Jim and the Flims (18 page)

When we left the maze that concealed Monin's house, I finally saw the Earthmost Jiva, their local sun. Her light glittered on the great wall of living water which bounded the Flimsy world. Her dangling tail was clearly visible, a spike beneath the swollen sun, extending all the way down to the ground.

Durkle lolled at one end of the couch, grinning into the wind. Ginnie leaned against me at the other end. Our cruiser rode as smoothly as a vintage cream-puff Populuxe convertible.

“Awesome,” said Durkle, wriggling with joy. “It's hard to believe that we flims never made a cruiser couch before.”

“Well, who invented the plow shoe?” I asked.

“The jivas did. They showed Monin how to make it for our garden. Mostly nobody in Flimsy invents things on their own.”

“Jim's clever,” said Ginnie, her kessence-strand hair tossing in the breeze. “Maybe he'll go beyond the plans of the jivas.”

The seven new jivas had tagged along after us. Out in the open like this, they were able to pick up teep signals from the Earthmost Jiva—I sensed a redoubling of the skritchy buzzing.

“What are they talking about?” I asked the jiva within me.

“Earth Jiva Happy Face commandments babies destruction,” said Mijjy, fleshing out her words with a flow of feelings and pictures, selecting the images from the library of my own mind. I saw the Earthmost Jiva wearing a smile, welcoming the newborns. She showed them how to cast a glittering net across the plains of Flimsy to fish for a flim to serve as a symbiotic partner.

The Earthmost Jiva also told the newcomers how to spawn. All the jivas were, in some sense, female—they could all lay free-floating eggs. And, given a particularly good target, they'd be able to implant the eggs directly into a host's flesh. I saw the new jivas' tails thickening with desire as they anticipated the day when they too would be parasitizing their victims.

The big jiva taught of war as well. She set the newcomers to dreaming of mighty battles against the yuels, with fleets of flying jivas darkening the skies and raining energy blasts upon the vile, shape-shifting enemies and their insufferable songs.

Before long, all but one of the newborn jivas had drifted away, each setting out on her own first mission—to find a flim she could partner with. Their egg-laying days were still a long way off.

The one jiva who lingered near us was a pushy little beet with orange zigzags around her waist and a silver onion-dome on top. She darted at Durkle on the couch a few times, making herself small in size, as if petitioning Durkle to swallow her up.

“I don't want a jiva,” said Durkle through clenched teeth.

“Doll doll superman,” teeped the jiva. Her words had a mocking, reckless vibe. She was taking pleasure in teasing the boy, and I feared she might do him harm.

I discussed the problem with my jiva, Mijjy. It was unpleasant to converse with her. Her jagged words were ungainly, and her thoughts had a snickering, sarcastic tone—as if she looked down on me. But finally Mijjy extruded a tendril from my hand, and we gave the hectoring new beet a whack, sending the zigzag-banded newcomer on her way.

And so we continued.

Given that long-distance travel in Flimsy was done via jiva jumps, we weren't seeing any real roads. Instead we were following footpaths, and cutting across meadows. For a time we skimmed the surface of a creek, our antigravity plate keeping us out of the water. We sailed along the stream's smooth curves, the scenery flowing past, lovely and hypnotic. Odd-looking trees hung down on either side. The stream water was so pure that I could see every detail of the bed.

Eventually the stream veered away from our intended route. I guided the couch up the bank, heading towards the unmistakable beacon of the Earthmost Jiva. Boulders and plinth-like outcrops dotted the plains here, and the land was sloping uphill. I maintained a good pace, bending our path around the rocks, the air always beating against our faces.

“This wind is getting to me,” complained Ginnie. “And we need some music. Hold on—”

She got to work with her own jiva, and affixed a streamlined zickzack window to the front of our couch—a windshield. To sweeten the arrangement, she ran a jiva-tendril link between her own mind to the windshield's surface, setting it vibrating like a speaker. A familiar blues tune washed over us. And now the drum-track switched to hoarse grunts.

“I've got a pitch-perfect memory for songs,” said Ginnie, tapping her head. “Thousands of files in here. And I can edit them in my head. It's so great to be doing this out loud.” The singer's voice became a modulated version of an ocean's roar. “Do you like it?” asked Ginnie.

“I do,” I said.

