Postsingular by Rudy Rucker (detective books to read .TXT) 📖

“How?” interjected Craigor grimly. He was standing over Jil and Chu. “Tell us how! We have to go after Bixie.”

“The orphidnet AIs and I did a timing-channel attack on the disappearing cuttlefish,” began Chu. “And—”

“More jive about cuttlefish?” cried Craigor. “Where’s my daughter, damn you!”

“Don’t yell at him, Craigor, or I’ll punch you in the mouth,” said Ond, his voice very tight. “Chu already gave me a link to the jump-code. It looks like blue spaghetti and it sounds like chimes. I’ll message the link to you right now, Jil.” He twitched his head and hopped to one side, ducking the big angel, who still had that menacing ray sticking out of her forefinger. “Stop it, Gladax! We have to save Jil’s daughter. I don’t care about the subbies. See the jump-code, Jil? All right then. Now let Chu finish telling us how it works.”

Craigor got hold of an oar and took out his anger by violently waving it around, stirring eddies in the air. This had a good effect; Gladax drew back a couple of meters, unable to navigate her body’s subtle matter through the roiled-up air currents.

“You don’t have to use the blue spaghetti anymore,” said Chu, his voice maddeningly deliberate. “I have a new version almost done.” He produced a bird’s-nest of string from his pocket and sat down on the deck. Delicately he tied two loose ends of his intricate tangle, which resembled a woven bracelet. “The jump-code’s in this knot,” said Chu, staring at it with absorption. “Nice and tidy. I can remember this.”

“Get to the point, Chu,” puffed Craigor, still waving his oar. “Spaghetti, chimes, knot—how does someone use your freakin’ code?”

“Well, I think when the angels do it, they stop thinking about themselves for a second,” said Chu, looking small and uncomfortable amidst the legs of the agitated grown-ups. His fingers were rubbing his knot. “And then they concentrate on the code and—”

Chu disappeared too.

“We’re going after them, Ond,” yelled Jil. “Craigor, you watch Momotaro. Don’t give me that moony hangdog look, Ond! Let’s go!”

Ond’s pursuers were yelling from the shore. An outboard motor sputtered and roared into life. Spotlights lit the water.

“Of course, Jil,” said Ond. “I want to hide in the Hibrane. Let’s pace up and down the deck; Gladax has trouble keeping up. Block out her messages or she’ll distract you. Please don’t hate me. I’d do anything for you.”

“Okay then, Doctor Übergeek,” said Jil, stepping lively toward the bow at Ond’s side, still extremely upset about Bixie of course, but also feeling just a little jazzed by Ond’s flattery and by the prospect of a wild trip through another dimension. “You better make this good. We space out and we slam the code, huh? Like meditating before doing a line of sudocoke. Too bad we don’t have Chu’s Knot.”

“Just use the link I gave you,” said Ond.

In the orphidnet Jil studied the tangled blue spaghetti and the ringing chimes. But try as she might, she remained stubbornly aboard the Merz Boat.

“We have to let go of our internal monologues,” suggested Ond. “Focus on the spaces between our thoughts.”

On a good, serene day, that wouldn’t have been hard for Jil, but just now it was tough. Urgently casting about for mental leverage, she thought of the Zen koan where the teacher holds up a stick and says, “If you call this a mere stick, you deny its Buddha nature. If you don’t call it a stick, you’re lying. What do you call it? Quick!”

Jil broke the stick. She was neither here nor there, neither now nor then, not inside, not out. The chiming blue spaghetti buried her. She felt a twisting sensation and saw a series of ocean images, as if she were flying very low across an endless sea. Some creatures like birds stuck their heads above the surface, snapping at her. Subbies? Jil dodged them readily enough, energized by a pleasure/paranoia rush straight out of her sudocoke days. It was hard to say how long the jump lasted. But then something changed, she felt a nudge, and—hello!

She was in the Hibrane, with Chu and, yes, Ond beside her, standing in a grassy moon-silvered meadow with great trees at the edge. Her skin tingled and, just like that, her orphids were gone. No matter, her mind was blooming in some new way. The air filled with a vibrating soundless hum. A sealed window in Jil’s head swung open.

Beyond the trees were the lamp-lit windows of a city like San Francisco. Nearby was a field and a hill. They’d landed in the Hibrane version of Golden Gate Park.

Everything here was big and slow; everything was alive. The grass rose to Jil’s waist; the pines and eucalyptus trees towered like skyscrapers. The meadow itself was impossibly broad. On this world, Jil, Chu, and Ond were only a foot high.

Giant people and immense dogs cavorted ponderously beneath lampposts in the meadow, moving as if in slow motion. The brightly dressed Hibraners were playfully skimming a wooden triangle back and forth.

Jil could sense the inner essences of the rocks, the trees, the people. This was paradise, better than anything she’d ever felt before. Although none of the Hibraners were talking, Jil was picking up their thoughts. Hibrane telepathy was different from orphidnet messaging. This telepathy was smooth and all but wordless, a flow of image and emotion.

Jil noticed a dark spot in the meadow, a dog the size of a buffalo, ruminatively chewing something on the ground. Oh, dear God, where was Bixie?

Without stopping to look into the dog’s mind, Jil charged toward the great brute, calling her eleven-year-old daughter’s name. Jil’s footsteps were surprisingly loud and heavy on the soft ground. And she seemed to be moving as fast as a car might drive. The long-haired giants stopped playing and assumed attitudes of fear, as if Jil were a fierce demon from a nether world.

