Turing & Burroughs: A Beatnik SF Novel (12 page)

Softening their bodies, Alan and the intruder twined themselves around each other and rose off the floor.

Error. Plaster and splintered wood tore loose from the ceiling. They thumped to the floor.

Reset. Alan and the intruder wrapped fleshy tentacles around a now-bared rafter and rose into the air.

Bliss. Continuously copulating, they swayed and rotated—a soft chandelier. The sensations were exquisite, easily the equal of Alan’s original merge with William Burroughs on Christmas Day. This was more than mere sex—it was cytoplasmic fusion.

During this intimate contact, Alan could readily perceive his partner’s thoughts. The man wasn’t Vassar Lafia at all. He was Ned Strunk, the very person whom Alan had sought to murder aboard the
Phos
. Strunk was finally getting what he’d wanted—an intimate conjugational contact whereby his body could adopt Alan’s skuggy tweaks. Very well.

And, oh, but this was delicious! Alan was taking pleasure from every square millimeter of his body’s surface—not only from the parts in contact with his new lover, but even from the bits that were bare to the morning breeze. The two skuggers jiggled in the air, embracing still more strongly—and now the mother of all orgasms washed over them.

In the final flash, Alan again had the disturbing vision of a distant eye watching him. But before he could ponder this, the bedroom door flew open.

Mrs. Burroughs was standing there amid the plaster dust. Perhaps she’d come to call her son to breakfast. Little Billy was at her side.

In seconds, Alan had released his hold on the rafter and had returned to his Burroughs form. The sated Strunk thudded to the floor, rose to his feet and scrambled out the window.

Laura Lee Burroughs could hardly have understood what she’d just seen. But she reached a judgment nonetheless.

“Out!” she cried, her voice a call to arms. “You’ve gone too far, Bill! I banish you!”

Chapter 7: Hanging With Ned

Upstairs, Alan donned his borrowed dark suit and graph-paper shirt, abandoning his sodden old clothes and the radio parts. On a last minute impulse, he pinched off a thumb-sized fragment of his flesh. A skuglet. Via teep—Burroughs’s word—he accessed the skuglet’s tiny mind. He told it to lie in wait in a corner of the bedroom closet until it sensed the presence of the real Bill Burroughs in his parents’ home, should the dear man choose to come after Alan. The skuglet could merge with Bill to relay Alan’s memories of his trip thus far—and to tell him where Alan and his skug had decided to head for next.

Alan made his way downstairs empty-handed. Laura was in conversation with her husband, while Billy stood to one side, evidently pondering what he’d seen. Mote glanced at Alan with an expression of concern.

“Mother’s on the war-path,” he said. “Not that I care to sort out what’s happened. I suppose it’s better if you’re in a hotel. Here.” He pulled some bills from his pocket and pressed them into Alan’s hand.

“That’s the last cent you ever give him, Mote!” cried Laura. “We’re not sending money to him in Tangier or anywhere else anymore.”

Alan felt a pulse of anger from the invisible, spying eye that seemed to be watching him again. Mastering himself, he managed to say something polite to the Burroughs parents. “Thanks for your kindness. I’m sorry for the uproar.”

“Go!” cried Laura.

“He was changing his shape like Plastic Man!” put in Billy. “I saw. He and the other man were hanging from the ceiling.”

“Who’s Plastic Man?” asked Alan, intrigued.

“My favorite comic book,” said Billy. “Plastic Man can make himself into a dinosaur, or a hammock, or a lightning-bolt. Thanks to the mad scientists.”

“That’s enough chit-chat,” said Laura. “Bill leaves or I’ll scream.”

“Goodbye for now,” said Alan, patting the boy’s shoulder. He felt sympathetic towards the lad, and wanted to say something that might help. “Live well. And—I’m very sorry about your mother. It was a horrible accident that I’ll regret for the rest of my life. If I can ever find a way to undo it, I will.” Alan forced a smile. “I know a few mad scientists.”

“Fix it soon,” said Billy softly. “It makes me sad.”

