Jim and the Flims (24 page)

My true mission was clear. I had to protect the Earth from whatever it was that Weena and her friends were planning to do. And I wanted to bring home Val—assuming this were possible. And assuming that Val wanted to come. I'd been taking that last one for granted. But maybe I was wrong. My backup strategy, if I couldn't get Val, would be to find a flesh-and-blood woman to live with. After I did cosmic battle to save the Earth, that is.

This scene was batshit. But, in a way, I was loving it. I yawned, feeling the fatigue. There were no more sounds from across the plain. I stretched out beside Ginnie and fell asleep.

In the morning, Durkle woke me with a nudge of his foot. I heard a babble of voices nearby. Sitting up and looking around, I saw something like a pale purple parasol projecting from the ground a short way off. It swayed gently on a stalk that was about the thickness of a man's leg.

“It's an offer cap,” said Durkle. “Did I tell you about them? A mobile plant—see those snaky roots at its base? They can walk, a little bit. It must have teeped us here. Like I told you, they live in the swamp, a few miles off. Isn't the offer cap cool? I've heard you can get anything you want from them—if you're quick enough. Watch how I outsmart it.”

All sorts of desirable objects were dancing beneath the offer cap's pinky-mauve umbrella. Evidently the offer cap could read my mind, for as I stared, it produced some items that I would have liked right about now: a cup of tea, fried eggs on rye, a map of Flimsy, a bag of pot with rolling papers, and a slice of cantaloupe.

Apparently this odd, alien plant had perfected a type of direct matter control. The objects on offer seemed quite solid, albeit made of kessence. Rocking from side to side, they marched in a giddy parade around and around the plant's flexible stalk.

It seemed obvious to me that I shouldn't try grabbing for the goodies, but Durkle either had a plan—or, more likely, he was even more naive than I'd thought. He began circling the offer cap, irregularly reversing his path and curiously flexing his rubbery limbs—as if he meant to bewilder the thing.

Alertly monitoring Durkle's movements, the plant's cap made continual slight adjustments in its position. And, as Durkle drew closer, the items on offer changed again. I noticed that the underside of the cap was spongy and damp, as on a toadstool. The thing's roots gripped the soil, as if preparing for a burst of speed.

Durkle seemed heedless of the risk—his eyes were fixed upon a dust-riding board identical to Flam's, a tasseled orange racing cap, a little chessboard, a short sword, and a pink glob that was forming itself into the shape of—a naked woman, but with rounded off arms and legs and a smooth bulb for a head.

“Stop right there, Durkle!” cried Ginnie, sitting up beside me.

“I know I can beat this stupid mushroom,” said Durkle, glancing back at her. “You want me to get you something too, Ginnie? Offer her something, cap! I dare you.”

Sensitive to our group's dynamics, the cap added two more offers to its jolly little parade around its base: a steaming mug of coffee and a very fashionable pair of sunglasses in wide tortoise-shell frames.

“Watch me now,” said Durkle, crouching lower.

His erratic skipping motions had brought him near me. Fearing for the boy's life, I ran forward and seized him around the waist.

“Geeky loser!” he yelled, struggling against me, his limbs flailing like long feelers. “I'm gonna win. You're jealous that I'm so young and fast! Ginnie wants me, not you!”

Maybe I was a little older than Durkle, but I had a jiva inside me. Durkle wasn't going to break my grip. But he did manage to knock us off balance. The two of us fell practically into the shadow of the offer cap's umbrella—a very bad place to be.

Fast as a whip, the thing had its roots around our wrists and ankles. And now an evil-smelling mist began wafting down from its floppy cap. Most of the offers had disappeared, now that the plant was getting down its real business. Its central stalk tilted, maneuvering the mauve umbrella so that it might soon flop down upon us. I felt drowsy, and the spray was stinging my skin. As well as being a soporific, the mist was a digestive fluid.

Suddenly the purple umbrella shuddered—and slumped to one side. Ginnie had used her jiva tendrils to cut the stalk! The offer cap let out a telepathic scream that filled my mind with red and yellow jaggies. Ginnie was circling around, her tendrils lashing at the carnivorous plant.

