Hylozoic (17 page)

Chu tried to peek into Lusky's body, but she had her innards blocked off from teep. He was thinking that, if he shipped out with Lusky, he'd be without human contact—and maybe that would be a relief. He was tired of people whipsawing him with their emotions.

“Don't listen to Thuy,” said Lusky, dismissing Chu's fears. “Pushers adore their jobs. Later you can talk to a female pusher whom I have aboard: Glee.” And then the great manta disguised herself again. The slate field looked empty.

Thuy and Chu pulled their attention back to the glen with the waterfall.

“See how good we are at camouflage?” said little Duxy, hovering
beside them. “If the Peng knew there's already a Hrull mothership here, they'd be wak-wakkin' mad. We'll share all kinds of tricks with you, once Earth becomes the Hrullwelt's ally.”

“In other words, you want to use our planet for slave labor,” said Thuy. Chu had to admire the way she got to the point.

“We Hrull are intergalactic eco-activists; our mission is to defend indigenous teekers against the imperialist Peng,” said Wobble. He swept his spiked tail in a circle, gesturing at their surroundings. “The Peng are siphoning off the complexity of these woods, right? Look how rigidly the branches sway. And I'm sure you realize that your thoughts are sadly stiff and stereotyped. If those filthy birds take over, humankind will deevolve. You'll lose your culture, your science, and even your ability to teleport. The Peng don't care. But the Hrull do.”

“Can you help us drive off the Peng?” asked Chu.

“We'll show you how to strip away the Peng ranch computations,” said Duxy. “We have a special atomic reset rune.” Duxy pushed a pattern at Chu, a spherical mandala with a glowing eye in the center and—good heavens—a quadrillion wiggly spikes projecting from the surface like rays from a sun. Avidly, Chu memorized it.

“How fast can you think?” asked Wobble. “To reset the whole ranch, you have to individually reprogram each of the ten tridecillion atoms.”

“Oh, oh,” teeped Chu. “I'm gonna need help. Hey, Jayjay, are you watching?” He kind of hoped the answer was no.

“I'm there in spirit,” said Jayjay's voice in Chu's head. He didn't sound friendly. “See, I wasn't kidding about the flying manta rays. I'm not as out of it as you two think. I know what's going on.” Obviously he'd witnessed the kiss.

“Look, Jayjay, we have to talk,” began Thuy. “Chu and I were just—”

“We'll get into that later,” said Jayjay darkly. “We gotta save the world, and meanwhile to hell with our marriage, right? Let me try that reset rune on—oh, whatever. How about that lame excuse for a waterfall.”

“Will Pekka let you do that?” asked Thuy. “I don't want her to—”

“Pekka isn't watching me just now. She's headtripping someone on another world. And her friendly local slavemaster, the Pekklet, is asleep.”

“I wish I could do something to help you,” said Chu, feeling bad that Jayjay was mad at him.

“Stand aside, horn dog.”

Flapping close to the cataract, Duxy displayed the reset rune again, and Jayjay instantly set to work, using his mental speed to cast the rune into each and every atom of the falling water.

The reset rune impacted upon the tame flow and—the cataract went apeshit, blossoming with forking rivulets, quivery drops and veils of mist.

Sadly it was only a few seconds before all the revivified atoms had fallen into the pool, and the waterfall was once again a bone-dull, predictable curve. Chu was finally beginning to appreciate the glory of natural gnarl. He'd been too cautious all these years, wanting everything lined up in tidy grids.

“I want my own personal chaos back,” said Thuy. “Can you chirp me, too, Jayjay?”

“Like you're not irresponsible enough right now? Like I'm in a mood to do you favors when you've been kissing that little boy?” But then Jayjay relented. “Oh, all right, I'll do it. But we have to hurry. Pekka's gonna be checking back on me any minute.”

Thuy stretched her arms toward her distant husband. “Zap me, darling! Make me weird!”

Under the effects of Jayjay's nimble ministrations, Thuy's flesh vibrated like kneaded dough. Meanwhile, Chu had a try at teeping the spiky reset rune into a few billion of his own atoms; he chose a group near the tip of his nose.

