Hieroglyph (76 page)

Carlo was at the front door, ready to make his exit. “Roadspiders and flydinos are what matter,” he said, pointing at the sky. “There's Reba Ranchtree on her flydino right now. Slygro's biggest investor. Yeah.”

For a while after high school Reba had been my girlfriend. She'd been very bitter when I dropped her for Jane. And then she'd dated Carlo. Always the same little circle of people in my life, nothing ever forgotten, all of us endlessly mind-gaming each other. Louisville's like that.

Following Carlo out to the grassy street, I peered up into the swaying housetrees by the river. It was getting on toward the evening of a late September day, a Thursday, the sun low and brassy, the temperature bearable, an evening breeze beginning to stir.

Reba's condo was in the same tree where I'd been living with Jane. I could indeed see Reba lying on her stomach on the back of the oversized leather-winged nurb dino that she rode. Tiny and far as Reba was, she somehow managed to see Carlo and me, and she gave us a wave. Maybe the wave was cheerful, but I took it to be lofty. Like a queen acknowledging ants.

“Reba and her rhamphorhynchus,” I said with unexpected bitterness. “The savage, toothy beak. The walnut-sized brain.” Loser that I'd become, I hated anyone who was doing well.

“And Reba's snobby about—what?” said Carlo, getting into my trip. “That's what I always wonder when I see her these days. Why does she think she's better than me? Because her parents died and left her a fortune? I mean, both of us were her lovers ten years ago. That should make for happy memories, right?”

“Actually she treats me okay,” I had to admit. “But it's like she's sorry for me. Little does Reba realize how nice my shop's spare room is. Little does she grasp that I've attached a giant nurb garden slug to the underside of my obsolete metal car. I drove the thing around the block last week. Did you hear about that?”

“Maybe, yeah.” Carlo was mildly interested again, and he let me draw him back into my store.

“My big ride, she slime around so nasty,” I said, my spirits rising. “Low and slow, qrude. A luxor assassination limo with a slugfoot. I might relaunch myself selling retrofitted cars.”

“Fuck retro. But a giant slugfoot—that's good. I want to ride in that car. When I have more time.”

Skungy was snuggling against my hand. Brother Rat. He rolled onto his back to expose his white underbelly. I caressed him with my fingertips.

“Before you go, Carlo, give me some background. For pitching our qwet rats to the slobbering marks. Like what the fuck is quantum wetware?”

“Well—wetware is, like, your body's chemistry. The genes and the hormones and the brain cell goo. Like you're a wet computer? And your brain has this switch that Gaven calls a gee-haw-whimmy-diddle.”

“Huh?”

“The name is a hillbilly thing. It's a wooden toy that, like, your country cousin Dick Cheeks whittles to sell to the slickers at the Shelby County Fair? You've seen them. It's a thin bumpy stick with a propeller on one end? You rub another stick along the bumps, and you holler ‘gee' or ‘haw' like you're talking to a mule, and the propeller spins the one way or t'other. Fun for the young, fun for the old.”

“And Gaven's using this phrase to acknowledge his glorious Kentucky heritage. Fine. And your brain's wetware gee-haw-whimmy-diddle switch does—what?”

“The ultranerds say that a quantum system can be smooth and cosmic—or jerky and robotic. Gaven's quantum wetware lets you wedge your brain's gee-haw-whimmy-diddle switch wide open. You can stay in the cosmic mode. And if your buddy does that too—why then the two of y'all get into a kind of telepathy. What we call qwet teep.”

“You've got telepathy? You're saying that Skungy can read minds?”

“In a weak way, yeah. But he only does the full mind merge with someone else who's got the quantum wetware. What we'd call another qwettie.”

“I've always wanted to have telepathy.”

“We'll probably be marketing it pretty soon. But it's not like you think it is. The teepers don't exactly remember it afterward. That's a problem. Gaven had drummed up some secret military funding, and now he's had to tell the war-pigs that qwet teep's no use for their messages. So they cut him off. And our man's on the edge of a financial cliff. I'm telling Gaven he should go ahead and start selling people the qwet teep treatments, but he's being all cautious and holding back.”

“Let's back up for a second. Can Skungy read my mind or not?”

