Jim and the Flims (29 page)

“A deal's a deal,” the Bulber was saying. “Me and the boys are gonna be stripping you clean tomorrow if you ain't paid up in full. You got a lotta nerve, thinking you can bullshit your way outta this, Duke. I notice that your jiva sun was trashing your Atum's Lotus, you dumb shit.”

“We'll start paying you tomorrow!” shrilled the Duchess. “But it might take a little time until the full amount is—”

“Paid in full tomorrow,” repeated Boss Blinks. “That's what the contract says. Weena wrote it up and you signed it. Once you're in default, we've got a legal right to loot the joint. Clause twenty-two.”

“We'll pay you double what we owe,” implored the Duke. “Just give us the chance to finish paying you.”

“Maybe,” said Boss Blinks after a pause. “I'll think it over. Depends on what kind of kessence we see coming in. And I mean starting early tomorrow.”

“Our agent is leaving in a few minutes,” said the Duchess, gesturing at me. “We're almost set.”

“Heard that before,” said the Bulber. He swam menacingly around the room once more, then wallowed out through the door he'd entered, leaving a smell of broccoli and ammonia.

“Way wack,” said Janie in a subdued tone. She gave me a look that was almost sympathetic.

“Guards!” yelled the Duke right about then. Four sturdy ghosts trooped in from a side door and seized me by the legs and arms.

“The eggs are ready,” explained the Duchess. “Take it like a man, Jim.”

The room's leafy ceiling began to glow. Through a window I glimpsed a fiery tendril from the Earthmost Jiva, coming for me once again. The sky-beet was going to inoculate me with ten thousand jiva eggs—perhaps some of them had been passed up from the mega-monsters of the Dark Gulf.

With the guards grasping my limbs and Mijjy inside my body, I had no hope of fighting or running away.

The jiva-root poked through the same aperture that Blinks Bulber had used. Her tip swayed left and right, sniffing around. And then—gradually, gloatingly, gracefully—the glowing tendril encircled my neck. I wanted to thrash and kick, but Mijjy had me paralyzed.

“Hold him really still,” the Duchess instructed her stooges.

“But what are you doing to him?” asked Janie, actually seeming upset.

Nobody answered aloud, but within me, Mijjy was singing joyful hymns of thanksgiving and praise.

My neck began to tingle as a zillion root hairs dug in, feeling for the deepest crannies of my soul. And now the transmission began. Pinpoints of energy caromed through my kessence. I was a pinball machine with ten thousand balls, a coal-chute funneling a city's worth of fuel. The eggs rattled through me, finding their way to their goal. I sensed a faint smell of musk and burning rubber. My neck was aflame with pain. It was like being choked and burnt and stabbed—all at once.

And now as the last few eggs straggled in, the sensation transcended pain and became a crazy kind of ecstasy. Mijjy within me was exceedingly agitated, and I felt an urgent sexual shudder from the Earthmost Jiva.

And then, quite suddenly, it was over. The now-limp tendril flickered, uncoiled and withdrew.

“Great,” said the Duchess, leaning over me. “Just perfect. And, look, Duke. Jim's got a boner. He's into this—right, Jim?”

“Let him go,” said the Duke to his guards.

My astral dick went limp. I raised my trembling hands to my neck, expecting to feel some rank, rubbery ruff. But my kessence skin was smooth, cool and bare.

“They shrank way down inside you, Jim,” said Janie. “How nasty.”

“Don't bum him out,” said the Duchess sharply. “Remember that you're supposed to escort Jim to Monin's farm, too, Janie. Or we don't pay you at all.”

“Fuck your threats,” said Janie, unexpectedly flaring up. “I know you're welshers. Pay me up front or I'm going back to Yuelsville right now.”

“Here,” said the Duke impatiently extending a long tube from his body to pour a pile of kessence at Janie's feet. “Eat this. And then do as you've been told.”

“More like it,” said Janie, wading into the kessence mound, soaking the stuff up. Her statuesque body seemed to grow a size or two larger. She grunted with pleasure, flipped her blonde hair, and gave me a veiled, amused look, as if there were some joke I still wasn't getting. Once again she winked.

Finally it clicked. Janie was Ginnie in disguise. The yuels had given Ginnie a new body, and she'd come here as a double agent. Before I could consciously articulate this realization, I pushed it into my subconscious, lest Mijjy and the others see.

