The Secret of Life Read online

  The Secret of Life

  Rudy Rucker

  Rudy Rucker

  The Secret of Life

  The quotations at the head of each part are taken fromNausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, New Directions Books, Norfolk, Connecticut, 1959.

  La Nausee was first published in 1938 by Librairie Gallimard.

  For Niles Schoening

  Part I

  “I was just thinking,” I tell him, laughing, “that here we sit, all of us, eating and drinking to preserve our precious existence and really there is nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing.”

  —Jean-Paul Sartre,Nausea

  Chapter 1:

  Monday, December 31, 1962 Conrad Bunger was sixteen when it first hit him:Someday you’ll be dead.

  The coat racks were at the foot of the stairs leading down to the bathrooms. Conrad made his way there and patted down the overcoats, feeling for the happy tumor of a hidden pint. It was easy; the bottles grew as thick as autumn fruit. Conrad drew out a pint of Old Crow and gulped at the strange liquid, vile and volatile stuff that evaporated almost before he could swallow.

  With flushed skin, buzzing ears, and the sudden conviction thathe was cool , Conrad fumbled the bottle back into its velvet-collared overcoat. A brief wave of sickness. He made for the men’s room, eyes and mouth streaming, and drank some water from the sink.

  The bathroom was empty, all light and white tile. Mirrors, a stack of clean-smelling linen towels by the sinks, and the urinals across the room. “I’m here by the sinks,” thought Conrad, “and it seems impossible that I will ever be over there by the urinals.” He began to walk. “Now I am moving through space, and time is going on, and now ...” He unzipped and began to piss. “Now, although it seemed inconceivable before, I am on the other side of the room.” His mind felt unbelievably clear. “Last year I never thought I’d be drunk at a dance, yet here I am, just as surely as I’ve crossed this tile floor.”

  As he started back toward the dance floor, the wider implications hit him. “I can’t conceive of being in college, but that will come, too, and when it comes it will feel likenow . I will go to college, and marry, and have children, and all the time it will be me doing it, me doing it in some mysteriously movingnow .

  And then I’ll die. It seems impossible, but someday I will really die.”

  Linda wasn’t interested in all this; Linda was a tennis player. She and Conrad had gone steady for almost a year, and now all of a sudden at the New Year’s Eve dance he was interested in the problem of death.

  Babbling about it on the dance floor, Conrad wore a heavy, glazed expression that made Linda suspicious.

  “Are you drunk? You’re acting funny.”

  “What difference does it make? What difference does anything make? Oh, beautiful Linda, why don’t you sleep with me before we die.”

  “That is just alittle out-of-the-question, Conrad. Maybe you should sit down.”

  Instead he dug back into the coat racks. There were some older boys down there now, but, hell, everyone was drinking, why should they care if he took a little?

  “Get out of here, Bunger. What are you, a pickpocket or something?” It was Preston, a party-boy with cratered skin and a black burr-haircut. He was sipping from the very same pint that Conrad had sampled earlier.

  Conrad attempted a smile. Suddenly he wasn’t cool anymore. “Happy New Year, Preston. Can I have a slug?”

  “Christ, and give me syphilis? Get your own!”

  It was still only 10:30, and those few gulps of whiskey were wearing off fast. The boys in the cloakroom glared at Conrad. He found his way back upstairs.

  The answer came to him as the song ended.Steal some wine from the St. John’s sacristy! He told Linda he’d be back in a few minutes and hurried out into the hall.

  There were some younger boys without dates out there, smoking and horsing around. Right now they were having a belching contest, bouncing the gurpy sounds off the oaken walls. One of them, Jim Ardmore, was a pretty good friend of Conrad’s. They belonged to the same high-school fraternity, a club called the Chevalier Literary Society. Some of the Chevalier members were fairly cool—though Conrad himself had been initiated primarily because his big brother Caldwell had been a member before going off to college and the army.

  “Hey, Jim,” cried Conrad. “You want to help me steal some wine?”

  “How decadent,” said young Ardmore, his mouth twisting. He was skinny, with a heavy shock of dry black hair hanging into his sallow face. “Decadent” was his favorite word, though right now he was using it with a certain irony. “Are we going to rob a liquor store?”