“Let's just say he's good at picking up people's vibes. Thing is, as long as you're physically near a qwet person or a qwet nurb, you'll get these little brief touches of qwet teep with them. On account of the qwettie's smell. Each scent molecule does a mini-zap on you.”

“And when two full-on qwetties get together?”

“You can get a full-on merge. Qwet teep's gonna be a superbig product. But for now, just to warm up, Gaven used qwet teep to copy a qwet guy's whole personality over to the qwet rat.”

“So Skungy's a person?” I echoed, more bewildered all the time.

“Yeah, baby,” said Carlo. “And we're rats.” He put his hands up under his chin with his wrists limp. He cheesed his teeth at me, nibbling the air. A comedy routine.

I held my hands like rat paws too. Skungy, Carlo, and I looked at one another, our six eyes glittering with glee. A multilevel goof was filling the room, fueled by Skungy's rank qwet scent. I could feel his individual odor molecules impacting my smell receptors. Pow, pow, pow.

“Where did Gaven get Skungy's particular human personality?” I asked, wrestling myself out of my trance.

“Joey Moon,” squeaked Skungy. His rough little voice was warm. “I am Joey Moon.”

“Moon works on Gaven's farm these days,” said Carlo. “Kind of a caretaker. He's twenty-five, has a wife and three kids, always broke. A pale guy with big dark eyes. Kind of rowdy. Drinks, gets into speed. I think he calls himself a painter—like you? They say he's rough on his poor wife.”

“Yeah, I know him,” I said shortly. “Not exactly the ideal personality you'd want to implant inside a consumer product.”

I'd seen Joey around town over the years, riding a scorpion or drunk in a bar. He was nearly ten years younger than me, and several notches wilder than my crowd had ever been. He said he was an artist too, and he'd come to my gallery once or twice, trying to set up a show of some paintings that he was unwilling or unable to show me in advance. They were supposed to be portraits of some type, but he didn't want to let anyone see them until they went on sale. He was afraid that some “art star” might “steal his big idea.” From the few hints that Joey dropped, I was guessing that the so-called pictures might be empty frames or glass mirrors. His stories were always changing. It was like he wanted your approval, but he wanted to completely mock you and prank you—all at the same time.

“I didn't like using Joey either,” said Carlo. “I wanted someone from New York. But Joey was handy. And, hell, we're only in prototype mode. Gaven paid Joey for a legal waiver and full mental access. Gave him a nice block of founder's stock as well. And then he made Joey qwet. So he could teep the rat.”

“I still don't get it.”

“The point of a qwet teep merge is that you don't write or evolve the target nurb's personality—you just copy it from a living template. Only takes an hour or so. But the qwetting process had some effects on Joey. He's not coping. We're still waiting to see how all that pans out. Before we start selling qwet teep treatments all over the place.”

“Joey Moon sold his soul for his litter of pink baby ratties,” put in Skungy, loading the pathos into his grainy voice.

“And the other Skungies?” I asked. “The qwet rats to come? Will they be copies of Joey too?”

At this, the gnats began buzzing in Carlo's face, and the squidskin on his wrist went wild with messages.

“That's enough whittlin' and spittin' on the courthouse steps, old son,” said Carlo. “More details later. Gaven's throwing a prelaunch picnic on his farm starting about now. You and Jane are both invited—Gaven already messaged her. He messaged Reba too. That's where she was headed on her flydino, no doubt. Come on over soon as you can. Maybe you'll get laid! You're gonna like it on the Slygro team, Zad. We keep our big ole balls in the air.”

And then Carlo was out in the street, jouncing off on his roadspider.

I closed up my shop, got into my slugfoot Lincoln, and headed for Gaven Graber's farm as well. I had the car's roof down and my qwet rat Skungy was perched on the dash, enjoying himself, now and then dispensing some bullshit Joey Moon advice. Route directions from a southern hipster rat.

The Lincoln was a dream to drive. With her slimy foot, she rocked and rolled like a luxor boat. I followed the old river road along the Ohio, heading toward the horsey end of town. Most of the asphalt and concrete was gone from the roads, replaced by tight, impermeable nurb grass. This might have been a problem for a car with wheels, but not for my slugfoot.