“Stay with them until Jim goes through the tunnel,” the Duke was telling Janie. “And then you close the deal.”

“Yeah baby,” said Janie, her voice hard and tight.

“I still don't see why she has to—” began Weena.

“Get going now,” said the Duchess coldly.

A mat of geranium tendrils swept the three of us to the field where I'd landed before, the field where the yuels had kidnapped Ginnie.

“Very well, then,” said Weena, expecting to take control. We were standing in the grass, and the geranium tendrils were gone. “I can link us to Monin's farm. Your jiva will follow mine, Jim. You don't have to do a thing. And as for you, Janie, can you find a way to tag along?”

Very abruptly, Janie changed her form. Once again she was visibly Ginnie—with her warm brown eyes, her punky dark hair, and her lithe frame. She wanted Weena to understand exactly who she was.

Janie/Ginnie seized Weena by the shoulders and sang a yuel lullaby louder than I'd ever heard one before. Instantly Weena's jiva crawled out of her mouth. I felt a nasty wriggling in my throat as my own jiva left me as well.

Without a jiva in place, my zickzack skeleton collapsed. I was a wispy ghost, barely able to stand on my feet. Ginnie was still singing. My jiva and Weena's jiva went flying off, although I had a sense that those ten thousand eggs were still inside me. If anything, Ginnie's yuel lullaby made the eggs burrow the deeper.

Weena was fighting back, but feebly—she too had lost her skeleton, and she'd been taken by surprise. Ginnie gave Weena's body a vicious twist and—oh my god—tore off both her arms. She bit into one of the arms and threw the other to me.

“You eat too,” said Ginnie. “You need the strength. It'll tide you over until we upgrade you to a primo yuel-built body.” And now Ginnie continued tearing at Weena, gobbling down her kessence like a cannibal zombie.

I looked down at the limp arm I held. It's not as if Weena were really my friend. And without any zickzack skeleton I was flexible enough that my mouth could open really wide. I braced myself and wolfed down the arm. What a bizarre thing to do.

Ginnie fed me more. I needed it. My ghostly body took on solidity and form.

In a minute or two we'd reduced Weena's ghost to a sprinkle. Like an angry gnat, she buzzed around us, teeping maledictions.

“I'll punish you for this, Jim!” rasped Weena's voice within my head.

“Bitch,” said Ginnie, flicking her fingers like frog-tongues. With a lucky grab, she managed to snag the sprinkle that was Weena's spark of soul. And now Ginnie bared her kessence-made teeth, raising her hand to her face.

“Are you sure that—” I began.

“It's thanks to Weena that a parasite came through the hole to kill your wife,” said Ginnie, holding the trapped sprinkle tight. “Weena was the one who sent Skeeves to kill me with an axe. Weena lured you here to get infected with those jiva eggs. And now she's told Skeeves to trash your meat body back home. It's enough.”

And with that, Ginnie bit into the shuddering mite that was Weena's soul. It cracked and melted against Ginnie's tongue. Weena was gone.

“Yes,” I said. “Oh yes.”

A great weight lifted from me with the knowledge that Weena was no more. I had some hope of charting my own course in Flimsy now. One way or another, I'd flout the jivas and find my way to Val.

“So now let's hop to Yuelsville,” said Ginnie. “We'll regroup there and make a plan. I already met up with the Graf there.”

“The Graf made it back to Flimsy?” I asked.

“Yeah. And I think he's basically on our side.”

In the near distance, the Earthmost Jiva had flushed an angry shade of red. Her tendrils were lashing the air in fury.

“One thing before we go,” I told Ginnie .“Teach me your yuel lullaby and I'll blast that frikkin' beet to bits.”

Ginnie and I got a subliminal resonance thing happening, just like I'd done with Charles last night. This yuel-style form of telepathy worked pretty well, especially for something like a song.

Even though I'd heard yuel lullabies several times before now, I'd been unable to internalize any of them. But now, with my resident jiva gone, I was open to the information. In just a few moments Ginnie had taught me her tune. It felt like an anthem.

I pinched off a ball of kessence from my body. I set the yuel lullaby to vibrating within the ball like a standing wave—I thought of the glob as a yuelball now. Running solely on instinct, I widened my mouth and throat so much that my floppy body became an erect tube. I chucked the yuelball down my throat, cradling it in the bottom of my gut like a cannonball in a cannon. I tensed my throat, preparing for a rapid rush of contractions.

