by Rudy Rucker
Already four or five redwoods across the stream had begun hugely to fall, the weakened trunks giving way with fusillades of sharp pops. Chu noted that the redwood silps were intrigued rather than upset. In their view, being a fungus-coated log was as interesting as being a leafy tree.
Jayjay twitched the big tube with precise motions, his face clenched in concentration, working to eliminate every particle of the aliens without doing excessive damage to the woods. Chu was impressed by his poise. Once the gawky birds were wholly gone, Jayjay aimed the gobble gun upward to prune away the branches that Thuy had set alight. And then he switched it off.
Grew was saved, but in the distance other trees continued falling for a minute or two. Each splintering collapse seemed to set off another. Chu put himself into a hyperalert state, poised to teleport out of there in case the Peng retaliated.
As the crashing subsided, the air twinkled again and—the aliens recongealed yet again, firm and solid as ever. Their mood was calmly triumphant.
Deeply intrigued, Chu teeped into Thuy and Jayjay’s minds, fishing for info about tulpas. Back on Ond’s patio, he’d been preoccupied by his monitoring of Bixie’s mood.
In short, the Peng were like holograms, but made of matter instead of light. The local atoms were skimping on the complexity of their physical interactions, and channeling their quantum computations into generating the Peng. The atoms were producing matter waves whose mutual interference patterns were solid Peng tulpas.
Teeping down into the atoms around him, Chu visualized the process in mathematical terms. He’d soaked up a ton of math in the last few years—he loved the stuff. He was seeing a Peng tulpa as being the sum of a Fourier series, like a chorus of sine waves piling up to form a spiky squiggle. As long as the local atoms kept pumping out the matter waves, the Fourier sum kept coming back. The computations generating these three grotty birds were distributed across the whole forest. It was going to be very hard indeed to rub them out.
Quietly, Chu stashed his stonker in his pants pocket. The gun was begging him to fire it, but there was no use. Meanwhile, Suller darted forward and whacked Jayjay’s gobble gun with his beak, knocking the tube to the ground. Gretta did the same thing to Thuy’s klusper. But, whew, that was the extent of the Peng payback.
As casually as ducks eating gingerbread, the two fowl pecked the guns apart and swallowed the pieces, raising their beaks high to work down the larger chunks. Meanwhile Kakar devoured the entire coiled worm of crushed matter that had emerged from the gobble gun’s rear. The Peng tulpas were truly omnivorous, capable of eating anything at all. And their matter-hologram beaks were forceful as wrecking bars.
A pair of bluejays peered down from the upper branches of Grew. Kwaawk and his mate. The jays scolded and cawed, teeping their distrust of the alien birds. The tree was unhappy, too, complaining about how stiff and stereotyped her motions had become. The local silps resented the mangy alien birds for siphoning off the richness of their inner lives.
“How did your world’s furry beasts end up bigger than the feathered ones?” wondered Gretta, twitchily looking from the bluejays to the humans and back. Her teep voice came across as shrill and penetrating. “Your natural order is cockeyed. I suppose that humans evolved from rodents? Nasty, scuttling things. In primitive times, rats ate our eggs.”
“We’re descended from apes,” said Thuy sullenly. “Not rats.”
“Apes, rats—it’s all the same,” said Gretta airily. She had a fey mannerism of abruptly darting her head. “On Pengö, there’s nothing but birds, fish, worms, and insects. Our ancestors eliminated the pesky furries many millennia ago. I suppose we’ll do the same thing here.”
“Have you always had telepathy?” asked Thuy, forcing a semblance of a smile.
Closely watching her, and managing to grasp that she was worried inside, Chu felt a sudden desire to bring a true smile to Thuy’s lips. Thus was born his new crush, the second of his life. Jayjay didn’t notice, he was turned inward, trying to figure out how to undo the atomic changes he’d helped bring about.
“At the dawn of history, a squealing bag visited us,” said Gretta in answer to Thuy’s question. “A noise-sack from a different reality. The flying bag’s sacred squawks unfurled our eighth dimension. All of our objects awoke, and we came to know Pekka, the mind of our planet. Pekka is a bit like your piggish Gaia, I suppose.” Gretta arched her neck, looking around the grove. “It’s interesting to be on a primitive planet where lazy eight is new.”