A few people waved to me along the way—the guy running the BBQ stand near the waterworks, an art collector tooling past on her roadspider, a realtor friend of Dad's on a zigzag-backed flydino. The news about my slugfoot Lincoln was out. Chatty little Louisville. Even if I hadn't sold jack shit for a couple of years, I still had my glamour. That qrude and loofy artist, Zad Plant.

It wasn't until Skungy was guiding me up the long green driveway to Todd Trask's old place that I grasped that this was where Gaven Graber lived. Todd himself had died of a nasty flesh-eating disease a few years back. The word was he'd caught it at a debutante sex nurb party in New York. Trying too hard to be a jaded roué.

The nurbs had brought along some new health risks all right. Sometimes a nurb would incubate a human disease, and the bugs would leak back out a thousand times as strong. At first people hadn't realized that could happen. But by now most of us knew better than to fuck nurbs.

Poor Todd. He'd given me my start. Naturally we'd made friends again a few weeks after the roadspider fiasco. And—just as Jane had predicted—the gory incident had helped launch my career. Todd managed to buy himself two new thoroughbred colts by flipping one of my
Cold Day in Hell
pieces. But my glory days were gone. At least for now.

Halfway up the driveway, I spotted the party group by the old pond where we'd picnicked when I was a boy. A rangy security guard waved me to a stop.

“I'm Zad,” I told him. “Zad Plant.”

“Right,” said the guard. “I'm Artie. Hell of a car you got. Just drive on down across the pasture.”

I swung down the gentle slope to join the gang. They were lounging on nurb chairs beneath a big oak tree, with Reba's flydino wallowing in the pond. The flydino was pale purple, with bat wings and a pelican beak. The September sunset was coloring the sky. Very idyllic.

Even though it was not all that hot of a day, Gaven had three jumbo AC bullfrogs croaking cool, dry air—they had icicles in their mouths like white teeth. Iridescent skeeter-eater moths were fluttering around. Bluegill fish with little pink legs were walking around the edges of the pond and its cattails, rooting up worms. Gaven was making some amazing shit.

He was standing next to my wife, Jane, intently chatting her up. A mental warning bell pinged. Meanwhile Reba Ranchtree was talking with Carlo and with a pleasant-faced woman I hadn't seen before—I figured was the Rikki Shimano whom Carlo had been talking about.
Volcanic geek-girl sex,
he'd said, building himself up.

Off to the side, a pale, twitchy guy was tending a fire and arranging some food at the mouth of a nurb horn of plenty. Joey Moon. I hadn't seen him for a while, and I was a little sorry to see him sunk so low. Working on Gaven Graber's farm. Not that I much wanted to talk to him. He'd just start running one of his wheedling cons on me.

I noticed hot dogs on the table. Cool. A nostalgic Trask farms weenie roast coming up. A full-lipped woman stood behind a table laden with drinks. She had oily skin and what I thought of as a gypsy look. Joey Moon's wife. Now she was someone I did want to talk to. I'd seen her around, but I'd never actually met her before.

“Hi,” said Jane, walking over to me just then, graceful and composed. “Your weird car's finally working. Very luxor.”

“The farthest I've driven it so far,” I said. “You look wonderful, Jane. I miss you.”

“Oh, Zad. You look nice too. And right at this minute I don't feel like shaking you and screaming in your face until I'm so hoarse that I can't talk.”

“We've done enough of that,” I said. “Both of us. I keep wondering if—”

“At least we never had children,” interrupted Jane, staving me off. “Makes things easier. But I do wish you'd get the vat of nurb paint off my balcony. I keep asking you to do this, and nothing happens. I'm ready to have someone denurbalize the slime and cart the vat to the dump. I want to put a little garden on my balcony.”

“My balcony, my balcony,” I parroted.

“Zad, let's not keep going back to square one. The Live Art shop is yours. The apartment is mine. A clean break. Now about that vat—are you ever planning to make a slime-mold painting again?”

“I want the vat, yes. Even if I don't paint with the mold, it's my friend. You know how I can coax the stuff into sticking up dozens of little heads and they all jabber at one another?”

“I do like that trick,” said Jane. “But your nurb paint won't do anything for me. I think it's sulking. Look—let's get someone to cart the vat over to your shop and you can keep it out back. The rain won't hurt it. You can throw trash in it, and it'll grow.”

“Fine. And when it gets deep enough, I'll drown myself in it.”