Authors: Rudy Rucker

Spaceland (32 page)

BOOK: Spaceland

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“Science and business, Tulip,” I said. “That's all it ever was. Until today anyway. TodayâI guess you could say I saw God. There's no Devil out there at all, Tulip. Just the Presence. Infinite Love.”

“I'd like to think that too, Joe. But when I woke up this morning there was blood in your room, and shooting and yelling. I don't want to see that kind of thing ever again. It was like my worst dream. How could you make that happen right afterâright afterâ”

“I didn't make it happen,” I began. But then I thought back. It was my need for grolly that had brought Momo into the room in the first place.

“Let's go, homie,” said the guard next to me. “We're on a schedule here. Gotta take your picture, process you in. We don't got all night.”

I ignored him and pressed the phone tighter against my ear. “It won't happen again,” I told Tulip. “I'm done with all that. I'd like to see you when I get out.”

“When's that going to be?” asked Tulip. “They said you blew up the house.”

“The Wackles knocked it down,” I said. “You saw how hyper they were. They were fighting with these other four-dimensional aliens. Momo and her family. Kluppers.”

The guard tapped me on the shoulder.

“I'm not done,” I cried. “Please!”

The guard chuckled and shook his head. “You doin' phone sex, or what?” But he stepped back for another minute.

“You're going to the meeting at MeYou, right?” I said to Tulip.

“Yeah,” she said. “I have to leave in a few minutes. Ordinarily I'd hate to drive down there, but I've got my new Mercedes. It's green. Why did you turn off the Mophones? Are you trying to ruin our IPO?”

“The antenna crystals, they were a trick. Momo gave them to us so that we'd make a hole in space. The Mophones send out more energy than they take in. I told Spazz, but I don't think he believes me. And Clement doesn't even want to think about anything that'll hurt the IPO.”

Tulip was quiet for a few seconds, putting the pieces together. “Conservation of energy,” she said. “I should have thought of that. How soon would the Mophones make the vacuum decay?”

“It already happened,” I said. “this afternoon at the Coffee Roasting. There was a hole in space. I got there just in time. I went into hyperspace and tied it closed and then I found a patch. Jena saw it happen, but I don't know if she really gets it.”

“She never does,” said Tulip. contemptuously.

“She's smarter than me,” I said protectively. “Anyway, can you make sure that Clement and Spazz don't turn the Mophones on again?”

“I'll think about it,” said Tulip. “You realize that if Mophone stays dark, we don't get the IPO. Maybe the hole in space at the
Roasting was a fluke. I bet Jena talks on her phone more than anyone else alive. I'll go to the meeting and we'll do some calculations andâ”

The guard reached over my shoulder and pushed down the cradle of the phone. I wanted to yell at him, hut I didn't. I'm dumb, but I'm not that dumb.

The Empress

So they
processed me in and I was alone in my cell. There weren't any windows, just flickering fluorescent lighting from some fixtures in the hall. The cell had a cot and a sink-toilet. Lots of initials and curses and gang signs were scratched into the shiny beige paint. I'd glimpsed a few of the other inmates on my way down the cellblock hall. An anxious gang kid, a sullen drunk, and two maniacal tweakers. Inside my cell, I couldn't see them anymore; there were concrete walls in between us. The cells were kind of like stable stalls.

I lay back on the cot, resting. There was a line of pain on my forearm. When I rolled back my shirt to look, I saw a singed dark line. A welt from the fire in Flatland? Too weird. I rolled my sleeve back down and thought about dimensions.

I was fantasizing how easy it would be to get out of here if I were still augmented. Even though I couldn't visualize hyperspace anymore, I remembered all the things it had let me do. If I were augmented, I could go vinn to Dronia, flap through hyperspace to the sidewalk outside the jail, and pop back into Spaceland. The
cops had taken my wallet when they processed me into the jail so, if I were augmented, before leaving the jail area, I'd first flap over next to the valuables locker and reach in, just like when I'd robbed the bank. And then I'd be out on First Street with my wallet. There was a light-rail line that went by here and up North First Street to where a bunch of high-techs like MeYou had their offices in tiltups, which were one-story buildings made by hauling in prefabricated concrete walls, laying them flat, and then using cranes to tilt the walls up to the vertical. I'd been to MeYou a couple of times. It was right next to one of the light-rail stops, at Component Drive, if you can believe anyone would ever give a street such a dumbass name. Easy name to remember though. Like a sore place on your gum that your tongue keeps wanting to touch. Yeah, if I were augmented, I'd get my wallet, flap out of here and catch the light-rail to Component Drive. But I wasn't augmented.

Even though I'd lost my watch to the bubble of Nothing, I'd noticed the time when they were booking me. It was a little after seven by now. Jena, Tulip, Spazz, and Clement Treed were at MeYou, deciding what to do. It was crazy for me to be locked up! I went to the barred door of my cell and shook it.