“Your planetary mind—Pekka,” probed Thuy. “She’s the one who sent you? I heard she has a local agent here—hidden in the subdimensions? She looks like you, but bigger and with no eyes?”
“That would be the Pekklet, yes.” Gretta clacked her beak, snapped up a beetle, and returned to the topic of her home world’s glorious history. “The flying noise-bag was our first miracle, and the second great miracle was when Waheer and Pekka learned to project Peng souls as runes. Thanks to Waheer’s daring and to Pekka’s divine wisdom, the adventurous among us can travel to teeker worlds and wear the bodies that you call tulpas.” Gretta clucked and flapped her stubby wings. “Tulpa, tulpa, tulpa.”
“I can see that we have a lot to learn from you!” said Thuy in her sweetest tone. “I’m terribly sorry about the misunderstanding with the guns.”
Chu admired Thuy’s effrontery, physically expressed in the insolent curve of her neck. The only misunderstanding about the guns was that Thuy had thought they might work.
Of course, Thuy was a twenty-seven-year-old married woman—and Chu was only fourteen. But she was surprisingly attractive to him, not that he could imagine actually trying anything with a woman that age. But . . . maybe? He loved her high pigtails. And she didn’t get all upset if you happened to stare, not even if you looked under her clothes. Not like Bixie.
Suller had begun berating Jayjay. “At first I was going to thank you for casting the pioneer runes that brought us here,” rasped the big bird. Overlaid by telepathy, Suller’s harsh caws reminded Chu of Mr. Big, the head gangster in a video game, Gross Polluter, that he’d played as a kid. “I’m prepared to cut you in on a very sweet cash deal,” continued Suller. “But—instead of saying hello, you and your wife try to murder us? What kind of garbage is that? It’s lucky that you’re our runecaster. Otherwise—” Suller darted his head forward like a woodpecker, bringing the tip of his diamond-hard beak to within a millimeter of Jayjay’s forehead.
Reading others’ emotions had never been Chu’s strong point, but Suller was particularly opaque, what with his alien mind and his glassy bird eyes. It was hard to tell if he was angry right now, or if he was just practicing for being angry later.
As for Jayjay, he barely even flinched, so intent was he upon the problem of how to undo the runes that he’d cast into the atoms of the Yolla Bolly woods.
Thuy laid a gentle hand on Suller’s subtly banded brown feathers, soothing him with her calm, reasonable tone. “How is it that Jayjay became your runecaster? What makes him so special?”
“He’s a zedhead. He can carry out ten tridecillion atomic tweaks in a couple of seconds. And, best of all, he got snared by Pekka’s agent.”
Gretta got in on the conversation, her teep signal shrill and gloating. “Jayjay saw Pekka’s agent and he yelled, ‘Yoo-hoo!’ ” She jiggled her head and let out a trill of mocking laughter. “The Pekklet hooked Jayjay—zack. Whenever Pekka needs him, he’s there. Our pet runecaster. We’re here to civilize another ratty teeker world.”
Suller studied Jayjay. “You’ve made a good start, I’ll grant you that. You cast the rune for my family here in Yolla Bolly, and you cast the rune for Blotz’s family in, uh, San Francisco. Wish you’d checked with me on that one, Jayjay. I didn’t want Blotz and his family to end up so far away.”
“Blotz!” exclaimed Gretta. “You didn’t tell me they were coming, Suller!”
Chu teeped back to his father in San Francisco to check that Ond was hearing all this. Ond was si
tting by the window in a darkened room of their house. “Keep your distance from Suller,” advised Ond. “And guess what—those San Francisco aliens Suller is talking about? They’re in our backyard.”
Ond directed Chu’s attention to the patio of their Dolores Heights mansion. A trio of gawky birds were out there talking to Jil and Kittie. The birds were pecking up some bread and oranges that Jil had set out for them, now and then pausing to admire the view. “Their names are Blotz, Noora, and Pookie,” continued Ond. “A father, mother, daughter trio. They came to our house because they’re looking for Jayjay. He’s supposed to help them do something.”
“The guns don’t work against them,” Chu told his father.