He had no problem in mentally handling the reset rune.

He found himself able to push it into three billion atoms in a row. But the effect of this limited effort was nil. To make a lasting impact on how Chu felt, he'd have to change the better part of his body's ten octillion atoms. Although easy for Jayjay, so large a task was just at the limits of an ordinary human's abilities.

“This feels so great,” exulted Thuy, turning a pirouette. She was back to her lively old self.

“Can you do the reset rune on me, too, Jayjay?” said Chu.

“Kiss my ass,” said Jayjay. “How about that?”

“Why not do the whole Yolla Bolly ranch!” exclaimed Thuy. “And then we'll do San Francisco!”

“I want to,” said Jayjay. “Those Peng tulpas are like ice sculptures in a blast furnace, kept together by a zillion gnats with trowels and Slushy cones. All I have to do is make the atoms stop working for them. But I don't want Pekka and her Pekklet to catch me. The Pekklet says she can paralyze me with her stun-stick. Maybe I better wait till the start of the next break they take, so I'm sure I have more time. I'll clear Yolla Bolly and San Francisco and maybe then I'll kill myself so the Pekklet can't use me again. Everything'll be great. You can marry Chu.”

“Oh, Jayjay,” exclaimed Thuy. “Don't dramatize. Don't talk that way.”

“Look, while I'm deciding, I gotta focus on making supper for the squawky birds,” said Jayjay. “They're watching, even if Pekka and the Pekklet aren't. See you in a minute.” Jayjay tuned out.

“He's mad at us,” said Chu.

“You noticed,” said Thuy and let out a desperate laugh. “At least I'm gnarly again. I'm feeling—fey. Fa la la, we're doomed. When we go back there, I'll distract the Peng whenever Jayjay's ready to reset the ranch.” Thuy turned a cartwheel and struck a pose, staring up at Wobble and Duxy.

“Teep this sound if you need us,” said Wobble, emitting a skirling squeal. “The Hrull whistle. Our mission is to defend indigenous teekers against the imperialist Peng.”

“You already said that line, Dad,” said Duxy.

The flying rays exchanged a burble of laughter and flapped into the dark shadows of the woods, melting into invisibility.

“Sinister,” said Thuy, shedding her air of giddiness. “What if they want to recruit, like, every family's firstborn child to be a pusher? Billions of galley slaves in their motherships. This is horrible.”

“Let's go back to the clearing,” said Chu. “We're the good guys. We're gonna win!”

“Ah, to be fourteen again,” said Thuy.

 

 

The pink marble walls of the new house matched the fantastic Bosch pile of the Peng palace. Admiring the glitter of the new house's roof, the Peng had gotten Jayjay to add gold caps to their two penis towers. They'd also set a pink marble fire ring into the little patch of open space that remained in the clearing. Although the sun was still up, a goodly bonfire was blazing. The flames were dull and predictable, like colored paper tongues swaying back and forth.

Jayjay was busy by the fire, roasting a pig on a spit. He flashed a hard look at Chu and Thuy, and mouthed the words, “Still asleep.” Meanwhile, the Peng were up on their second-floor
patio, getting drunk on a keg of—wine? They'd pecked the top right off the barrel.

“Done sulking, Thuy?” cawed Gretta raucously. “You're just in time for our cockadoodle party.”

“The word is
cocktail
, Mom,” said Kakar. “Hey, Chu, we're drinking mead! Fermented honey. Runecaster Jayjay teleported it in with the pig. I'm feeling brilliant. Try some!”

“An excellent brew,” said Suller, dipping his beak into the barrel and tipping back his head to savor the honey wine. “Possible slogan: Earth, the Flower World.” He flapped one of his wings and hiccupped.

“Wait till you taste this roast meat,” said Jayjay, cranking the spit. “Earth, the Swine World.”

“Radiant nectar!” cooed Gretta, working a gulp of mead down her long neck. “I'm all shimmery inside.”

“What fun,” said Thuy, putting on her polite tone. Pekka wasn't watching and the Pekklet was still asleep.

