Jim and the Flims (8 page)

As the mist thinned, the sun was gaining in force. I unbuttoned my flannel shirt, thinking. If we couldn't rush off to Flimsy, we needed another plan.

“Do you know much about those surfers who live in the house?” I asked Weena.

“I know what you've told me,” she said. “And what I see in your memories. And what I've garnered via surreptitious teep. And I know a bit more regarding the fourth one who lurks within that house. He and Header killed the Graf.”

“You're talking about Skeeves!” I exclaimed. Light dawned in my muddled mind. “You're the mummy woman that he's been fucking all these years! He's been hearing your voice in his head. You've been telling him what to do. And—and you're the one who made sure that I got that special tip for the scanning-tunneling microscope. The tip that killed my wife.”

“Calm yourself, Jim. Things are not as you may imagine. Look at me, dear. I'm no mummy. Yes, I've had some unwholesome interactions with Skeeves. The man is unspeakably vile. I'm only trying to help you people. And that's why I stopped the Graf.”

“Maybe I'm saying that you killed my wife.” I didn't totally believe the accusation. It was more that I wanted to hear Weena deny it. I wanted to be reassured.

“I didn't, Jim,” said Weena right away. “Not at all. Poor Val had cancer. It had nothing to do with me.” She took my face in both her hands and stared into my eyes as if hypnotizing me. “Help me. And if you play along—well, maybe I shouldn't promise this...”

“What?” I said, a crazy burst of hope blossoming in my chest. “Maybe there could be a way to bring back Val. I had nothing to do with her death, no, but I might know of a way to resurrect her.”

“Oh, Weena. Don't play with me.”

“Trust me, Jim. But first of all we have to find that house. And Header. The Graf may be back in Flimsy by now, but I think that before he left, he somehow took control of Header.”

So now we were back to gibberish. “So who is the Graf?” I dutifully asked. I wasn't quite ready to ponder what it might be like to bring back Val.

“The Graf is a flim who lives in Flimsy,” answered Weena. “Like me. He's a friend of the yuels. And—I may not have mentioned this before—he was my lover. Besotted as I was, I shared the secret of my tunnel, and he pushed through before me, bribing the keeper as well. He planned to invade your world with yuels. More fool he.”

“I have an idea about finding that trashed Victorian house,” I said, thinking things over. “Probably Header and Ira and the girl go surfing every day. Maybe we could follow them home if we could find them around town. Or I guess we could check all the surf breaks. Or—how about this—can you do a telepathic search?”

“I can't promiscuously teep the whole county,” protested Weena. “The lower my profile, the better I can ambush my foes.”

“I've got it!” I exclaimed. “I'll just ask Chang. I've known him since high school. He knows everything about the surf scene. He was riding the pro circuit for awhile—but this summer he's giving lessons down at Cowell Beach near the pier.”

“Capital!” said Weena, smiling at me. Her first rush from her sprinkles was wearing off, and she was more like her usual self. “We'll interview your friend, pass the day in idleness, and tonight, after my new jivas hatch—we act!” Weena shaded her eyes, glaring down the street at the enemy yuel.

The yuel squatted on the pavement, watching us with his shiny golden eyes. His gray tongue lolled over his thin lips. He almost looked friendly.

“Sea-lion-fucker!” yelled Weena. She'd been learning the modern style of speech.

“Does he understand what you're saying?” I asked. “Can I talk to him?”

“Don't squander the energy for this,” said Weena dismissively. “Yuels are scum. They can talk, in a low, grunting fashion. All verbs. And they use a kind of teep as well, via a low, gross channel that I can barely perceive. They exchange images, washes of emotion, and the like.”

“I'm really getting curious about Flimsy,” I admitted. “And you're saying that Val is over there?”

“Yes, yes. Let's hurry and find Chang!”

The sky had turned a bright cerulean shade. I tied my over-shirt around my waist and Weena threw her red coat over her shoulder. We walked to the pier. It wasn't all that far. We took side streets so there wouldn't be a lot of people getting excited about the yuel—who continued following us.