“Play it a little softer,” said Durkle. “I'm not used to these kinds of sounds.” It was like he'd never heard a musical instrument.

Up ahead, some houses were visible near the crest of the hill, no two of them the same. Some were largely biological, having the forms of plants or shells, while others were shimmering zickzack constructs, rich with arches and nooks.

“I've been to that place over there,” said Durkle pointing to pair of giant, striped gourds. “That's where my cousin lives. Flam. His father is my father's brother. They grew Flam here, like me—he's a native flim. But Flam has a jiva.”

“Let's not stop,” I said. “I don't want to get hung up in your family scene.”

“Fine,” said Durkle, looking young and vulnerable. “I don't really like cousin Flam. He picks on me because he's older. And because my body was made by yuels. And because I won't get a stupid jiva.”

“I don't really follow all these distinctions,” said Ginnie. “It's like haute couture fashion or something.”

“The jivas can make these spacewarp rods that we call zickzack, okay?” said Durkle. “And if you're a ghost with a jiva inside, like you two, you have a zickzack skeleton. A plain ghost is just a wispy cloud of kessence, or maybe just a sprinkle. And if you want a really nicely made kessence body, you have to get a yuel to make you one. They're very good at that stuff.” The boy set his jaw. “I'm proud of my yuel-built body, no matter what the others say.”

Passing these houses, I could see some local flims watching us, and I could teep the thoughts in their minds. They already knew who Ginnie and I were—the jiva-web had spread the news of our unconventional arrival from Earth. Like the farm wife Yerba, the flims of this village were leery of us, and not particularly eager for a visit. They knew we were on our way to the castle of the Duke of Human Flimsy.

Beyond the village we reached a bluff.

“Let's stop here to eat,” said Durkle. “I came here once with Mom and Dad.”

I pulled the cruiser couch to a halt. We got off the couch and stretched, admiring the view, a vast checkerboard of meadows and woods with abrupt towers of stone breaking the valley bed. Far away to the right was a glittering swamp, and to the left ran the hazy outline of a mountain range.

“So look way out there along the horizon,” said Ginnie. “Is that an ocean?”

“The Dark Gulf,” said Durkle without much interest. “Where the new ghosts appear.” He was pacing back and forth, studying the ground.

“And to the left and right, those bright little dots?” continued Ginnie. “They must be the other suns. I don't see any end to them. What a weird world.”

“Hey, I see a patch of pigpops over here,” exclaimed Durkle. “We ate some when we came to this cliff before. Pigpops are good if you cook them.”

“I'm ready for that,” I said.

The pigpops looked like pink snouts projecting from the soil. Each snout had a ruff of triangular flaps like pig ears, and a plump round base that nestled into the dirt. Durkle yanked up a half dozen of them—they squealed as he snapped their curly roots.

“Ask your jiva to make us a zickzack oven,” said Durkle to me. “Pigpops are too tough to eat raw.”

“Let me make the oven,” said Ginnie. “What do I do?”

“Get your jiva to assemble, I don't know, a square zickzack box with no top,” I suggested. “And connect the inner walls to some squares of space that are up in the sky near the Earthmost Jiva.”

Ginnie had a little trouble with this, but I reached into her mind and helped her. And then we had a box of sun blazing on the ground at our feet. Durkle tossed in the six pigpops. They wheenked and twisted for a minute, and then settled down to sizzling.

“Pluck 'em out when they're done all the way through,” said Durkle, excitedly scampering off. “I'll pick some waffle cactuses.”

I used one of my jiva tendrils to monitor the center of a pigpop, and by the time Durkle returned, the textured kessence flesh was nicely roasted. Durkle was carrying a dozen rounded pads, green and doughy. We took the pigpops out of the cook box and tossed in the waffles. And then, after a minute for toasting, Ginnie took the box apart.

I made us three self-filling mugs that linked to the clear stream we'd ridden along. We sat on the ground for our picnic. Thanks to some friendly subtlety of the kessence, the pigpops tasted much like pork tenderloin, and the waffle cactuses were like corn tortillas. A nice meal.

“I'm happy to be going somewhere new,” said Durkle, surveying the view ahead. “This is about as far from home as I've ever been.”

“Then how are you supposed to guide us to the castle?” demanded Ginnie.

