Spaceland (15 page)
Authors: Rudy Rucker
“This is our family home,” Momo told me.
There was this incredible fountain in front of it, the ultimate transdimensional cosmic ideal of a fountainâlayer after layer of water dripping and squirting and splashing and running down in sheets, totally hypnotic. And then, just to bug me, Deet splashed some water on my face and I started choking. Old Eleia made a sharp comment to him. Deet got a hangdog look, and even went so far as to wipe me off. Of course if he hadn't splashed me, I might never have stopped staring at that fountain. I turned my attention to the house.
It was three stories high, three rooms wide, three rooms deep, and three rooms across in the vinn/vout direction. Though I couldn't see through the walls, I could gauge the size of the house by counting its windows. Three by three by three by three made eighty-one rooms in allâI multiplied it out in my head. Three to the freakin' fourth power. This was a lot of rooms for not all that big a familyâa house beyond a dot-commer's most bloated dreams. What with that fourth-power thing going on, hyperspace had more room in it than regular space.
On our way through the town, we'd picked up a little procession of followers, mostly kids. They kept darting up to touch me, running their hands over my vinner and vouter sides. Several of them made it a point to touch my penis, laughing like maniacs to see it flap. I covered my privates with the velvety cloth of the carry-all at my waist, but still the gawkers kept touching my body. Their hands felt like big worms crawling around inside my guts and my flesh.
“Stop it!” I hollered at one particularly intrusive curiosity-seeker, a stumpy little Klupper boy with a shock of red hair. The sound of
me trying to boss him made everyone laugh. The kid seemed to be a favorite of Momo's family, and no matter how much I yelled at him, he wouldn't stop touching me. So, what the hell, I started screaming as if I were being killed. Throwing a tantrum in my stroller. Momo and Eleia opened their house's front door, and Kalla pushed me and the saucer in after them. We were in an entrance hall. Deet stayed outside to deal with the crowd, but Voule and that red-haired kid had come inside too. They took off towards the back of the house. Kalla untied my hands. I hopped out of the saucer and left it in the hall. The three women of the family ushered me into a sitting room. I sat down on a couch next to Kalla.
me trying to boss him made everyone laugh. The kid seemed to be a favorite of Momo's family, and no matter how much I yelled at him, he wouldn't stop touching me. So, what the hell, I started screaming as if I were being killed. Throwing a tantrum in my stroller. Momo and Eleia opened their house's front door, and Kalla pushed me and the saucer in after them. We were in an entrance hall. Deet stayed outside to deal with the crowd, but Voule and that red-haired kid had come inside too. They took off towards the back of the house. Kalla untied my hands. I hopped out of the saucer and left it in the hall. The three women of the family ushered me into a sitting room. I sat down on a couch next to Kalla.
There were over a hundred pieces of furniture in the room, but nothing was crowded. In your normal ostentatious-type mansion room, you might have twenty-five pieces of furniture, loosely arranged in a five by five grid. Chairs, couches, tables, china closets, like that. But here the floor had room for five by five by five pieces of furniture. Left/right, front/back, vinn/vout. Nice comfortable-looking furniture, too. Jena would have loved seeing this stuff. She was always dreaming of ways to get inside rich people's houses. We'd toured all the palaces in Vienna.
There was a huge rug covering the floor, a beautiful oriental-style carpet with patterns that morphed off into endless variations along the vinn and vout axis. Like in a carpet store where they have a giant stack of rugs in the middle of the floor and you can flip through them. But in here, all those rugs were on the floor at once. The grolly business made a nice profit, all right.
A butler in a complicated black and white outfit came angling across the room and handed me a glass of something bubbly. Though I felt queasier than ever, I tried some, hoping it would settle my stomach. But then when I took a drink, the glass slipped out of my hyperthin hands and fell on the rug. At least it didn't
break. The butler was staring so hard at me that Momo had to remind him ro clean up my mess.
break. The butler was staring so hard at me that Momo had to remind him ro clean up my mess.