By the time we reached the ocean, the morning fog bank had retreated a few hundred yards off shore. The sky was luminous, like a stretched membrane. The surf muttered, endlessly chewing the shore. Shrieks and music drifted from the Boardwalk amusement park on the south side of the pier. I noticed an animal rescue van nearby—some rangers were herding sea lion cows into the sea, probably bringing them back from my house. The yuel, attracted by the cows' sexy barking, reconfigured himself as a bull, and slithered into the water for fresh conquests.

With Droog on his leash, Weena and I took the stairs down to Cowell Beach, a sandy crescent nestled at the base of the cliffs on the north side of the pier. The waves here marched to shore in regular lines, each of them straight and well-formed, none of them very big. It was a perfect spot to learn surfing. And there, at the far end of the beach was a shed surrounded by surfboards sticking up from the sand, the shed bearing a red-on-yellow sign declaiming, “SURF HERE NOW.”

I found Chang talking to a pale young couple who looked to be honeymooners from the heartland. Raptly they listened to him. Chang had grown into a handsome man: tall, with bleached hair, prominent cheekbones, Genghis Khan eyes, and a laid-back way of talking. While I was starting to look maybe a little middle-aged, Chang still resembled a twenty-year-old. It was like he'd been preserved by the sea and sun.

He was telling his clients to start by catching some waves while lying flat on their stomachs on the boards, and then to try it kneeling. He said he'd paddle out and help them when it was time for them to stand.

“We're all waves,” he concluded, gesturing at the sea. “And these humpers are your friends.”

The honeymooners lugged their long, soft beginner-boards into the water. Chang glanced over at me. “Hey, Jim.”

“Hi, Chang. This is my friend Weena. It's nice to see the master teach.”

Chang shrugged. “Tubes for goobs. Seems like I've gotten too freestyle to win any contests these days. So here I am, grubbin' it. You're still a mailman?”

“A little bit. I was in the hospital this week.”

Chang shook his head. “On top of losing Val last year? Too harsh, man.”

The sympathy put a lump in my throat. Weena took the opportunity to pipe up. “We're on a quest for three surfers.”

Chang considered her as if noticing her for the first time. “Why?”

“Header, Ira and this new girl,” I said, regaining my voice. “I want to talk to them. They live in a crumbling old Victorian house somewhere downtown. I think it's on Yucca Street. But—”

“The Whipped Vic crew!” said Chang. “Sure I know them. Header, Ira, Ginnie—and don't forget Skeeves. I hear they're having a party today.” He chuckled. “Their house is curiously difficult to find.”

“Please lead us there,” said Weena.

“I don't see the Whipped Vic as your kind of scene,” said Chang, not liking Weena's looks.

“I, uh, lost something at that house,” I said. “I need to get it back.”

“What's with you, Jim?” asked Chang. “Is your woman friend a cop?”

“I'm a fallen woman,” said Weena in a low, throaty tone. “A vamp. Just ask Jim.”

Chang gave me a worried look. “You're this hard up, man?”

“It's all very freaky,” I told him, unable to keep holding everything back. “Weena here—she's the mummy that Skeeves is always fucking.”

“No doubt!” said Chang, breaking into wild laughter. He totally didn't believe me. “Same old Jim. What the hell, I'll bring you guys to the Whipped Vic party, sure. It might piss off Header. But that'll make me glad.”

“I appreciate this,” I said.

“Bro!” said Chang. “Remember the time you took me to that Wiggler Labs picnic and you fed them all that gnarly eel?”

“Well, I already knew they were going to fire me,” I said, a little embarrassed.

“You were so frikkin' ripped,” mused Chang. “It was beautiful. And then you started hassling me for more pot in front of everyone.”

“I've matured,” I said.

“Me too,” said Chang. “It sucks.”

A wail from the water distracted him. His woman student had lost control of her board, which was bobbing to shore.

“I gotta do my thing,” continued Chang. “Meet me at the Perg coffee shop around seven-thirty, and we'll catch the Whipped Vic crew there. They always hit the Perg after they ride. Ginnie's a serious coffee hound.”

“Should I bring a salmon for the party?”

“Nah, don't bother, of course not. Bring a bottle of tequila. That'll help with Header. He'll be trippin' about me hooking him up with Jim and—
the mummy
!”

