green gub’s lookin’ to spawn two babies. She’s gonna pick two bumpfs, run some mods on them, and let her mate wet em down with a squirt of gub sperm. Could be either the spotted gub or the dark gub what does those honors.”

  “You’re gonna bewilder these folks,” said Jeptha, shaking his odd little head.

  “I can’t hardly understand how the green gub can even look at that dark gub,” continued Stanky without a pause. “The way he’s flat and all. It’s gotta be the spotted gub who wins. And—like we been sayin—that’s what all this la-de-da is about. Jane and Zad gonna close the deal for the spotted gub! That’s why the spotted gub done lured you through our dang oddball!”

  “I—I can’t handle any more of this crazy jabber,” said Jane, leaning against me, her knees wobbly. “I need to lie down.”

  “You’re not being good hosts,” admonished a nearby voice. I saw an aethereal figure like a young woman, nearly transparent, faintly blue, with long hair and a flowing gown. She was floating in midair, lying languidly on her side. Her hair’s tendrils waved with each faint current of air. “Shame on you, Stanky and Jeptha,” she added, her voice like a sigh. She had no trace of a hillbilly accent.

  Looking around the ballroom, I realized there were some other air fairies in here as well. It was easy to overlook them.

  “Lenore with her fancy manners,” grumbled Jeptha. He glared at me. “So, fine, you two bumpfs want some clabber and cornbread for supper? A roast sparrow? No? Well, go on and get your sleep. Can’t rightly do much till daybreak nohow.”

  “Can we find a quiet bedroom upstairs?” I asked. “Or is the whole house teeming with you people?”

  “It’s tight just now,” said Stanky. “What with the elves and gnomes and the air fairies. Refugees from the myoor.”

  “Not that me and Stanky needs a bed,” said Jeptha, kind of bragging about it. “We prefers to sleep outside, upside-down, holding onto any sizable branch of a tree.”

  “But the myoor’s putting a hurt on our trees,” continued Stanky. “So we headin’ for the barn’s rafters tonight.” She turned to the air fairy named Lenore. “How about you be the one to find Zad and Jane a bed, if you so wild about playing the lady.”

  “I shall,” said the hovering air fairy. “Come along, dear bumpfs.”

  Jane and I followed Lenore to the living room, which was an exact replica of the one in the Rollers’ house. Except there were about fifty fairies. Two dozen of them were elves in natty green caps—fine-featured little folk telling tales and singing rounds. Half a dozen dragonfly fairies like Jeptha and Stanky were fastened to the walls. Something like a merman and a mermaid were lolling in an enormous cut-crystal punch bowl, along with a goggle-eyed cuttlefish fairy. Four hard-faced gnomes were gathered beneath a table, playing cards. One of the gnomes seemed to be the leader; he was distinguishable by his jutting beard. His fellows called him Blixxen. Five blazing imps were entangled in the fireplace, continually twining their forked limbs.

  One last fairy resembled a worm with a mortarboard hat, a round starched collar, and a pair of spectacles with heavy black frames. I was curious about that one. Sensing my interest, he sought to open a conversation.

  “I’m Professor Wriggle,” he said, inclining his smooth and featureless head. His voice was a whistling drone emanating from a tiny hole at his body’s anterior tip. “Tell me, is cannibalism common among you bumpfs? When I was but a pinworm, Nurse used to scandalize me with tales of your race. Might I have a peek at your deadly fangs?” Professor Wriggle’s glasses were held in place with an elastic strap in b
ack. But he didn’t seem to have eyes. Nor did the glasses have any lenses.

  I would have been glad to talk with the fairy worm, but I became distracted because the draft from the chimney was dragging our airy guide Lenore towards the hearth. At the last moment, she twirled her translucent body in such a way that she flowed over the mantelpiece, slid across the ceiling and rejoined us by the door.

  “Do take a pew!” Professor Wriggle was urging me, all set for a long talk.

  But Jane waved him off, and Lenore led us upstairs—to the same room that I’d shared with Loulou and Joey on our first night in the Funhouse. Going up the stairs, we had to step over a number of tiny fairies sleeping on the steps.

  Once in the bedroom, Lenore allowed the breeze to take her where it would—and she swept out the open window and into the continuing rain. Something out there was bellowing. A damp, unpleasant sound. And again I teeped a mind like a primordial soup of life. The myoor. I wasn’t ready to look at her yet. I closed the window.

  A dozen elves lay mounded on our bed, but Jane and I moved them to a pair of pillows on the floor. Their delicate, sleeping bodies were feather light.

  Finally in a bed together, Jane and I embraced—relishing our shared warmth, our mingled scents, the contact of our skins. Salt and honeysuckle. We merged our minds via teep and sank into slumber, sharing a dream of a vast, green mind that filled all of Fairyland—and all of Earth.

  In the morning I was awakened by a dozen thumb-sized toy soldiers parading back and forth along the mattress, right beside my face. They were executing a drill. One of them was singing out orders, and two others were piping and rattling a matchstick fife and a thimble drum.

  Catching the flicker of my eyelid, the leader strutted closer to my face, saluted, and addressed me in this wise.

  “Sergeant Cobble at your service! We’re sent to you by Colonel Jeptha and General Stanky, requesting your presence for a breakfast briefing.”