“Yeah, I saw,” said Ond. “We’ll have to try something else. But with San Francisco’s gnarl being siphoned off, I can’t think straight. As soon as these nosy Peng leave our yard, I’m moving down to Santa Cruz with Jil and Nektar and the kids. According to my calculations, when you leave a Peng zone, the effects wear off. I’ll get back to you when I can. Be very careful, son.”
“Hey!” teeped Gretta, interrupting Chu and Ond’s conversation. “I see what you’re seeing: Blotz and his tacky wife Noora and their silly little daughter Pookie. It’s so disgusting the way Noora holds her tail feathers pooched out to the sides. Does she really think that everyone wants to see her filthy cloaca?”
“Blotz and Noora are a high-class pair of Peng,” Suller heavily told his wife. “Just like us. Eventually we’ll establish a solid chain of Peng ranches between here and San Francisco, sweetie. Then we’ll be able to visit with the Blotzes; strutting from ranch to ranch, merging the matter music. I’m thinking Kakar might even get Pookie to lay him an egg. They’d be a fine match, so shut your beak, okay? Warm Worlds Realty is bringing the cream of Peng society, no doubt!”
“What a crock,” quacked Kakar. “Floofy’s the one I want, not Pookie. But, nooo, you had to bring me here. Blotz and Noora are broke losers—just like you guys. That’s why you four took these stupid jobs as land developers. The cream of Peng society are the ones who are gonna actually pay Warm Worlds to have a ranch on Earth—if this place turns out to be livable, which I doubt. I swear I saw a rat just now.”
“Rat!” squawked Gretta, hopping several meters off the ground and staying there, curiously suspended in midair.
With abrupt fury, Suller pecked Kakar hard enough to draw blood. Screeching piteously, the younger Peng bird flexed his legs and leapt for the roof of Thuy and Jayjay’s house, extending his rudimentary wings for balance. He hadn’t jumped hard enough to cover the distance, but, like Gretta, he came to rest in midair. Apparently the Peng could make themselves weightless. Kakar fluttered his wings till he’d reached the roof. Safely perched, he railed at his parents.
“I hate you! I wish I’d never been hatched!”
“Ungrateful fledgling!” croaked Gretta, settling back to the forest floor. “We only came to this terrible place because you’re such a wild dreamer! Going to the cliffs to be an artist with Floofy—what a mess. Ever since then, Floofy’s parents have been threatening us!” Next she turned on her mate. “And now I learn you’ve brought Noora? I know all about your affair with her, Suller. No wonder you’re disappointed that their ranch isn’t next door.” Her voice cracked; despondently she lowered her beak.
Suller cooed softly and smoothed Gretta’s feathers with his bill. Up on the roof, Kakar was examining the wound in his side. Chu almost offered to help, but he could teep that the gouge was healing fast; restored by the massed computations of the Yolla Bolly Peng ranch.
“My family . . .” teeped Suller, turning back to the humans with a sigh. “Never satisfied. Listen up, Jayjay. I can make you an attractive proposition. I want for you to do a series of teleportation hops, a hundred kilometers at a time. At each spot you land, the Pekklet will feed you a rune for a fresh family of Peng pioneers, and you’ll cast the rune into the atoms of the new ranch. The way Warm Worlds figures it, there’s room for fifteen thousand ranches on Earth’s land surface—what an opportunity!”
“No,” said Jayjay. “I won’t do it.”
“I’ll see that you’re very handsomely paid for your runecasting,” continued Suller smoothly. “Presently we’re in start-up mode, with only seven pioneer families committed to come here, but I’m sure we’ll have a land rush down the road. If all goes well, you’ll be the richest man on Earth.”
“I’d rather die.”
“You will help us,” said Suller coldly. “One way or another.”
“You’re worried about losing the—gnarl?” Gretta asked Jayjay. She’d recovered her aplomb. Cocking her head, she turned her attention to Chu. “This boy doesn’t mind the missing gnarl.”
“I do, too,” insisted Chu, wanting to seem like the others. But there was something to what she said. He liked things to be predictable and orderly.
“You furries will be better off without so much emotion and self-will,” Gretta told Jayjay. “Leave the drama to us. We’ll be your legends, your mythic queens and kings.”
Teeping Jayjay for his reaction, Chu was shocked to see the intensity of the man’s unhappiness. Jayjay hated himself for having opened the gateway to the Peng, hated himself for being an addicted pighead, hated himself for making his wife sad.
