Jim and the Flims (19 page)

“The monster pit,” said Durkle reverently. “At last.”

The pit was maybe ten miles across, and probably even deeper, although it was hard to be sure. Its lower reaches were quite dim, with a single small glint from the very bottom.

Little slides of sand were continually rippling down the pit's sides, as if it were a gargantuan hourglass. Puffs of dust blew up the slope and got into my mouth, gritty against my teeth.

I heard a whoop. Feeling around with my teep, I located the bright minds of two kids riding the slopes. Now that I knew where to look, I could see the tiny figures a mile below us, wavering back and forth, throwing up rooster-tails of sand, carving short-lived curves.

Curious about the riders, I teeped a greeting—and a moment later, the two board-riders had jiva-jumped up to check us out. One was a snub-faced young woman with a shock of blonde hair, the other was a lanky guy with a beaky nose and a prominent Adam's apple. Each of them carried a zickzack board six or seven feet long.

“Durkle the turtle,” said the lanky guy, surprised. “What are you doing here, floppy-boy?”

“Hi Flam. These are my new friends from Earth, Jim and Ginnie. New ghosts. But they didn't go to the underworld at all.”

“Impressive,” said Flam mildly. “Maybe I heard about this. They came through your family's big snail? Won't the guards be after Ginnie?”

“Not as long as she's with Jim,” said Durkle. “Jim's important. I'm taking him to meet the Duke.”

“But naturally you want to ride the pit on your way.” said Flam. “Fine. I just wonder if you noobs can—”

“Hey!” said Ginnie. “Jim and I are from Surf City, my man. I'll make us three special boards with a levitation hack, and with a shear drive like we have under our cruiser couch.”

“You rode here on that couch?” asked the calm blonde woman at Flam's side. “And hi, by the way. My name's Swoozie.”

I had a fleeting urge to drop to my knees and nuzzle the sexy Swoozie's thighs like a dog. Seeing this in my mind, she favored me with a casual smile that said, “Thanks, but no way.” If you were a telepath, you were accustomed to other people's extreme thoughts.

Meanwhile Flam watched Ginnie fashion us three long boards, each with a power plate on the bottom and a control lever in back. Ginnie was bright. She'd effortlessly picked the design details from my head. She decorated the boards with splashy pictures: jivas for me, pigpops for Durkle, and skulls with axes for herself.

“I'm a little worried about you, cousin Durkle,” allowed Flam. “You can teleport, yeah, so maybe you can hop back to the top when you need to. But I know how stubborn you are. If you actually hit the bottom—” Flam threw his hands in the air.

“What's down there?” I asked. “A giant ant lion?” I pumped my hands like insect jaws, kidding around.

“A pool of hungry ghosts,” said Flam, not smiling. “It's an underground lake that comes in from the Dark Gulf. The folks who go in there don't came back anytime soon. That's why it takes guts to ride the pit at all.”

“And, no, I'm
not
going to teleport when it's time to bail,” said Durkle, eager to show off. “That's for wimps. I'll use this lever to bomb uphill.” He crouched on his new board, his snaky limbs wrapped into a knot, diddling the control. The board swung into motion, and Durkle carved circles around us.

“Whoo hoo,” muttered Flam sarcastically. I could teep that he was little envious of our cool rigs.

“Ready to race?” yelled Durkle, heady with his board's power. “How about one of those chicken races, Flam?”

“What's that mean?” I asked.

“Oh, that's when you ride straight down and go faster and faster until someone falls off or bails,” said Flam. “But—”

“Durkle shouldn't do that yet,” put in Swoozie. “Not on his first ride.”

“Should too!” shrilled Durkle, coming to a halt at our side. “I'm gonna be the pit master.”

Swoozie glanced over Durkle's pigpop-patterned board. “That lever thing is radical.”

“Flashy trash,” said Flam. “Boards should be simple.”

“You're weak, Flam,” hollered Durkle. “You're lame!”

Flam's mouth tightened. With a practiced move, he flipped his long board through the air and balanced himself on the edge of the cliff. Wordlessly he scowled at his cousin.

“We'll ride full speed, and the first one in sight of the bottom wins,” babbled Durkle. “Right? I've been dreaming about this all year. I'll be the new pit master, yeah. And if I beat you, Flam, you have to give me your board.”