“I've gotta get out!” I hollered. “I've got a meeting to go to!”

“Meeting,” echoed one of the tweakers, his voice a fueled whoop. “I've got a meeeeting!”

“Yuppie meeting!” screeched the second tweaker. “Intel down two, Apple down three, Cisco down four, crank up five, Scotty up forty-nine!” The last two meant speed and PCP, which were the big tweaker favorites. Cheap, dirty drugs.

“Forty-niner!” echoed the first tweaker. “I got a meeeeting.”

“Shaddup!” hollered the drunk. “Shaddup or I'll kill you bastards. Shaddup shaddup shaddup.”

The guards didn't respond to any of this. They had cameras on
the ceiling to watch us with. There was no reason for them to come in here. Me yelling was no different than a dog barking in the pound.

I sat down on my cot, staring intently into the empty center of my cell, hoping to see something, ignoring the way my polyester pants cut into my waist.

“Can you hear me, Drabk?” I whispered. “Wackles? Can you hear me? We have to stop them from turning on the Mophones!”

And now, yes, there was a flicker in the air. But it wasn't Drabk, and it wasn't a Wackle. It was something green and leathery and wriuktedâa hand, two hands, a faceâit was the Empress of Klupdom. She gazed at me and spread her knobby old hands as if in friendship. Her neck was wrapped in a muff that was pinned with a large and intricate gem. Crimson sleeves led part-way from her hands to her invisible body.

“Greetings, Joe Cube,” she said in her deep, furry voice. “You did well to patch the hole in Spaceland. Momo's family has been punished.”

“It was the crystals Momo gave us,” I said quietly. “They weaken the fabric of our space.”

“I understand,” said the Empress. “Before his end, Voule confessed that he and Momo supplied you with tens of thousands of them.”

“That's right,” I said. “We packaged them into Mophones. They're turned off now, but they may yet be turned back on.”

“I know this,” said the Empress. “Even now my troops are watching the meeting of your wife, your lover, your rival, and your master. My marshal relays the news to me as we speak. If I say the word, he will pluck the hearts from all four. Does this sit well with you?”

“No!” I yelped. “There has to be another way.”

“You are ingenious, Joe Cube, you are blessed with a Spacelander's
low cunning. So I have come to ask you this: What is the other way?”

I was temporarily too panicked to think. “We won't turn the Mophones on again,” I babbled. “We'll recall them. Don't hurt Jena. We'll get all the Mophones back.”

“From what my marshal is overhearing at the meeting, this is not your partners' intent,” said the Empress. “It's hard work to unsow seeds cast to the wind.”

“Can't you fix things from vout there? Reach down and take all the Mophones away?”

“Perhaps we could, in time. But if your partners act so unwisely, then of time there is none. It does seem best the four should die. Only then may we have the leisure to hunt down each and every crystal.”

“Don't kill Jena!” I cried, so loud that the other inmates could hear me.

“Kill Jena!” cackled one of the tweakers. “Dude! Kill Jena good!”

“Beam me up, Scotty,” shrieked the other tweaker. “Beam me and Jena up!”

“Shaddup shaddup shaddup,” went the drunk.

There was madness all around me, but once again I felt the Presence. All grew still and calm. I had plenty of time. I thought of Dronia and of her cliffs. I thought of tens of thousands of tentacles, each of them splitting at the tip. “The Wackles,” I said to the Empress in a low tone. “They can do it! There's so many of them!” And here came the best part of my thought. “The antenna crystals stick vinn to the Wackle's side of Spaceland, Empress. It'll be easy for the Wackles to find the crystals. They can feel them like stubble. Like rough spots. They look like little squares sticking out of Spaceland. Call the Wackles, Empress, bring one of them here to talk with us.”

“I am to bawl an invitation into Dronia?” said the Empress, her
hands curling in a gesture of disdain. “I shall entreat vermin?”

“I'd gladly do it,” I said. “But I'm not augmented anymore.”

“And a good thing too,” said the Empress, making no move to call anyone. “You became a menace.”

“Call the Wackles, Empress, and all our problems will be solved.”

She paused, as if listening to an invisible voice. “My marshal tells me that your wife, lover, rival and boss are now very nearly agreed upon reactivating the Mophones. What folly. Yes yes, quite soon they must die.”

“Call the Wackles!”

“You are most importunate, you flat man.”

“Please. You owe me this much. After the way Momo used me.”

“Oh, very well.”

The Empress's shape shifted as she pushed her head and arms further through Spaceland and into Dronia. A lump of her midsecrion remained in my cell, swathed in crimson hypercloth whose fuzzy nap was thick in some spots and thin in others. Soon she rocked back into the cellâand a Wackle appeared beside her, a full-sized red devil, just like all the times before.