8: The Boardwalk

S
o that left Weena and me with a long afternoon to kill. Going back to my house didn't seem like a good idea, what with the excitement about the sea lions, and with Diane Simly wanting to evict us.

“What are those immense machines?” asked Weena, pointing at the bright structures of Boardwalk. “Is it a, a fish-cannery?”

“Oh, come on, Weena,” I said. “It's an amusement park.” She looked doubtful. “I'll tell you what,” I continued. “I'll take you on some rides.”

“Amusement park,” echoed Weena, thinking this through. “Of course. I rode on a Ferris wheel as a girl. And I've frequented Funger Gardens in Flimsy. But this one—so very many machines.” Another pause. “How clanking and inhumane our Earth has become.”

“You say there's an amusement park in Flimsy too?” I asked, wanting to lighten things up. We were headed along the oceanfront, Droog still on his leash. I still didn't really understand what or where Flimsy was—or why Weena seemed so unfamiliar with the modern world.

“But in Flimsy there's no machines at all,” she said. “No bustling assemblages of clamps and screws and wires and paint and rust. We use zickzack and kessence instead. Have I told you this?”

“You've hardly told me anything, Weena. What are kessence and zickzack?”

“Kessence is like aether. A subtle substance, a higher energy. Zickzack is more complicated. The jivas construct things from it. Zickzack is akin to—to hyperdimensional origami. Zickzack is a piece of space that's been folded or stretched or glued.” Her hands moved rapidly, molding a shape in the air. “For example—take a slab of space and attach the inside to the outside in a certain way. And then anything that tries to pass through the slab bumps into itself coming back out—and it has to stop. In this fashion one makes a zickzack wall.”

“Hold on—I don't get how the jivas can just start bending and gluing space.”

“The jivas and the yuels of Flimsy see the world as if it were a bolt of cloth. They think in higher dimensions. A jiva can reach into the mural that is our cosmos and reconnect the zones.”

I mulled this over as we continued walking. “Those zickzack walls—they can be any shape at all?”

“You see to the heart of the matter, Jim. A wall can be a tube, a block, a strut. My skeleton is enhanced with zickzack braces, and my muscles are strengthened by zickzack bands. Many of the clothes in Flimsy are zickzack as well. By use of diffraction gratings, the jivas can make zickzack of any color. Folded space is a universal construction material.”

“What—what about a lightbulb?” I blindly challenged. “Where do your lamps get their juice?”

“In Flimsy, a lightbulb is a ball with its outside connected to the inside of a ball that stays near a glowing local sun,” said Weena, proud of her experience.

“All right,” I said, pondering the image. But, as usual, I had to wonder if she was putting me on.

By now we were at the Boardwalk entrance. A sunburned woman and her husband were staring suspiciously at us, overhearing our odd conversation.

“How about if I buy us some tickets for the rides?” I asked Weena. “How many do you want to try?”

“All of them?” said Weena, with a smile. “We have considerable time. But I must confess that I brought no money. I expected we'd proceed directly to the Victorian house, and thence to Flimsy.”

I hesitated, remembering the slim contents of my wallet. But, hey, if I was about to leave this world, there was no harm in running up my credit card. I got us all-day passes.

Dogs weren't really allowed around the rides, so I walked down the stairs from the midway to the beach and settled Droog in a shady spot with a paper cup of water. I attached his leash to the steps so no meddlers would assume he was a stray although, really, I could have left him unleashed and he would have waited perfectly well.

Weena and I started with a ride that appeared fairly tame—it was a plastic pirate ship that swung from a tower like a giant swing. I didn't remember ever having gone on this particular ride but, come to think of it, I hadn't been on any of the Boardwalk rides for fifteen years.

“Can you handle this?” I asked Weena.

“I'm an adventuress,” she said as we walked up the gangplank together. “My lover Charles and I were on wilder rides at Funger Gardens in Flimsy. I recall a ride that turns people upside-down. That is, a chute loops around and dumps you into a pavilion whose space has been flipped over. The pavilion is open all around, and the sky is up and the dirt is down because of a space-gluing. So it appears as if you're falling towards the ceiling. And a hysterical voice warns that if you touch the ceiling, you'll explode.”