“Like that'll happen,” said Flam cracking a smile. It was hard to withstand Durkle's gall. “And if I win—I get to keep Jim's cruiser couch. He can always make a new one, right?”

“No problem,” I said. Flam wasn't really a bad guy.

Swoozie said she'd wait up here—she wasn't interested in little Durkle trying to prove himself. But Ginnie and I lined up next to the two boys. This seemed like too awesome an experience to miss.

“Remember that riding is supposed to be fun,” Flam cautioned Durkle. “Please don't overdo it and get yourself killed. I don't want your mother coming after me.”

“I'll watch over him,” I said.

16: Under the Pit

A
nd then the four of us were whizzing down the slope—Flam, Durkle, Ginnie and me. The sand rose behind us in plumes, the sky was a watery disk of blue, the Earthmost Jiva was watching.

Flam held the lead. He had a special way of crouching and rocking that set his board to bouncing. He arrowed down the slope like a skipping stone, moving his arms in rapid ideograms of grace.

Hell-bent on besting his cousin, Durkle lay down on his pigpopdecorated board, making his flexible body as flat as a fried egg. He pushed his lever all the way forward. Feeling a sense of responsibility for the excitable lad, I followed close behind, squinting against the flying sand.

Ginnie, to our rear, wasn't so interested in the race. She was getting a feel for the ride and the slope. She stood erect like a surfer, swooping back and forth in huge slalom loops, having fun.

For a little while, Durkle and I were gaining on Flam. I started to have some hopes of passing him. But then he glanced back at us, laughed, and began bouncing harder, redoubling the lengths of his hops down the slope. Our boards' power-drives didn't seem to make much difference in the face of Flam's skill at using the natural dynamics of the pit.

The miles flew by, and the pit grew steeper. In the process of our cat and mouse chase, we'd amped up to the speed of a Bonneville race car. I worried that if we wiped out and tumbled, we'd be sanded down to oozing scraps.

Up ahead, Flam rocketed into the shadowed zone near the cone's base. Seconds later, Durkle and I entered the gloom as well. Deep below, a wet patch twinkled. The cone was but a half-mile across here, and the walls were nearly vertical. The cavity murmured with the echoes of our headlong chase.

Something clunked and shattered against my board—shit, that was an abandoned zickzack skull! Flam continued accelerating down the tightening cone, continued increasing his lead. I was seeing damp spots and sparkles of color in the sands, and further down, the colors flowed into a sinister, glowing pool of living water. Flam had warned us about the bottom. Time to bail.

I hoped I could figure out how to teleport myself. Imitating what I'd seen Weena do, I wove an invisible cocoon of tendrils around myself. And then, reaching upward with some longer tendrils, I felt for a suitable a target zone at the cone's lip. Flam was still ahead. The race was done.

As if to confirm this, Flam disappeared. He'd jumped back to the top. And behind us, Ginnie had jumped too. But that crazy little Durkle was still racing straight ahead—what was he thinking? The pool below us flickered with pearlescent light.

Somehow I felt responsible for the boy. I decided to stay with him a little longer. I asked Mijjy if she'd delay the jump I'd just prepared. Mijjy gave me an answer of sorts, but not what I'd expected.

“Funnel puddle ecstasy death,” she said, and showed me the image of a ghost-like Jim with his kessence smeared across an acre of gravel and his jiva wriggling free. The jiva in the image was giggling with titillation, savoring the sensations of the man's last spasm.

In plain words, my jiva was in this for kicks, and she didn't really care if I pulled out of my dive or not. Fine. For now I still had time to catch up with Durkle.

I pushed my board lever the last possible bit forward. With aching slowness, I drew even with the boy, coming up on his left. The converging walls of the dim pit were flying past in a blur, with more and more streaks of living water in the sand. Durkle grinned over at me, his eyes squinted to slits. He was loving his ride. Like kids everywhere, he imagined he was invulnerable.

I couldn't speak over the roar of our tobogganing, nor could I use jiva-teep to reach the boy. And so I fell back on gestures. I indicated that Flam was gone, and that the glowing, shifting walls were closing in on every side. I put my hands together as if in prayer, and bowed to Durkle, to show him that he was the true pit master. I pointed to the pool of melding pastels just below.