Silently the three humans started an encrypted teep conference.

“I'm going for it now, after all,” teeped Jayjay. “Who knows if I'll get another chance. You can stand guard, Chu.”

“Are you sure that—” began Thuy.

“Worry about me,” teeped Jayjay grimly. “Worry a lot.”

“You and Chu work from our cottage,” teeped Thuy, turning businesslike. “I'll distract the goony birds.”

Just about then, Kakar got nosy about what the humans were privately conferring about. The young bird hopped off the patio and stalked over to wave his beak near Jayjay's head, as if sampling the vibrations.

Thuy smiled at Kakar and cut an energetic series of dance steps. The ostrichlike bird shuffled his feet, awkwardly following her rhythm. She drew him into a dance around the fire, with Gretta and Suller watching enthralled. The Peng didn't
yet suspect that Thuy's matter had been freed. They were simply enjoying how lively she'd become. Kakar was dancing up a storm.

Jayjay and Chu made their way to the cabin behind the marble McMansion.

“Keep your hands off my wife,” was the first thing Jayjay said when they were alone.

“I'm sorry, Jayjay. She was just trying to help me.”

“You need help, all right.” He was pacing around the room, distracted and overwrought. “So the flying manta rays are the Hrull? I couldn't teep a clear image of the one by the waterfall. She was camouflaged or something. Blending into the rocks. You think we can trust them?”

“What I think is that you better get started on the ranch right now,” said Chu. He took a quick teep toward the Peng. It was dusk outside. Thuy had teleported the roast pig to the second-floor patio of the Peng's palace for the birds to feast upon, and she was up there dancing for them. The birds seemed very content.

But now Suller idly turned his head as if staring right at Jayjay and Chu, as if seeing through the house walls, as if seeing their plan. Mustering all of his mental force, Chu sent Suller a perfectly rendered image of himself and Jayjay—arguing about Thuy.

Displays of human emotion were of no interest to Suller. The drunk bird's focus twitched away. He dipped his beak back into the barrel.

“Start runecasting, Jayjay!” urged Chu.

“The Peng and the Hrull and the pitchfork,” fretted Jayjay. “Three alien invasions at once. Why do I feel like we're totally fucked? Okay, here I go. Ten tridecillion copies of the reset rune.”

“I wish I could be a runecaster, too,” said Chu.

“You'd like a lot of things,” said Jayjay. “But little boys don't always get what they want.” He sighed despairingly. “Oh man, I truly don't want Pekka to hit me with that stun-stick.”

But now, courageously, Jayjay started to hum, showers of bumps marching across his skin. He was using all of the component silps in his body, working multiple threads in parallel, moving concentrically outward from the cottage, the creek, and the clearing—ignoring the evanescent air and burrowing down into the ground. At this breakneck pace it would take less than two minutes for him to clear the Yolla Bolly ranch of Peng code.

Chu relished the fresh feel of life and energy in his body as Jayjay removed his Peng runes. The bonfire looked interesting again and the redwood, Grew, was swaying as chaotically as before. And now the sought-for effects of the atomic resets were taking hold: the tulpas were beginning to change.

Against the darkening sky, the Bosch house and the McMansion were crowned with pale coronas, like in an old picture of flickering Saint Elmo's fire on a ship's masts before a devastating electrical storm. The ruffled bodies of the Peng birds were growing smoother and more stylized. Sharp cusps formed at the ends of their beaks and claws; the birds' energies were draining off in wavery jets.

The Peng understood what was happening. But, slowed by the mead and by the ever-increasing disturbances in the Peng ranch's computation, it took them nearly a minute to launch their counterattack.

And by then Jayjay was protected by the reawakened silps of the trees, stones, and streams. When Suller tried to spit a klusper-style femtoray at Jayjay, a falling leaf diverted the ray's path long enough for Chu to shove Jayjay from the line of fire. When Gretta tried to run across the clearing to peck the two, a dead branch dropped from Grew to trip the Peng. As Suller
fired another ray from his beak, the stream's flow undermined the Peng house's foundations to throw off his aim.