And now, as if on cue, the jiva swooped towards us, blazing with hate and menace. And, like a living bazooka, I hocked my yuelball into her fat flank.

I maintained a subliminal linkage to my yuelball, and I could feel how it expanded like a star within the Earthmost Jiva's form—sending the sweet, insufferable music of my yuel lullaby into her tiniest parts.

The monster jiva tried to flee in every direction at once—and exploded into a million gobbets of jiva-flesh, each fragment flaming and crackling with her stolen energies.

I'd been a rebel my whole life, but never with this kind of success.

“Hog roast with fireworks,” said Ginnie, her elfin face lit in reds and yellows. She looked calmer and more powerful than when she'd been hosting a jiva. As the remnants of the Earthmost Jiva fizzled out, the world around us turned to night.

I'd killed the sun.

24: Yuelsville

"K
ick
ass
!” said Ginnie in the dark. The Duke's castle was lit from within, with a few of the nobles buzzing around, trying to figure out what had happened. Scraps of the Earthmost Jiva were burning on the ground.

“So let's go to Yuelsville now,” continued Ginnie.“I bet the yuels can help you get rid of those eggs. They're nice, even if they talk funny.” “Nice? The yuels back on Earth were snarling and charging at us. And when we got to the castle here, they kidnapped you.”

“I'm better off now,” said Ginnie gently. “We had it backwards all along. The jivas are evil and the yuels are good. The yuels love me now. I helped them resurrect Rickben.”

“Rickben the yuel?” “Remember how I ate a little piece of him that was drooping across my foot? Back at the Whipped Vic?” “I don't know. Maybe. I don't want to see Rickben again.” I was feeling a little dizzy from my bazooka push.

“When I ate that noodle of Rickben's flesh, it put all his information inside me,” said Ginnie. “His life, his shape, his memories—all hidden in my kessence. Somehow the yuels here could sense it. That's why they were so glad to abduct me for the Duke.”

“Did the yuels tell you to kill Weena?”

“Weena wanted me out of the way. And the Duke and Duchess wanted the yuels to send a hit-woman to terminate Weena. It was a swap. But when the yuels mentioned the second part of the gig, I decided I should be the one. Double reverse! I was happy to take down that snotty Weena for once and for all. How could you have been that horrible woman's lover?”

“I was lonely. Who are you to talk? You were with Header, for God's sake.”

“All Weena's fault,” said Ginnie. “She got what she deserved.”

I pointed across the fields to a spot where a light had begun to glow. “Look over there. That's the mouth of the burrow where the Earthmost Jiva lived. I bet a replacement's coming soon.”

“I know how to hop without a jiva,” said Ginnie, all amped up. “The trick is that you merge into the One Mind of Flimsy.”

The leading bulge of a fat yellow jiva was already rising from the Earthmost Jiva's burrow. The root hairs of the new jiva's tendrils were reaching toward my mind, talking to me. The new Earthmost Jiva just so happened to be the former clerk of the platonic Sandwich shop in the underworld.

Apparently, there'd been a quick dog-eat-dog battle for succession. The ambitious clerk had eaten her rivals and claimed the prize. She knew exactly who I was and what I'd done. The only reason she wasn't killing me right away was because of the eggs buried in my body and soul.

“We're outta here,” said Ginnie wrapping her arms around me. “I'll carry you.”

Everything seemed to turn inside out and then—we were standing up to our knees in living water, with soggy mud underfoot.

“This is Yuelsville?” I asked.

“Well, I missed by a few hundred yards,” said Ginnie. “I was rushing.”

The sky was bright with the day's second dawn. We were amid odd trees, their reflections shaky in the swamp water.

“I don't want a showdown with that new jiva sun,” I said. “I don't have the energy to be killing one after another.”

“It's pretty safe in Yuelsville,” said Ginnie. “We might as well to walk. We'll be there in a minute. It's on an island that rises up like a dome. Relax and enjoy the swamp.”

The living water was green with sprinkles, as if verdant with algae and duckweed. We were amid trees like cypresses, bulbous at the bottom, and with roots that arched into knees. Ghosts were living in the trees, in flat nests and in huts wedged into the forks of the branches. The spaces within these nooks were oddly large. A little dome the size of a birdhouse might hold a whole extended family.