Finally Durkle relented. He pulled back on his lever and swung his board hard to the right, expecting to carve an upward path to the top of the pit. Too sharp a turn? For now it was okay—his board held steady. His right edge carved a deep furrow into the lambent sand. Durkle was going to make it.

I still wished he'd just hop himself out of here, using his yuel-style teleportation, however that worked. But for now I was stuck shadowing his moves. I steered to the right like Durkle had done. I was already imagining the ride to the top, the reunion with Ginnie, and the tongue-lashing I'd give my jiva. But just then—I screwed up.

I was tired, scared, over-excited. Eager as I was to escape from the bottom of the pit, I'd gunned it a little too hard—and my board scraped the side of Durkle's. We wobbled, bumped once more and—oh hell—rolled.

Mijjy hadn't entirely abandoned me. My tendril cocoon were still in place. I grabbed hold of Durkle, and my jiva firmed up my cocoon enough to keep our kessence intact as we bounced down the final meters of the pit's slope.

If I'd been fully accustomed to teleportation, I probably could have hopped the two of us up to the top. But, remember, I'd never actually teleported before. I wasn't quite sure how to pull the trigger. And Mijjy showed no inclination to coach me along. I think she was curious what might happen when we hit bottom.

The water at the bottom was flickering like the Flimsy night sky, or like the wall I'd passed through in the tunnel. I realized it was filled with sprinkles—hungry ghosts.

It was as if death had been stalking me across the worlds. It had already taken my wife, and it had nearly nailed me at the Santa Cruz Hospital. Perhaps to escape, I'd travelled out of my body for this great adventure. But now this. Too bad.

The shimmering waters splashed up around us and the sprinkles set upon us like tiny piranhas. As in the tunnel, the sprinkles' onslaught broke me into a flock of scraps—but once again my body pulled itself back together. Durkle and I drifted down through a few meters of living water, and emerged into air, dropping onto a floor.

Stunned by the sudden transition, we two remained silent for a time.

We were in a place that resembled—what a letdown—a ramshackle, cobbled-together shopping mall. A layer of living water floated above us like a ceiling, filled with sprinkles fighting their ceaseless battles. And here amid this collection of walls and corridors was a crowd of human-shaped ghosts—milling around, plucking at us.

The touches of their hands were feathery and insubstantial—these puny spirits had no jivas in them, and no zickzack bodies to their name. I flailed my arms and sent them tumbling like dry leaves. One of them, a man in green, hit his head on the floor. The other ghosts tore him apart, devouring the wispy scraps. The man's last remains shrank into a glittering emerald speck that arced up to enter the thick blanket of living water overhead.

The man's fate scared off our attackers. They lost interest in us for a time.

My jiva, Mijjy, was eagerly running exploratory tendrils into this reality. And Durkle was at my side. It occurred to me that Val might be somewhere down here. The thought was both alluring and creepy. There's a reason why we bury our dead. We can't bear to see our loved ones so terribly transformed.

Still silent, Durkle and I began to walk.

Narrow corridors veered off at crazy angles, holes pocked the floors. The ceiling was a continuation of that same sheet of living water. Durkle had called it an underground lake—presumably it was fed by the great Dark Gulf that filled the lower hemisphere of Flimsy.

Crooked store fronts lined the walls, none of them quite straight, nothing quite level. For some reason, the stores' signs were graphic icons: Chair, Fish, Vase—like that. This place felt less like a building than like an organically grown reef. The halls were evenly lit by a feeble, greenish glow, as if from the energies of decay.

To every side, the pastel ghosts darted in and out of nooks and passages, some nimble as insects in a colony, some streaming past us with hooded eyes, lost perhaps in memories, or intent upon power quests. The fainter figures were presumably the newer arrivals. Often the more experienced ghosts would set upon a newcomer, siphoning energy from their victim until he or she collapsed into a sprinkle that darted up to that sheet of living water overhead, perhaps to drift into the depths of the Dark Gulf.

Now and then a particularly vigorous sparkle in the living water overhead would eat so many of its fellows that it was able to blossom out and drift down in the form of a humanoid ghost.

All was in flux.

“The underworld of Flimsy,” said Durkle softly. “I've never been here.”