Inherent Vice (18 page)

“
Yeah, picked it up from some road maniac from Barstow who just
rode the shit out of it, so putting it back in shape is taking up a few week
ends. That and old Sortilege, they
’
re keeping me cheerful.
”

“
It
’
s really nice to see you guys together.
”

Spike looked over at the corner of the room, thought a minute, said
carefully,
“
We go back some, I was a year ahead of her at Mira Costa, we
dated a couple times, then when I was over there we started writing, next
thing anybody knew I was going, well, maybe I won
’
t re-up after all.
”

“
Must
’ve
been around the time I had that matrimonial in Inglewood
where the b.f. tried to piss on me through a keyhole I was lookin in. Leej will never let me forget that, she was still working for me then, I remem
ber thinking that something cool must have been happening in her life.
”

As time passed, Spike was able slowly to learn to relax into the social
yoga positions defining life at the beach. The Moto Guzzi brought
it’s
share
of admirers to hang out and smoke dope and drink beer on the cement
apron in front of the garage where Spike worked on it, and he found one
or two veterans back from the
‘
Nam who wanted more or less the same
unhassled civilian afterlife he did, especially Farley Branch, who
’
d been in
the Signal Corps and managed to boost some equipment nobody wanted, including an old Bell & Howell 16-mm movie camera from WWII, army
green, spring-wound, indestructible, and only a little bigger than the roll
of film it used. They would take off on their bikes from time to time look
ing for targets of opportunity, both discovering after a while a common
interest in respect for the natural environment, having seen too much of it
napalmed, polluted, defoliated till the laterite beneath was sun-baked solid
and useless. Farley had already collected dozens of reels
’
worth of Stateside
environmental abuse, especially Channel View Estates, which reminded
him strangely of jungle clearings he had known. According to Spike, Farley
had been out there the same day as Doc, shooting footage of the vigilante
raid, and was waiting now to get it back from the lab.

Spike himself had been growing obsessed with the El Segundo oil refinery and tanks just up the coast. Even when the wind here cooperated, Gordita was still like living on a houseboat anchored in a tar pit.
Everything smelled like crude. Oil spilled from tankers washed up on the
beach, black, thick, gooey. Anybody who walked on the beach got it on
the bottoms of their feet. There were two schools of thought—Denis, for example, liked to let it just accumulate till it was thick as huarache soles,
thereby saving him the price of a pair of sandals. Others, more fastidious,
incorporated regular foot-cleaning into their day, like shaving or brush
ing their teeth.

“
Don
’
t get me wrong,
”
Spike said the
first time Sortilege found him
on the porch with a table knife, scraping off the soles of his feet.
“
I love it here in Gordita, mostly cause it
’
s your hometown and you love it, but now and then there
’
s just some
..
. little
...
fucking detail.
..
”

“
They
’
re destroying the planet,
”
she agreed.
“
The good news is that like any living creature, Earth has an immune system too, and sooner or later she
’
s going to start rejecting agents of disease like the oil industry. And hopefully before we end up like Atlantis and Lemuria.
”

It was the belief of her teacher Vehi Fairfield that both empires had sunk into the sea because Earth couldn
’
t accept the levels of toxicity they
’
d reached.

“
Vehi
’
s okay,
”
Spike told Doc now,
“
though he sure does a awful lot of acid.
”

“
It helps him see,
”
explained Sortilege.

Vehi wasn
’
t just
“
into
”
LSD—acid was the medium he swam and
occasionally surfed in. He got it delivered, possibly by special pipeline,
from Laguna Canyon, direct from the labs of the post-Owsley psychedelic mafia believed in those days to be operating back in there. In the course of systematic daily tripping, he had found a spirit guide named Kamukea, a Lemuro-Hawaiian demigod from the dawn of Pacific history, who centuries ago had been a sacred functionary of the lost continent now lying beneath the Pacific Ocean.

“
And if anybody can put you in touch with Shasta Fay,
”
Sortilege said,
“
it
’
s Vehi.
”

“
Come on, Leej, you know I had some weird history with him—
”

“
Well, he thinks you
’
ve been trying to avoid him, and he can
’
t under
stood why.
”

“
Simple. Rule number one of the Dopers
’
Code? Never, ever put nobody—
”

“
But he
told
’
you that was acid.
”

“
No, he told me it was
‘
Burgomeister Special Edition.
’”

“
Well that
’
s what that means, Special Edition, it
’
s a phrase he uses.
”

“
You
know that,
he
knows that
...
”
By which point they were out on
the esplanade, en route to Vehi
’
s place.

