Turing & Burroughs: A Beatnik SF Novel (21 page)

Rupert and Ned had already clambered onto a pair of headstones that leaned against the wall.

“Thanks awfully,” Alan told Veronica Vale, handing her a dollar. And in that moment, he remembered his dream of this morning—the hearse with the flashing light, and the ghosts in the dark borders of his visual field.

“
Now
you see them,” said Veronica Vale, with the preternatural sensitivity of the mad. “Now you don’t.” She waggled her fingers in Alan’s face. “The crypts and the mud and the white winter sky.” And then she’d danced back to her crypt.

Alan climbed up next to Rupert, while Susan and Vassar mounted a third gravestone.

“There’s my Hudson,” Rupert whispered, pointing to a stodgy gray car with a metal sun-visor like a cap’s bill. It was was less than fifty feet away.

“And the side-window’s open,” said Ned. “Here we go.”

Ned’s arm grew long and flexible, wriggling along the dirty pavement on the other side of the wall. “Oh!” exclaimed Susan softly. The arm crept along, drawing substance from Ned’s shoulder and back—he became quite shriveled on his right side.

The three idlers in Rupert’s car noticed the arm—Alan could make out the dark holes of their mouths in their surprised faces. The Hudson’s engine made a frantic chuffing sound, trying fruitlessly to start.

Ned’s arm rose like a cobra and struck—sending a finger into each of the vigilantes’ heads.

“Quickly now,” said Alan, slipping over the wall. Vassar helped Susan with her tapes and her machine, and then the five of them were on the sidewalk. The Hudson’s struggling engine finally caught.

Rupert shooed his now-docile posse from his car and urged the others forward. “Go ahead y’all. The feds gonna be here any minute.”

“Thanks, pal,” said Ned, handing Rupert the Pontiac’s key.

Rupert’s newly skugged companions stood around him, a raffish, unlikely crew.

“I have it—the four of you should shape your bodies to look like
us
!” Alan said—speaking more to the skugs than to the skuggers. “Drive north to throw our pursuers off track.”

With a rapid series of teep exchanges, their inner skugs organized the masquerade. And now Alan, Ned, Vassar and Susan were facing clones of themselves.

“So where all are you road-dogs headed?” asked the one who looked like Alan.

“I don’t like to say,” said the real Alan.

“West across Texas,” said Rupert in a spiteful tone. “I saw that much in his head before he clamped down.”

“Keep your trap shut about us,” said Ned roughly. “Now beat it, and get your asses into that Pontiac down there. And before you leave, we’ll move the stuff from its trunk into this crappy beater.”

Ned took the wheel of the gray Hudson. Tentatively he tried revving the idling engine. It knocked and stuttered, with a bit of a roar.

“
Vroom
!” said Vassar as he, Susan and Alan got inside. “Go fast bad car.” The Hudson was very worn inside, pale gray, with springs poking through the seat cloth.

Before any kind of police had arrived, Susan’s goods were transferred, and the two cars were underway. As planned, Rupert headed north—and Ned found his way to a secondary road that ran along the bayou, that is, along the swampy border of the Gulf coast.

The Hudson’s engine ran so roughly that a long push seemed unfeasible. Around sunset they veered off the main road, into a blue-collar settlement called Holly Beach.

The little resort was a congregation of trailers and dowdy, dinky plywood cottages, some with their windows boarded up. A line of power poles sketched a perspective against the jumbled silhouettes. Ned found a rickety two-story motel at the water’s edge, run by a seedy rube named Oscar. As it was January 4, and a Tuesday to boot, the motel had no other guests whatsoever. Perhaps Oscar kept it open because he had nothing else to do.

The skuggers registered for a neighboring pair of rooms on the upper floor, Alan and Ned in one, Vassar and Susan in the other. They ascended to their quarters and surveyed the beach from a wobbly communal balcony that ran along the fronts of the rooms.

Alan was soothed by the rhythmic crashing of small brown-green waves. He’d been careening from one crisis to the next ever since stepping off the Phos four days ago. He needed some time to figure out an over-all plan. Where might the skug infestation lead? And why wasn’t he more disturbed about the upheaval of his own inner life?