Alan walked away from the Burroughs manse, heading towards the sun, towards the ocean beach. He felt another spasm of emotion from the ethereal mind that was watching him. The thing was furious with him. But now, blessedly, it withdrew.

Alan went ahead and flipped his shape back to that of Abby. He was done with Burroughs, and he certainly didn’t want to risk looking like Turing.

His sleeves dangled and his trousers dragged. He paused, rolling up his cuffs. In order to take on Abby’s form, his flesh had compressed itself. He was four or five inches shorter than he’d been a minute ago. Perhaps he should have kept Katje’s dress. Not that it bothered him to look like a woman dressed in an oversized man’s suit. In Manchester he’d been known to use a loop of twine for a belt.

Ned Strunk was at the first corner, leaning against the spiky trunk of a towering royal palm. He was dressed in the same outfit as on the ship, much the worse for wear. But his face looked tauter and cleaner than on the
Phos
. He was really quite handsome. Ned’s conjugation with Alan had done him some good.

“Hi, cutie,” said Ned, studying Alan’s girlish form.

“Abby’s the name,” said Alan, reverting to his British accent. “You’re looking well.”

“Thanks to you. That voice in my head was right. I’m my old self again. But I still don’t know what the hell anything’s about.”

“Look down in your mind,” said Alan. “You’ll find that you’ve acquired many of my memories. A side-effect of our recent
merge
.” Alan paused, smiling. “For my part, I gleaned quite a bit of data on you. Not that I’ve gone over it yet.”

“Are we still human?” asked Ned.

“We’re
skuggers
,” said Alan. “That’s what I call it. It’s a communicable condition. A contagious mutation.”

“That hand crawled onto me in an alley in Gibraltar. Like I told you. It melted me and put the voice in my head. I had no idea. But now I know the hand was a—skug? And it tells me that you guys already converted two cops called Pratt and Hopper? And—and William Burroughs. And a bunch of street Arabs in Tangier?”

“Pratt was the first to be assimilated. The original skug began as a tissue culture that a young friend and I
developed
. We threw our skug into Pratt’s face as a matter of self-defense. The skug was crude, and Pratt’s personality was erased. Just as well. The man was a rotter. A cat’s paw for the Q
ueen
. Britain has it in for me, you know.”

“I’m on the run too,” said Ned. “Nobody’s even supposed to know about the big-ass cruise I was on. It was a secret test for a brand-new nuclear-powered sub.” The young man paused. “I had a plan to sell that fact to some spies. If I could of found them.”

“My concern is that the spies don’t find
me
,” said Alan.

“How did the skug get from Pratt to you and to me, anyhow?”

“After the skug absorbed Pratt, I adjusted the creature’s biocomputations so as to make its actions less
dissipative
. I kept a bud of the improved tissue, and the rest of Pratt went stumping down the alleys of Tangier. I gather he made some converts. And one of them sent his hand after you.”

“So the bud skugged you, and the hand skugged me?”

“
Skugged
, yes,” said Alan. “Or might one say skugified? As you like. We were fortunate not to lose our personalities.”

“I’m a stubborn guy,” said Ned. “The skug hit me like a mule’s kick. But I hung in there. I think of my personality as—as a story I’m always telling to myself. I’m not the feeb you thought I was. I worked my way through the University of Louisville as a mechanical engineering major, see? I’m not a math prof, but I love numbers and what they do. And I went in the Navy to learn about nukes. I figure it’s the coming thing.”

Ned’s last remark set off a strong pulse of excitement on the part of Alan’s skug.
This is why we need his knowledge
, said the voice in Alan’s head.
He’ll help our cause
.

Meanwhile they’d crossed a street, and were drawing near the ocean beach. Little Billy came pedaling after them on his bike. “Is that you, Plastic Dad? You turned into a woman! Wow. But I know it’s the crafty William Burroughs, hee hee. Are you really gonna bring back my Mom?”

“I’ll try, Billy,” said Alan. “But, please, leave us alone now. My friend is worried about running into the police.”