A little Klupper came trotting inâthat red-haired kid again. His four-dimensional nose looked like a pig snout. It turned out he was Momo's son, Kalla's little brother Torsten. I think he was sorry about having upset me; he had a toy he wanted to show me. Torsten didn't speak English; he just held out the toy.
I took the toy in both hands and examined it. It seemed incredibly complicated. Looked at from one angle, it resembled a cube with each face a different color. But when I rotated it, sloping terraces bulged out of a few faces. As I turned the toy further, the terraces grew, kind of sucking the rest of the cube along with them, and then it smoothed out and I was holding a new cube with a different set of colors on its faces. The faces swung around as smoothly as if they were on hinges. But yet the thing felt rock solid. I studied the clever gimcrack for a minute.
“Isn't that cute,” said Kalla. “Torsten gave Joe one of his block.
“That's all it is?” I said, amazed that this bizarre object was something so simple. “A block?”
“It's a hypercube,” said Momo. “Like our house.”
“Oh, of course,” I said, just to cover my butt. But then all of a sudden I finally got it. The block stopped looking like it was made of hinges. It was a hypersolid, that was all. I walked across the room, still holding the block, and looked out the window.
Up until now, everything had been seeming to warp and turn as I passed by. It's like when you're walking down a streetsâif you kind of zone out, you see the patterns around you as flat shapes that are deforming as you move. Normally your brain does some kind of reconstruction thing with your two-dimensional input images and you get the idea of three-dimensional objects. But every now and then the filter stops working.
I remembered it happening to me on a poorly planned ski-trip with some party-hearty college buddies. I'd been up studying for three days but my friends were tripping on E, and they talked me into being the driver. I never take psychedelics; I guess I'm afraid of losing control and ending up like my mother. So I was the natural choice for designated driver. Anyway, there I was driving a van of spaced-out buddies, with a couple of quarts of coffee in me, and I started seeing the road as a two-dimensional videogame. The effect was especially strong inside tunnels. I drove us all the way to Aspen like that, finding my way like an ant walking on a photograph.
And now, here in Grollyton, maybe thanks to all that grolly I'd been eating, the opposite thing was starting to happen, a higher-order brain-filter was kicking in and I was really starting to see the fourth dimension. With my third eye, I could see the buildings outside as four-dimensional boxes instead of as flopping shapes. The warping was just changes of perspective. For the first time since I'd gotten to Klupdom, my stomach calmed down.
Voule appeared, carrying a hypercubical box filled with hyperthin sheets of plastic. The sheets were dotted with little squares of a hyperdimensional substance that glittered like silicon. Like tiny glass cookies sitting on trays.
“These are your Mophone antenna crystals,” said Voule. “They're hyperprisms.”
“Cool,” I said, not that I had a clear idea of what he was talking about.
Voule took out a sheet and peeled off one of the square things. To my normal eyes it looked like a thin rectangle of silicon, perhaps half an inch long on either side and a couple of millimeters thick. It had a pair of sturdy copper wires protruding from its edge. The pair of wires ran into the center of the crystal and seemed to disappear there.
My third eye could see that the crystal extended a slight amount
into the fourth dimension. It was actually a continuous trail of crystals. A hyperprism, a four-dimensional box.
into the fourth dimension. It was actually a continuous trail of crystals. A hyperprism, a four-dimensional box.
“Look what the wires do,” said Voule, handing me a four-dimensional magnifying glass that resembled, loosely speaking, a ball on a stick, not that I bothered to waste much time trying to think about it.
Peering through the hyperlens with my third eye, I could see how the copper wires entered the crystal and disappeared near its centerâlike I'd noticed before. But now my third eye could see that the wires had a right-angle vinnward bend in them at the center. Remember that this four-dimensional crystal was a vinn/vour stack of crystal cross sections. The wires left the center of the “top,” or voutmost, crystal to run a short distance vinn to a “bottom,” or vinnmost crystal, there to bend back into a normal space directions In the bottom crystal, the two wires branched apart, circled around and hooked up with each other, making a flat loop that was parallel to the space of the top crystal where the wires originally fed in.