Voices and faint bursts of music sounded from a few of the cottages—some people were here year round. Now and then a car or a pickup drove along the packed sand at the water’s edge.

“Idiots,” said Susan, observing a truck with a large flag on its rear.

“That’s a bit like our Union Jack,” remarked Alan.

“The Confederate flag,” said Vassar. “Always a bad sign.”

“I’m so glad we’re leaving the South,” said Susan.

“Check out the drillers,” said Ned, pointing out towards the gulf.

The techno-smudges of a half dozen floating oil-rigs were on the horizon. As the night hastened in, the rigs lit up like Christmas trees, like spaceships. Alan wondered if the drilling platforms might learn to drift about on their own, prospecting for fresh oil pools, and even mining ore? What if the rigs learned to assemble behemoth copies of themselves—and began to reproduce? He imagined an Earth dominated by humans, skugs—and oil rigs.

“Shrimpers there,” said Vassar pointing out a lit-up boat closer in. Long booms stuck out from its sides. “Dragging huge nets.” The trawler moved slowly, laboriously, rocking from side to side, pulling the heavy weight of her catch.

“I’d be ready for more crustaceans,” said Ned. “My skug’s got my appetite dialed to high. That country boy downstairs—Oscar? He says there’s a seafood depot down the beach. Open all the time.”

They fed on memorably fresh and succulent shrimp in an unpretentious, knotty-pine-paneled nook off the seafood depot, which had a coolers of frozen seafood along one side. They were the only customers. They topped off the meal with a massive bowl of bread pudding that Vassar cajoled from the twangy-voiced lady who ran the place. Reba. Her husband had seined these very shrimp. And she’d made the bread pudding—originally for her large family, who lived in a cottage out back

“I’ll go make up another batch for them,” said Reba. “If you can settle up the check now? Glad to see y’all enjoyin’ yourselves. Just close the door on your way out.”

They were quite alone now. Alan made a quick scan—no other skuggers were in range. Outdoors the wind was rising; the surf’s tone was more insistent than before.

“Where exactly are we going?” asked Susan. “Across Texas and then what? You’ve been holding out on us, Alan. Hiding secrets. Maybe Ned knows, but I don’t.”

“It’s better as a secret,” said Alan. “Just in case.”

“But I do know one thing,” said Vassar. “Alan and our skugs want to turn everyone in the world into a skugger. All of us as one in the skuggy light.”

“It’s an opportunity for a lasting step forward as a race,” said Alan. “Like when our ancestors left the water for dry land, or when they learned walk on two legs, and to develop the power of speech.”

“I keep thinking this is more like—I don’t know—a virus that I caught,” said Susan. “Even if the skug inside me says no. I keep hoping I’ll be well by the time I’m in California. The real me.”

“Becoming a race of skuggers is the path to an optimal future,” insisted Alan. “The true path.” For a brief moment, Alan saw himself as a Christ amid His apostles.

“In other words you’ve gone completely insane,” said Susan, picking that image out of his mind. She got to her feet. “I’ve always hated cults. Religion sucks.”

“I hear ya, girl,” said Reba, reappearing through the back door. “Family’s what matters. And good sex. No church at all in Holly Beach. Last year we had a preacher setting up shop to sponge onto us, and my husband run him off.” She flipped off the lights. “Y’all go to bed now and work things out.”

They didn’t talk much on the walk back to the motel. Once they were upstairs, Ned went next door for noisy, confrontational sex with Vassar and Susan. Weary and bitter, Alan slept alone. Blessedly he had no dreams.

He awoke early, relishing the plash of the waves, the pearly gray light off the misty sea. Ned snored softly on the other bed. Often, in the empty interval of time at the start of a new day, Alan would get a clear sense of what mattered to him—before the usual worries and regrets came boiling into his mind.

Today the revelations were simple and clear: He loved William Burroughs. He wanted to be together with him. And he didn’t want to die.

Next door a toilet flushed. Susan or Vassar was awake. Soon the four of them would be on the road again today, rushing further west. Alan realized he’d made an ass of himself last night. Jesus and the apostles? How gauche, how overweening. The skugs’ influence was insidious, like a not-entirely-welcome drug. Why was Alan so eager to help these essentially inhuman forms of life? Was he really so resentful of society that he wanted to destroy it?