Durkle had managed to free one of his wrists, and he'd snaked out a hand to catch hold of that short sword the plant had made as bait—this desirable item had remained on offer to the very end. It was indeed a real and solid blade. The boy slashed at the plant's roots, freeing our hands and ankles.

And then he crawled a few feet away from the plant and tugged me after him. Slowly the cap's frenzied alarm waves within my head died down—and the mist cleared away. I could think again. Belatedly joining the battle, Mijjy set the remains of the offer cap on fire.

“Got any more
good deals
for us?” I asked Durkle.

“This is an epic sword,” protested the boy. The weapon was perhaps two feet long, with an embossed grip and an elegant handguard. “Those plant-things craft their kessence one particle at a time. This thing is flawless.” Durkle sighted down the blade at me. “I rule.”

“It's like nanotech telekinesis,” I mused.

“You boys and your toys,” said Ginnie. “Let's check out the Duke's castle.”

Rather than starting up with a fresh cruiser couch, Ginnie and I decided that the three of us should teleport to a spot near the castle. This time Mijjy was able to help me figure it out.

Mijjy wove a basket of tendrils around me, and stretched more tendrils towards our target, a field near the Duke's castle. I could see via the tendrils, as if via cameras. I picked a comfortable-looking spot, and Mijjy prepared a second nest of tendrils there. Supposedly I'd land in it. In a certain sense Mijjy and I were sewing together two little balls of space. Ginnie and her jiva were making similar preparations.

“And you, Durkle?” I asked. “Do you want me to carry you?”

“I can teleport fine,” insisted Durkle. “I merge into the one mind of Flimsy. Like a yuel does.”

Meanwhile, Mijjy showed me a kind of head-trick whereby I viewed our target location as being the same spot as where we were standing. It was a little like crossing my eyes—but it didn't involved my eyes. It was more like flipping the two halves of my brain.

“Anticipation relocation dimension, Jim,” Mijjy said.

“Go,” I said.

It worked. Ginnie and I landed in a rolling meadow, thick with dark green grass and star-shaped flowers, everything lit by the Earthmost Jiva. Beyond the field rose—a giant geranium.

“The castle,” said Durkle, who'd just appeared at our side as well.

“A plant?”

“Everything in Flimsy is organically grown kessence,” said Durkle. “Even my sword.” He was besotted with his little prize, country boy that he was.

The geranium was taller than the mightiest redwood tree, with thick bent branches, storms of pink flowers, and parking-lot-sized leaves ten meters thick. The stems and the dusty green leaves had windows and entryways. The plant had a big bulge on the lowest part of the stem, like a gall. Four or five flims were busy on the ground near there, digging in kessence, and squirting on that same silvery fertilizer that Monin had used.

Higher up in the plant, some people were gazing down at us, and others were buzzing from leaf to leaf. The leaves and flowers swayed in the breeze; the brightly garbed nobles jiggled like gnats. A shimmering tracery of tendrils kept the flying courtiers aloft. The tendrils were bumpy pale lines that emanated from the living castle itself.

“I like this,” said Ginnie. “I could live in that castle for awhile. It's is the best thing I've seen in Flimsy.”

“So let's go ahead and—” I began.

Foomp! Foomp! Foomp!
Three large blue baboons appeared, seemingly from thin air, each nearly the size of a person, dropping to the ground in front of us.

“Yuels!” exclaimed Durkle, uneasily raising his sword.

“Let's bail,” said Ginnie. Still more yuels were teleporting in, thick and fast.

“Let me talk to the yuels for a minute,” I said, wanting to slow down the pace. I was tired of being stampeded from one crisis to the next. “You yourself said the yuels aren't so bad, Durkle. They gave you your body.”

In a minute the flow of yuels had petered out. Sixty of them were mounded in front of us. They weren't acting at all aggressive.

“I want to be friends,” I called. “I'm a visitor from Earth.”

“Recruit,” said one yuel. “Inform,” said another. That sounded harmless enough, and at this point the yuels were still just lying there in a heap.

“They're melting,” remarked Ginnie.

Indeed the yuel's bodies were beginning to droop and flow. In a minute, their hundred-and-twenty eyes were like raisins in a great mound of blue dough.

“Tell me what's really going on,” I asked the slowly shifting form.