  “No, no. Just come with me. We’ll gettwo bottles.”

  The other boys cheered, and Ardmore went on outside with Conrad. Conrad’s mother had lent him her new blue Volkswagen. It shook a lot in first gear. They drove along River Road for a while, then up a long hill to St. John’s. It wasn’t far.

  Just two years earlier, Conrad’s father had suddenly taken it into his head to be ordained as a deacon in the Episcopal Church. He worked as an assistant at St. John’s, and Conrad was a regular acolyte.

  Sometimes Conrad would light and extinguish the candles, and sometimes he would be in charge of getting out the bread and wine. As a result, he knew (1) where the locked closet with the communion wine was and (2) where to find the key. The church itself was always unlocked. Conrad’s father felt very strongly about leaving churches unlocked—he made a point of leaving a note saying,“A locked door, an unfaithful act,” on any locked church door he encountered.

  Conrad and Ardmore hurried in, got the liquor closet unlocked, and gazed down at a full case of cheap California port. High high-school laughs. They each took a bottle and tumbled back into the VW.

  Conrad was a little leery of bringing stolen church wine into the party, so he and Ardmore drove around for an hour, chugging at the stuff. Lights swept past, stores and cars, and the evening began to break into patches. Conrad could hear himself talking, louder and more eloquently than ever before.

  “We’re going todie , Jim, can you believe that? It’s really going to stop some day, all of it, and you’re dead then, you know? It’s going to happen to you personally just like when I was at the dance and walking across the bathroom, how at the sink I thought I’d never be at the urinals, and then I was there anyway. I can’t stand it, I don’t want to die, time keeps passing.”

  Ardmore laughed and laughed, never having seen Conrad so animated. They realized they weren’t going to be able to finish even the first bottle and headed back to the dance. Linda met Conrad in the hall.

  “Wherehave you been? You stood me up!” It was past midnight, and people were slow-dancing inside.

  Conrad was eager to share his new wisdom.

  “Conrad, if you ever want to go out with me again ...”

  “But I don’t!” brayed Conrad, realizing somewhere inside himself that this was true. “I don’t want to go out with you anymore, Linda, because you don’t understand death.”

  A few onlookers had gathered. For the first time in Conrad’s life, people were looking at him with interest. He’d been a weenie long enough. Get drunk and talk about philosophy! That was the ticket! He groped for a concept.

  “God is dead!” he shouted, suddenly understanding the dry phrase. “All is permitted!” With a whoop of laughter, Conrad threw the ashtray into the air and watched it shatter on the marble floor.

  Next came a darkness, voices, and rough motion.

  “Take it easy, Bunger, you’ve got puke all over yourself. Is this your house?”

  “Uh, uuuuuh.”

  “Yeah, that’s his house. Park his car, ring the doorbell, and let’s get out of here. Be sure to get that other bottl
e of wine.”

  “Right.”

  The dark forms disappeared, the house door opened, and there was Conrad’s father in his bathrobe.

  “Shouldn’t wait up for me,” muttered Conrad. “Lea’ me alone, you old bastard.”

  There was yelling. His parents put him to bed, he threw up again, lights and more yelling, his mother screaming,“Pig! Pig!”

  Finally he was alone. The bed and room began to spin. Conrad fumbled for a way to stop it. There had to be some head-trick, some change of perspective to make the torture stop ... there. He felt himself grow lighter and less real. Dropping off to sleep, he had the feeling he was floating one inch above his bed. And then ... he was in the throes of an old, recurrent dream.

  The structure is circular, high in the middle. It could be a circus big top. Conrad is off to one side, watching the thin, bright shapes that move above the center. They are flames, these beings; they are rods of light. The whole enclosed space is filled with moving lights, and they have reached some wonderful, awful conclusion about Conrad’s future... .

  Chapter 2:

  Tuesday, January 1, 1963 Conrad’s best friend, Hank Larsen, had gone to a different New Year’s Eve dance. New Year’s Day, Conrad walked over to Hank’s house to compare notes.