“Heck, all we have to do is head towards the Earthmost Jiva,” said Durkle, pointing ahead with his wobbly arm. He gave Ginnie an ingratiating smile. I had a feeling the boy had a crush on her.

Studying the Earthmost Jiva with Mijjy's help, I was able to make out more of this sun-like object's details. She was a brilliant pale yellow, with a darker yellow stripe around the middle. A small hump of orange was on the top, and a pale, flickering tail hung from the bottom, disappearing into the distant ground. I couldn't easily judge how big the jiva was—but I was thinking she might be less than a mile across.

“Is that the castle out there?” Ginnie asked Durkle. “The smudge of green under the big jiva?”

“I think so. I hear the castle is a giant green plant. But before we head there, I want to swing by some other spots. That swamp to the right? The swamp is crawling with offer caps. I'd like to have a try at outsmarting an offer cap. And in the middle of the swamp is Yuelsville. The yuels there run an amusement park called Funger Gardens. And right before the swamp, that big dusty patch? That's the
monster pit
.”

Durkle said this last phrase as if he were talking about a world-famous monument. Seeing our blank faces, he elaborated. “The monster pit is a gigundo conical hole in the ground, all covered with slippery sand. My cousin Flam told me that he and his friends ride boards down the monster pit's slopes. I wanted him to take me there, but—”

“Flam and your parents said it was too dangerous for a kid like you,” guessed Ginnie. “Fuddy-duddies. For sure we're swinging by the monster pit, Durkle. Before I got axed, I was hella good at riding boards.”

“What did you ride the boards on, Ginnie?” asked Durkle, increasingly fascinated by her.

“Streets,” said Ginnie. “And ocean waves.” She crouched down and peered at the floaty region under the cruiser couch. “Hey, Jim, what happens if we drive your rig off the edge of this cliff?
That'd
be some kind of ride.”

“I think maybe we'd crash and die.” I pointed to the right, where a footpath ran along the bluff's crest. “We'll angle that way to get to the pit.”

“Die?” mused Ginnie, running her hands down her shapely face. “But if this is the afterworld and everyone here is a ghost—”

“I'm not exactly a ghost,” I interrupted, wanting to keep this straight. “I have a body waiting for me on Earth.”

“I'm not a ghost either,” said Durkle. “I never lived on Earth and I never died at all. I'm native-born flim, a tweaked glob of kessence. And, like I say, my parents got my body from the yuels.” He stretched out his arms and wriggled them like snakes. “It's better without a skeleton.”

“Okay, but that's all beside the point,” persisted Ginnie. “I'm trying to find out where I go if I die here.”

“You turn into a puny sprinkle,” said Durkle carelessly. “Didn't we already tell you that? And then you end up in living water of Flimsy, just like a newly arrived ghost. Maybe you make into the underworld and you work your way up. Or maybe you get swept across the sky. I hear the souls rain back down at the core.”

Finally we were getting some decent information. “I can't quite believe that the sprinkles are souls,” I said. “They're so small.”

“They're folded-up,” said Durkle with a shrug. “You hear their voices when you eat them. We don't worry about it, though. Sprinkles have no rights. There's a big pecking order, see, and too many flims anyhow. Don't forget, we've got a septillion intelligent races sending their ghosts in here, plus we've got the natives like me. The sprinkles are all trying to get a kessence body together so they can be respectable citizens, maybe with a jiva inside. If you push ahead in line—like you and Ginnie did—well, then some flims think it's their right to torture you to death.”

“Sounds like home,” said Ginnie, shaking her head in disgust. “A special welcome for the immigrants.”

We cruised along the cliff 's edge, with our windshield playing an miraculously long and detailed Charlie Parker solo—Ginnie had crafted it by sewing dozens of Bird's solos together into one.

The bluff descended in a series of swoops and humps, guiding us to the plain we'd seen from above. Rather than heading towards the glow of the Earthmost Jiva, we steered toward the haze of dust that betokened the location of the monster pit.

We cruised along for awhile until, upon rounding a grove of trees, I saw a break in the landscape and a distant cliff. It took me a moment to realize that the remote cliff was the far side of the monster pit. Soon we came upon the pit's near edge, which stretched for miles to either side, an abrupt drop where the meadows gave way to a sandy slope that slanted down at a fiercely steep pitch.