“Kidnap,” teeped the yuel-mound conversationally. It was kneading itself into the shape of a fat creature with four sturdy legs. “Swap.”

A head the size of car appeared along one end of the blue monster. A trumpet-like trunk grew from the head end, along with a fierce pair of tusks. The yuels were taking on the shape of a good-sized elephant.

“It's a group yuel,” exclaimed Durkle. “I've heard of that. The yuels band together into these big elephants for fighting and for self-defense.”

The eyes migrated to the head and pooled into two great orbs. A crack formed along the sides of the head and opened into a slackly grinning mouth. The trunk raised and—

“Time to hop!” yelled Ginnie.

But our jivas weren't responding. I could feel Mijjy inside me, waiting and watching. We'd been set up. The jivas wanted this scenario to proceed. Like some surreal street-musician, the elephant rose on his rear legs, put his two front legs together and crooned a song.

“
Weep no more, my Ginnie, oh, weep no more, today. We will sing this song for our Yuelsville home, for our Yuelsville home far away.
”

I stretched my arms forward, wanting to send out jiva tendrils—but still nothing happened. Deep within me, the recalcitrant Mijjy giggled.

Ginnie took off running, but in moments the blue elephant had dropped to his feet, darted forward, and grabbed her with his trunk. As if in a circus, the yuel elephant lifted Ginnie into the air, and seated her upon one of his thick tusks.

And now with the dainty grace of an opera singer, the elephant pivoted and galumphed across the meadow. As the monster ran, he broke into a herd of individual yuels that disappeared in puffs of light—they were teleporting away.

In the thick of the pack was Ginnie, perched atop a single yuel as if riding bareback. And then, with a final flash, she and her yuel were gone.

20: The Castle

M
oments later, Weena came flying down from the castle, riding on a little carpet of ethereal geranium tendrils, wriggly and pale yellow.

“Are you too shy to enter ?” inquired Weena in a friendly tone. Her astral body was perky and trim. “Is that why you're waiting out here, Jim? Fear not, everyone awaits your entrance. Where's Ginnie?”

“She's gone,” I said curtly. “Kidnapped by the yuels.”

“Just as well,” said Weena, sounding pleased. “She was a little too low-class for you.”

“Did you send those yuels?” I blurted out. “To get rid of her? Our jivas wouldn't save us. Did you set that up too?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” said Weena airily.

Almost certainly she was lying. But I couldn't do much about it. Maybe later I'd see that Weena got what was coming to her. But for now—given that she could teep me—I had to be careful about my conscious thoughts.

“Can I come inside the castle too?” piped up Durkle.

“No,” said Weena firmly. “I don't trust people without jivas. Go ahead and be a low-class flim in a yuel-built body—but don't expect equal rights. Would you go home now please?”

“You're a bitch,” said Durkle. He paused for a moment, thinking. “So, okay, maybe I'll hop back to the monster pit. I'll ride it one more time. And visit Yuelsville. And then the Funger Gardens amusement park.”

I wondered if Durkle might mess around with those offer cap plants again—or have a try at conjugating with Swoozie. But those would be his own decisions. He was a big boy.

“Be careful,” was all I told him. There was no way to have a real conversation with Weena standing over us. “I hope to see you soon.”

“I'll be fine,” said Durkle, slashing at the air with his little sword. “Here's a tip. The yuels might help you if things don't work out with the jivas.”

As he'd mentioned before, Durkle had his own way of teleporting. He didn't send out tendrils or anything like that. Instead he began to glow. He became a pure shape of light that contracted to a point and vanished.

“What a pest,” said Weena shaking her head. And now she held out her arms for a hug. “Aren't you at all pleased to see me?”

I hung back, trying to control my speech and my thoughts. I was in some sense Weena's captive here. Even if I no longer believed that Weena would help me reunite with Val, I depended on her good will for my own survival.

“It's—I don't really feel the same about you anymore, Weena,” I said carefully. “Not after seeing you kill Header with the axe.”

“I already told you that it wasn't Header whom I axed,” said Weena dismissively. “He'd become a dangerous zombie, a yuel inside a corpse. Really it was the Graf who killed Header, not me.”

“And—and you know I'm upset about my wife,” I added, wanting again to hear what she'd say.