“True Empress of Klupdom?” he said, reaching out to touch the Empress's green hand. “First contact hi.”

I glanced up at the camera in the ceiling outside the cell, wondering if the guards would come. Maybe they were napping. I still had the feeling of plenty of time.

“You have to eliminate our antenna crystals,” I told the Wackle. “Those things that made the hole before.” The Wackle's expression was blank, as in complete incomprehension. “The hole in Spaceland?” I coaxed.

“Memory bank withdraw for who you I do now,” said the Wackle. “Replay. Our smeel is one. The hole in space that Drabk fixed. Long long ago this was.”

“Two
hours
ago,” I hissed. “Listen to me. There's thirty thousand
antenna crystals scattered around Spaceland. Each of them projects a millimeter vinn to Dronia. Find them all and pull them out. Hurry! Get all the Wackles on the cliff working together and you can do it in like two or three minutes.”

“Why for?”

“So there's no more holes in Spaceland, pinhead! So the grolly doesn't grow all over your cliffs!”

The Empress made a disapproving click. “I can express this more eloquently in our higher tongue.” She leaned vinn and made some noises, a series of four-dimensional sounds. Most of her speech went off into Dronia, but some of the sound leaked into Spaceland.

My stomach vibrated so much I almost crapped my pants. One of the tubes in the hall lights went out. The tweakers went ape. The drunk started bellowing.

There were footsteps and the rattling of bolts. The guard was coming. I turned to warn my visitorsâbut they were gone. And, as it turned out, I never saw them again.

“The yuppie's goin' dark side!” one of the tweakers called to the guard. “The dude is five-oh-one, he's doin' voices like
wuuuuh.”

“No man, he's like
grooooh,
not
wuuuuh,”
interrupted the other tweaker.

“You in a condition, homes?” the guard asked me, peering into my cell.

“I'm fine,” I said. “Have they set my bail yet?”

“That's it,” said the guard, jingling his keys. “You got a bail bondsman came in for you too. Any luck, you're not comin' back to this cell, so don't leave nothin'.” He paid no attention to the tweakers or to the darkened light.

Out at the booking desk was the same detective I'd talked to before. She was a round-faced Hispanic woman with deep wrinkles in her forehead and around her mouth. Kind-looking, but serious and worldly-wise. “The bomb squad's report just came in from the
house on Los Perros Boulevard,” she told me. “No evidence of explosives. Can I see your hands?”

I held out my hands; she turned them over and felt my fingers and my palms. “Soft,” she said. I noticed she had a little tape recorder going. “Desk-worker hands. No blisters or calluses. Unlikely that Mr. Cube destroyed the house manually.” She glanced up, regarding me with clear, hazel eyes. “Is Clement Treed angry with you?”

“Yes,” I said. “We had a disagreement on a strategy decision.”

“Dot-commers,” said the detective, like she was talking about termites. Guys like me were making people like her pay a lot more in rent. She'd probably been born in San Jose. “I asked the magistrate to set your bail at ten thousand dollars,” she said. “That's low. Tell your bondsman to do the paperwork and you can go.”

Who was this bondsman they kept talking about? And then he appeared from around a corner of the hallway, carrying a manila folder in his hand. It was Sante Machado, his oily hair shiny in the fluorescent lights. He'd taken his hat and shades off, but he was still wearing his Raiders jacket. His lips parted in a wolfish grin.

“Hey Joe,” he said, stepping forward. “I got your bond all set for you.” He laid the papers down on a corner of the detective's desk. “Put your John Hancock here and here and here and you're sprung. You need a ride anywhere when we get out?”

“I don't think so,” I said. “I'll take the light rail.”

The loan fee for the ten thousand dollar bond was eight hundred bucks. Good enough. I was eager for freedom, and I didn't ask Sante any questions in front of the detective. In a couple of minutes, we were outside the jail, standing under the overhang with the rain coming down past it. It was dark; the raindrops sparkled in the pink sodium lights of the parking lot.

“C'mon and ride in my car,” urged Sante.

“Gimme a break, man.” Sante was still taller than me, but I
wasn't scared of him anymore. “You wanted to stick an ice-pick in my guts. I'm not going anywhere with you. And listen up, man, either Mophone's about to go outta business or the world's coming to an end. Either way you don't get your million.”

“I got fired from Nero's on accounta you and that million,” said Sante, his eyebrows slanting mournfully down. “You owe me. That's why I bailed you out, to remind you to do me a favor.”

“Since when are you a bail bondsman? And what exactly do you want?” Eager as I was to get up to MeYou, I needed to finish my business with Same.

“I grew up here in San Ho,” said Sante. “I was a bondsman before I worked in Vegas. When the rubber hits the road, Sante collects the dough.”

BOOK: Spaceland

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