  “No driving,” warned Conrad’s mother. “After last night, you can just stay in the neighborhood.” “OK, Mom.” Conrad’s dog Nina followed him over to Hank’s house. Hank was in his room, reading a science-fiction book and listening to one of his radios. Hank’s big hobby was electronics—over the years he’d assembled four or five different types of radio transmitters and receivers. He even had a ham license from the FCC. “The Magnificent Paunch,” intoned Hank by way of greeting. Friends for years now, the two had a large number of code phrases, many of uncertain meaning. “High guineaus, Si,” responded Conrad. “I don’t feel too peak.” “Got y’self all drunked up, did you, Zeke? Got a touch of that riiind fever?” “It was great,” said Conrad, breaking into normal speech. “Ardmore and I stole wine from the church and got really plastered. I was talking about time and death and some guys drove me home.” “I bet you got caught bigger’n shit.” “Yeah. They were both waiting up. I don’t remember too clearly. I think maybe my old man slugged me.

  I was cursing and everything.” “What’d they say today?” “Well, nothing, really. But what about you? What happened on your big date with Lehman? Did you finger her again?” Hank closed his book and stood up. He was tall and blond, and his girlfriend Laura Lehman was crazy about him. Instead of answering Conrad’s question directly, Hank nodded his head warningly toward the hall. “Let’s roll out.” “OK. Let’s walk over to Skelton’s pasture. Nina’s here too.” “Bo-way.” It was a cool, gray day. The frozen grass crunched underfoot. Hank’s family lived in a subdivision which petered out in a series of large cow pastures. The land all belonged to an old Kentucky gentleman named Cornelius Skelton. In the mid-fifties, Skelton had gotten into the papers for claiming he’d seen a UFO

  land in his fields. Skelton said it had butchered one of his hogs, and he had a mineral crystal that the saucer was supposed to have left. He wasn’t fanatical about it, or anything—he just insisted that he’d seen a UFO. He was a pleasant, courtly man, and most people ascribed this one eccentricity to his grief over the premature death of his wife. Conrad had been wandering the pastures ever since the Bungers moved to Louisville in 1956. It was his favorite place. Today, Hank and Conrad were walking along a small stream that ran through the pasture bottoms. You could see bubbles moving beneath the clear patches in the ice. “Did youfuck her?” Conrad asked finally. Hank seemed reluctant to discuss it—like a rich man embarrassed to describe his treasures to a hungry beggar. “Did you do it in your car?” demanded Conrad. “No, uh, her mother was out. We used Laura’s room.”

  “You planning to beat off on this, Paunch?”

  “Come on, Hank, I have to know. What does it feel like? Do they like it, too?”

  “I felt tingly all over,” said Hank slowly. “It was like pins and needles in all of my skin, and I was dizzy.

  The first time was real fast, but the next one took longer. She was crying some of the time, but squeezing me real tight. I would have done it a third time, but I only had two rubbers. Just when I was leaving, her old lady came home. ‘Was it nice at the dance, children?’ ”

  “God.”

  They walked on in silence for a while, following the stream. Nina ran ahead, sniffing for rabbits. At the crests of the hills on either side you could see houses, new split-levels like the one Hank lived in. A crow flapped slowly to the top of a leafless black locust tree and perched there, cawing. Conrad couldn’t get over the fact that his best friend Hank had actually managed to get laid.

  “You really did it, Hank! That’s wonderful. Congratulations.” They paused to shake hands solemnly.

  “You know what I was thinking last month—” Conrad continued, “about the only wayI’m likely to ever get any pussy? I was thinking that when we have World War Three, there’ll be a whole lot of dead women around, you know, good-looking dead women with their clothes all ripped, and ...”

  “Oh, come on, Conrad. You won’t be a dry stick forever.” Hank poked Conrad and sang an altered bar fromMy Fair Lady : “With a little bit of luck, we’ll all fu-huh-uck!”

  “Yeah, I guess so, sooner or later. Today’s the first day of 1963. I can remember when I was about ten, reading an article inPopular Science about all the neat inventions we were supposed to have in 1963.