“A loop antenna,” said Voule. “But with the loop in a vinner space that's offset precisely one millimeter from the space of the vouter crystal.” He chuckled and rubbed his hands, which was a bizarre thing to see in and of itself. Like two dark-skinned snakes eating each other. “I've machined these all to have the exact same hyperthickness,” continued Voule. “There's ten thousand of them on these sheets. Momo will set them down into Spaceland with you when she takes you back.”
Just then Deet opened the front door and shouted something to us. A warning? Looking out the window, I saw a whole company of the crimson-suited soldiers by the fountain, with an incredibly ornate flying saucer floating in their midst. It looked like this monstrous bronze cradle Jena and I saw in the Hapsburg Treasure Chamber in Vienna.
“Oh my goodness, the Empress is already here,” said Momo,. “Quick, Voule, secrete Joe's crystals in my saucer. Come, Joe, I'll bind your hands again.” I let her do it.
Voule ran into the entrance hall and stashed the sheets. And a moment later, Deet opened the door, grinning and bowing. A tall, greenish-skinned woman came striding in.
Momo and her family all bowed deeply, and then the Empress
started asking questions. She had a deep, furry voice. Her jewelry was just unreal, with these incredible gems made up of vinn/vout trails of geometric solids. I would have liked to have gotten one for Jena.
started asking questions. She had a deep, furry voice. Her jewelry was just unreal, with these incredible gems made up of vinn/vout trails of geometric solids. I would have liked to have gotten one for Jena.
Of course the Empress wanted to get a good look at me, and Kalla urged me forward. The Empress ran her gnarled old hand across my vinner and vouter sides, then said something to Kalla.
“She wants you to pirouette,” said Kalla. “She wants to see just how thin you are.”
So I did a pirouette to my vinn, and of course I had to trip over my feet and fall down onto the floor, unable to break my fall thanks to my tied hands. The Empress exclaimed in wonder and pity. At her urging, Momo helped me back up and untied my hands. The Empress quizzed Momo for a while. Momo answered in her sweetest tones, with many gestures in my direction. Finally the Empress turned her attention back to me. She asked me a question in her native language, and Kalla translated.
“She wants to know what you think of Klupdom,” said Kalla. “Say something nice. And offer her your gift.”
“Klupdom is wonderful,” I told the Empress. “It's very big. You have a lot of room.” Kalla relayed my answer and the Empress let out a peal of laughter.
Meanwhile I got the mouth of my hypersack open and took out the old mouse. The ball from inside it had fallen out. I bowed and handed the empty mouse to the Empress.
The Empress held it up by its wire, looking at it from every side, perhaps marveling at our flat Spaceland workmanship. But then she got a stern look on her face and told me something else.
“She wants you to promise not to come up here again,” Kalla told me. “Momo told her you'd escaped from Spaceland on your own. She thinks you're a sorcerer. Momo said you came up here to steal our grolly.”
“Oh thanks a lot,” I said. “Tell the Empress I'm just a poor slob who wants to go home.”
Kalla said who knows what, and the Empress nodded. She made a commanding gesture, and then Momo tucked me under her arm and hopped into her saucer, making a show of putting the rope back around my hands. The Empress made a parting speech that nobody bothered to translate for me. Eleia ran into a back room and came out with one of those hyperbazookas for Momo. The Empress shook a warning finger at me, and then Momo and I were on our way, with two military saucers flying in formation with us.
We swept over Grollyton and the river and the field and then we were roaring back down the tunnel to the Cave Between Worlds, the military saucers trailing us on either side.
“What was that last thing the Empress said?” I asked Momo as the long miles of the tunnel swept past.
“She said that I'm to watch over you,” said Momo happily. “She also said you'd do well to forget the black arts you employed to escape your proper space.”
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