Spooked by little Jil’s charge, the huge dog wallowed to his feet and began a deep, startled bark. On the ground between his legs was—only a stick.

“Mom!” came a sweet voice from the shadows of a park bench nearby. “I’m over here.” Yes, it was Bixie, sitting upon a collapsed leather wineskin. Thanks to the telepathy, Jil could see Bixie in the dark—and she could sense her daughter’s whole mind, sweet as a summer day. A moan of relief escaped Jil; she sped to embrace the girl.

“I’m scared of that dog,” said Bixie, disentangling herself. “I’m glad you came, Mom.”

“I want to take you home now,” said Jil, hoping this was possible. With all their orphids gone, there was no chance of linking back into the Lobrane Earth’s orphidnet. So how would they access the magic blue spaghetti code?

Ond and Chu came pounding across the moon-silvered grass, scared of the dog. They joined Jil and Bixie beneath the bench. Some of the lamp-lit Hibraner giants on the lawn were turning to flee; a couple of the others were ever so slowly hunkering down to stare at the Lobraners. The enormous dog continued his slow, thunderous barking, but showed no sign of wanting to attack.

The Hibraners’ clothes were curiously dyed and homespun in appearance. Another giant had arrived; he had big dark eyes, a straight nose, and a slight beard. He wore a stocking cap with a bun of hair balled up in a sphere atop his head. Jil recognized him from the Merz Boat.

The young Hibraner’s mind reached out to Jil, playing across her psyche. His name was Azaroth. He said he’d helped guide their jumps toward Golden Gate Park. He warned that the Hibraners might regard the Lobraners as dangerous gnomes—at least until they got used to them.

Chu was listening in. Showily he kicked at the ground, making a deep dent in it. “I bet I could make that dog go ki-yi-yi and run away, Bixie. The giants can’t hurt us. We’re like iron. And we’re fast.” Not that Chu was actually moving toward the dog.

“Can we go back?” Jil asked Chu.

“Yes,” said Chu in his matter-of-fact tone. “I still have my special knot.” He showed her his intricate tangle of string. Good. Shifting her attention to Ond’s mind, Jil was a little surprised to see just how intensely the man worshipped her.

Ond smiled at her, knowing that she knew. “The vibrating soundless hum,” he said, picking the phrase from Jil’s mind. “This telepathy is so powerful. And there’s more. I feel like I can remember every shape I see.”

“I miss the orphidnet,” said Chu, admiring his knot. “I was good at it. Maybe we should go home with Jil and Bixie.”

“Not yet,” protested Ond. “I want to lie low until things calm down back home. Maybe wait a year or two of Lobrane time. I think that’ll only be a few months by this world’s clocks. We’re six times as small and six times as fast. Stay and keep me company, son.”

“But I liked being so smart. I liked the beezies. The air ate all our orphids when we got here.”

“We don’t need orphids here, Chu. We’ve got telepathy, omnividence, and—an endless spike of extra memory space.” Ond gazed at Jil. “I’m storing images of your face,” he murmured. “Dear Jil.”

“I miss the orphids,” insisted stubborn Chu.

“Not me,” said Jil. “I was liking my life the way it was.” But was that really true? Of late, Craigor had been seeming restless. And this made staying sober a little harder than before.

“Maybe I was wrong to unleash the orphids,” Ond was saying. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, Jil. I thought it was the best defense against the nants. But maybe—”

“Oh, don’t beat yourself up,” said Jil, feeling a deep empathy for the awkward man and his odd son. “Life will settle down.”

“I love you,” messaged Ond.

Jil could almost have melted into him. Dear sweet Ond. But no. He wasn’t supposed to be her type at all. She’d been a cheerleader in high school, and she’d always gone for the jocks. Also, Craigor and Momotaro were waiting at home. It wouldn’t do to leave Craigor alone for too long. Not that Jil enjoyed the role of jealous jailer. With Nektar out on her own, Craigor seemed primed for a reckless move. What if Jil just let Craigor screw all the women he liked? Impossible thought. Jil had the superstitious feeling that her stable marriage was all that stood between her and sudocoke. It was very nice to know that Ond really and truly loved her. But Ond wasn’t as physically attractive as Craigor. What would happen if Jil found herself a much hotter man, maybe someone younger? Did she have to be a puritan in every respect for the rest of her life? Oh, god, where was her head? And Ond and Chu were probably seeing all these thoughts. Stop it, Jil!

“Let us use your magic knot now, Chu,” said Jil in a brisk tone.

“Go ahead,” said Chu, holding the knot steady with his fingers. “Stare at it as if it were the blue spaghetti. And feel it with your fingers. The touching takes the place of the chimes.”

“Me first,” said Bixie.

Chu flashed a rare smile at Bixie as he held out his magic knot. “See you later.”

“Hurry, Bixie,” urged Jil. “Look over there across the lawn. It’s that bossy angel Gladax. And, see, she’s carrying some kind of net! Go on, Bixie, get out of here. Thanks, Chu. Bye, Ond. Take care, you two.” She hesitated, then gave Ond a quick kiss on the cheek.

Bixie disappeared and then Jil. Gladax was still twenty yards away, her legs and arms moving at