Chu found it painful to know these feelings. In the old days, before he’d started healing his autism, he’d been unable to visualize other people’s inner lives at all. Sure, it was good to understand other people better now—but sometimes empathy was a drag.
“Why do you need a runecaster at all?” Thuy asked the aliens, twining her arm around her husband’s waist.
“I’ll answer that one,” teeped Kakar from the roof. “Tulpa programming happens to be one of my interests.” He hopped down into the clearing and cawed his explanation. “Each pioneer rune codes a small Peng family—bodies, brains, memories, the works. The runecaster has to be a teeker so he can program the rune into atoms, and he has to be able to think very fast so that he can do the full ten tridecillion atoms that you—”
“Spare me the geekin’ details,” interrupted Thuy, which was annoying for Chu. Thuy continued, “What I’m asking is why the Peng don’t frikkin’ teleport here if they want to invade? Why make it so complicated?”
“Listen to her, Suller and Kakar,” cackled Gretta. “They don’t even know.”
“Not many races can teleport and teek,” said Kakar. He raised his wings and bowed in an ironic salute. “Humans are special.”
“I’ve heard that all the teeker races are descended from rats,” said Gretta, twitching her head to snap a moth from the air. Jayjay shuddered and let out a faint hum.
“Apes, Mom,” said Kakar shortly. “Like Thuy said earlier. Apes are the furry things with four hands that climb in trees. Do you act so dopey on purpose? Would Dad be scared of a hen who’s not as dumb as him? I don’t understand how you two hatched a genius like me.”
Gretta tightened her beak, not deigning to respond to her son’s insolence. Another moth appeared in the air beside her, and she caught that one, too. “Yum.”
“You’re saying that only humanoids can teleport themselves?” asked Thuy, looking back and forth between her husband and the aliens. “Only humanoids can reach into atoms and reprogram them with their minds?”
“Apes, humanoids, whatever,” said Suller. “I wouldn’t want to be one. Teek and teleportation come out of this neurotictype syndrome. Those three teeker emotions—what do they call them again, Kakar? I always forget.”
“Remorse, doubt, and fear,” said Kakar, scratching a steady stream of banana slugs from the dirt. “You can teep the pattern in Jayjay’s head, he’s already thought about it. Remorse about the past, doubt about the present, fear of the future. What if, what if, what if. The pusher crew on a Hrull mothership at the Pengö spaceport told me about it, too. Pushers have it rough.”
“Yeah they do,” said Suller darkly. “You Earthlings are lucky we got here before t
he Hrullwelt ships found you.”
Chu was thrilled by the mention of a mothership. It would be great to be in a starship crew, visiting rough spaceports on alien worlds like Pengö and the Hrullwelt—whatever that was.
“Tell us about your home planet,” he urged Suller.
“My voice is tired,” said the tall alien bird. “I’ve been squawking too hard. All this hassle and stress. I’ll show you a—a kind of movie.”
A flow of images began in the humans’ heads, richly enhanced by data links. It was an ad for Warm Worlds Realty, with headquarters at planet Pengö’s south pole.
The first scene shows the Virgo Supercluster, which stretches two hundred million light-years, encompassing the M51 Group as well as the Milky Way’s Local Group.
The M51 galaxies sparkle like diamonds on black velvet, and now one of them begins to grow; it’s the beautifully symmetric Whirlpool Galaxy.
“We are not alone,” croons a bird’s voice in deep, textured tones.
The viewpoint zooms in on a particular planet whose temperate zones are a filigree of green and blue. There are no open seas or level plains on this world, only a global maze of water channels and verdant rock ridges. A heavy frosting of ice coats the polar caps.
“Our planet Pengö is ancient,” says the voice-over. “Our once molten core has all but crystallized; our continents have shattered. And thus our world’s surface is a labyrinth of sea and stone.”
The view swoops into winding, interlinked fjords with twisted trees growing in every crack. Flocks of birds scythe through insect swarms and wheel above the crystal waters, diving for fish.
“Our planet’s beauty reflects the perfection of Pekka, our planetary mind,” says the narrator. “And one species above all enjoys the radiance of Pekka’s full favor. The Peng.”