Standing in the bathroom, Alan looked sideways out the open rear window. A fit-looking man was studying their car, peering into the windows. Alan’s stomach clenched. Surely this was another stool pigeon—or a federal agent.

Driven by an unexpected reflex, Alan vomited into the toilet. But—oh, how repellant—the vomitus was in fact a spawned-off skug. The slimy, orange-yellow thing sprouted a forest of tiny snail-antennae, feeling at the water and air, making a plan. And then it slithered from the bowl, smoothed over, paled in color, and took on the form of a seagull. The skug-bird hopped to the sill of the bathroom window and gave a peremptory caw. Hearing the sound, the snooper by their car turned his head. Too slow. The gull was already diving at him. The skug sank into the man’s chest, enlisting him on the spot.

Alan pulled on his borrowed clothes and stumped downstairs. The new convert’s name was Roland Gill, and he was indeed an agent for the FBI. Being a skugger now, Gill was basically on Alan’s side, albeit with many inner doubts. The two of them had a low-voiced conversation, filling in some background details.

“I’m just surprised to find your gang here,” said Gill. He was a solidly built little man, crewcut and with a mild Southern accent. Really quite cute. “Bunch of folks saw your car heading north on US 51. With passengers matching your group’s description. English scientist, tall Southern guy, and a boho couple from up North. We’re on track to capture them today. The agency only sent me out his way to follow up on that informer—Rupert Small? This here’s his car. So I’m guessing you swapped. But—”

“Rupert and his friends changed their
shapes
,” said Alan. “To look like us. They’re all skuggers too.”

“I can change my shape now?” asked Gill, staring critically at his right hand. “Get a little brawnier?”

“Whatever one wants,” said Alan. “You saw the seagull. Moments ago, he was a foot-long slug. But do tell me what do you know of Norvell and Landers.”

“Those West Palm Beach cops, yeah. The agency ambushed them at the house of the police captain they killed. We skuggers aren’t going to win every round, it seems. I can’t hardly believe I’m saying
we
.”

“And they made Landers into—a skugsniffer?”

“Yeah. We got him locked down inside a glass contraption that trickles in just enough air and sugar-water to keep him going. Along with some electrodes to put a hurt on him if he won’t help. He’s our skugsniffer, like you might say. He uses this telepathic ability that we skuggers—”

“We call it teep,” said Alan.

“Yeah,” said Gill, squinting up at the pink sky. “Still getting up to speed. I can teep your three friends upstairs. Neddie’s asleep, Susan’s singing in the shower, and Vassar’s spying on us. Comb your hair, Vassar. Grease it real good.” Agent Gill looked back at Alan. “There’s another problem we gotta face.”

“What’s that?”

“We got a government lab on the case, and they using Norvell’s remains to culture an anti-skug vaccine. Should be rolling in production right about now. They inoculating the FBI strike force that’s going after decoy crew you sent up US 51. They still think that’s gonna be you. You lucky you got an agent on the inside.”

“Quite,” said Alan. “Do you have a secure line where I can phone you, Mr. Gill? It would aid us immensely to know how the hunt’s progressing.”

“Here’s my office number,” said Gill, teeping it to him. “But why not use telepathy?”

“The teep only reaches half a mile,” said Alan.

“Oh, yeah,” said Gill. “I did know that. The Bureau’s milked a lot of intel from Landers by now.” Agent Gill chuckled. “Might say Landers is spineless. Packed into that jar like a pudding.”

“Canned pig meat,” put in Vassar, who’d appeared at their side. “Crap in a can.”

“Screw you, boho,” said Agent Gill in a level tone. “Breaks my heart to be on the same side as a guy like you.”

“I’m sorry, we’re all a bit on edge,” said Alan. “But don’t forget the higher cause. And now, Mr. Gill, please go back to New Orleans and follow the hunt. And here’s the technique for setting up a teep block so the skugsniffer can’t suss you.” Quickly Alan teeped Gill the info.