“If you don’t have a room tonight, you can sleep in our back yard! I can leave some potato chips and pillows out there.”

“I don’t want to enrage your grandparents.”

“I hope grandpa gave you enough money for a hotel. Or you could sleep under the pier. That’s where the bums hang out. Will I see you tomorrow, Dad? What’s your friend’s name?”

“Ned,” put in Strunk. “You’re a force to be reckoned with, kid. Thanks for the tip about the pier. I’m surprised there’s any bums here, a fancy place like this.”

“Can you guys show me how to change my shape, too?”

“I don’t want to do that to you,” said Alan. “Please do go home.”

“Don’t forget me!” cried Billy, and was gone.

“How did you get linked up with this screwball Burroughs family anyway?” asked Ned.

“Well, right after I absorbed my skug, I went ahead and skugged
William Burroughs
in Tangier,” said Alan.

“And you were playing at being him on the ship.”

“Yes, he’d given me his passport, dear fellow. I was planning to pass a few days with his family here. Until your seedy antics got me
evicted
.” Alan smiled at Ned, who looked more and more attractive to him. There was nothing like sex to spruce up a friend’s appearance.

“It felt good,” said Ned, sensing what was in Alan’s mind.

“How did you hit upon the idea of dangling from the ceiling?” queried Alan, a blush warming his cheek. “It was—overwhelming.”

“Well, that’s how leopard slugs do it. We’ve got em living in our garden back in Louisville, Kentucky. They’re what a carnival barker would call morphodites. Male and female at the same time. It was seeing you change into a woman that put me into a dangling-slug frame of mind.”

“You aroused me by imitating Vassar,” said Alan.

“I knew you had a thing for him. And I remembered how he looked. It’s wild how we can change our bodies, isn’t it? What a kick.” Ned ran his fingers across his short crewcut.

Alan felt a sudden rush of empathy towards the youth. The fellow was much more interesting than he’d realized before. “I’m sorry I strangled you,” said Alan. “And that I threw you overboard.”

“Damn hard to kill a skug!” exclaimed Ned, brightening. “After I hit the water, I glued myself to the keel of our ship, with a sly tube running up along the side for air. I came ashore when you did, and morphed myself to look like a wino. Got in the way of your cab, and when it ran me over, I plastered myself to its underside. Hung there till you hit Palm Beach.” Ned looked down at his dirty, wrinkled clothes. “I stored this suit wadded up inside my body. Not all that fresh-looking, is it?”

“I saw you lying in the driveway last night,” said Alan. “I thought you were an alligator. You didn’t say a word.”

“I was too beat to start no hue and cry. I spent the night in the garden. And slimed into your window with the morning sun. That skug voice kept on saying I needed Alan’s touch.”

“Sound advice,” said Alan. He felt safe and calm for the first time in a couple of days. It was good to be away from the ship, from Vassar, and from the Burroughs family. He needed to get back to thinking about science. This whole skug and skugger business was an epochal breakthrough. He longed to ascertain the best control techniques for these new systems, and to chart a path for integrating them into society at large. Ratiocination was a mode he found more congenial than the emotive vicissitudes of sex, friendship and love.

“I’m commencing to feel all right,” said Ned. The beach and ocean were in view. “All I need now is breakfast. And then, please, oh, mighty wizard of skugdom, some new clothes. I saw you getting money off Mr. Burroughs just now. You didn’t count the wad, but I did. A hundred bucks. It’s like I could see through your eyes.”

“Remarkable.”

They went into an aluminum eatery with windows facing the sparkling sea. A studiously poker-faced waitress took their order.

“Did you notice how she was looking at your get-up?” asked Ned after the waitress padded off on her crepe-soled shoes.

“I didn’t,” said Alan distractedly glancing down at his baggy coat with the rolled-up sleeves. He’d just now been thinking about continuous-valued feedback systems. “I do realize this isn’t standard women’s wear.”

“Are you planning to keep being a girl?” asked Ned.