Voluntary or whatever, the trip Vehi
’
d put him on with that magic beer
can was one Doc kept hoping he
’
d forget about with time. But didn
’
t.

It had all begun, apparently, some 3 billion years ago, on a planet in a binary star system quite a good distance from Earth. Doc
’
s name then was something like Xqq, and because of the two suns and the way they rose and set, he worked some very complicated shifts, cleaning up
after a labful of scientist-priests who invented things in a gigantic facil
ity which had formerly been a mountain of pure osmium. One day he
heard some commotion down a semiforbidden corridor and went to have
a look. Ordinarily sedate and studious personnel were running around in uncontrolled glee.
“
We did it!
”
they kept screaming. One of them
grabbed Doc, or actually Xqq.
“
Here he is! The perfect subject!
”
Before
he knew it he was signing releases, and being costumed in what he would
soon learn was a classic hippie outfit of the planet Earth, and led over to
a peculiarly shimmering chamber in which a mosaic of Looney Tunes
motifs was repeating obsessively away in several dimensions at once in
vividly audible yet unnamable spectral frequencies..
..
The lab people were explaining to him meanwhile that they
’
d just invented intergalac-tic time travel and that he was about to be sent across the universe and maybe 3 billion years into the future.
“
Oh, and one other thing,
”
just before throwing the final switch,
“
the universe? it
’
s been, like, expand
ing? So when you get there, everything else will be the same weight, but
bigger? with all the molecules further apart? except for you—you
’
ll be the same size and density. Meaning you
’
ll be about a foot shorter than
everybody else, but much more compact. Like, solid?
”

“
Can I walk through walls?
”
Xqq wanted to know, but by then space
and time as he knew it, not to mention sound, light, and brain waves, were all undergoing these unprecedented changes, and next thing he knew he was standing on the corner of Dunecrest and Gordita Beach Boulevard, and watching what seemed to be an endless procession of
young women in bikinis, some of whom were smiling at him and offering
thin cylindrical objects whose oxidation products were apparently meant
to be inhaled
...

As it turned out, he was able to go through drywall construction with
little discomfort, although, not having X-ray vision, he did run into some disagreeable moments with wall studs and eventually curtailed the prac
tice. His new hyperdensity also allowed him sometimes to deflect simple
weapons directed at him with hostile intent, though bullets were another
story, and he also learned to avoid those when possible. Slowly the Gord-
ita Beach of his trip merged with the everyday version, and he began to
assume that things were back to normal, except for when, now and then,
he
’
d forget and lean against a wall and suddenly find himself halfway through it and trying to apologize to somebody on the other side.

“
Well,
”
Sortilege supposed,
“
many of us do get uncomfortable when we discover some secret aspect to our personality. But
it’s
not like you ended up three feet tall with the density of lead.
”

“
Easy for you to say. Try it sometime.
”

They had arrived at a beach pad with salmon walls and an aqua roof, with a dwarf palm growing out of the sand in front decorated all over with empty beer cans, among which Doc couldn
’
t help noticing a number of ex-Burgies.
“
Actually,
”
Doc remembered,
“
I
’
ve got this coupon, buy a case, get one free, expires midnight tonight, maybe I better—
”

“
Hey, it
’
s your ex-old lady, man, I
’
m just along for the finder
’
s fee.
”

They were greeted by a person with a shaved head, wearing wire-rim
sunglasses and a green and magenta kimono with some kind of bird motif on it. He was a dedicated old-school longboarder recently back from Oahu, having somehow known in advance about the epic surf that hit the north shore of that island back in December.

“
Man, did you miss a big story,
”
he greeted Doc.

“
You too, man.
”

“
I
’
m talkin about sets of fifty-foot waves that wouldn
’
t quit.
”

“‘
Fifty,
’
huh. I
’
m talkin about Charlie Manson gettin popped.
”

They looked at each other.

“
On the face of it,
”
Vehi Fairfield said finally,
“
two separate worlds,
each unaware of the other. But they always connect someplace.
”

“
Manson and the Surge of
’
69,
”
said Doc.

“
I
’
d be very surprised if they weren
’
t connected,
”
Vehi said.

“
That
’
s because you think everything is connected,
”
Sortilege said.