  Personal helicopters, self-driving cars. Time keeps passing, Hank, and before we know it, we’ll be dead.

  That’s what I was telling everyone last night. We’re all really going to die.”

  “So what, as long as you have some fun first.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re just worried you’ll die avirrgin .” Hank had a special, nasal voice he used for unkind cuts like this. “The SacredVirrrgin Mary.”

  “Sure, religion’s bullshit,” said Conrad, steering back to his chosen topic. “Heaven and hell are just science fiction. But can there really benothing after death? I mean a corpse is the same matter as the living person was. Where does the life go to? Where did it come from?”

  “Ghosts,” said Hank. “The soul.” In the distance, Nina was barking.

  “That’s right,” said Conrad, “Iknow I have a soul. I’m alive, I can feel it. But where does itgo ?”

  They were near the end of the pastures now, and Nina was running back toward them. The two boys squatted to wait for her, squatted and watched the bubbles beneath the ice, ice patterned in ridges and blobs, clear here and frosty there. Toward one bank, the ice domed up. A lone, large bubble wobbled there, braced against the flow. Smaller bubbles kept arriving to merge into that big bubble, and it, in turn, kept growing and sending out tendrils, silver pseudopods that pinched off into new bubbles that were swept further downstream. Nina came panting up, pink tongue exposed. Her breath steamed in the cold air. “Good dog,” said Hank, patting her. “Hey, Conrad, let’s go back. Lehman’s mother’s giving an open house today. Maybe your parents will let you come.”

  “Hubba-hubba, Zeke, I done lost my life-force up Laura’s crack.”

  “No, listen, I know where the life-force goes, Hank. I’ve got it figured out. There’s a big pool of life-force ... out there.” Conrad gestured vaguely. “It’s like that big bubble under the ice, you see. And each of us is a little bubble that can merge back in.”

  “Like a soul going to heaven.” They were walking now, headed back toward the houses.

  “And the big thing is that once a little bubble joins the big one, the little bubble isgone . The soul goes to heaven,and then it’s absorbed into God . The drop of life-force slides into the big pool. Isn’t that neat, Hank? Your life-force is preserved, but your personality disappears! I’ve invented a new philosophy!”

  Still riding high from his big first fuck, Hank felt no need to b
urst his friend’s bubble. “It’d be cool to major in philosophy next year. Find out all the answers and then become a Bowery bum.”

  “God, yeah.” Conrad felt elated. “Do you think we’ll be able to get beer over at Lehman’s?”

  “Sure. Her old lady don’t give a shit. She’ll be plowed anyway.”

  On the way back, Conrad began jumping back and forth over the frozen stream. With his big new idea in mind, he felt light as a feather. The floating feeling from bed last night came back ... he’d never jumped so far so easily before.

  “Look, Hank, I can fly!” As Conrad said it, the feeling disappeared. He landed heavily on the stream bank, and one foot crashed through the ice.

  “You’ll fly better once we get into Lehman’s brew.”

  But Hank’s mother waylaid them before they could make off with the Larsen family car. She was a pleasantly plump redhead with a gentle voice. Conrad had an unsettling feeling that she knew exactly what both he and Hank had done last night.

  “Conrad, your mother called. Your father would like for you to come home right away. And, Hank, why don’t you leave the poor Lehmans alone for one day? Weren’t you supposed to rotate the Valiant’s tires this afternoon?”

  “Oh, Ma.”

  “Goodbye, Conrad. And Happy New Year!”

  Hank and Conrad exchanged shrugs. Hank was led into his house, and Conrad started back home. His father was waiting in their gravel driveway.

  Mr. Caldwell Bunger, Sr., had moved his family to Louisville when Conrad turned ten. He’d gotten two acres of land cheap from Cornelius Skelton, and he’d built a white split-level, a comfortable house set well back from the road. He’d never gotten around to putting blacktop on the long driveway.

  Approaching his father, Conrad’s mind wandered.Gravel driveway . When Hank and Conrad were twelve, they’d had a special game with the gravel. They’d get a shovelful of it, douse it with gasoline, light it, and then throw the burning sand and rocks up into the air. It looked like people made of fire, sort of, and ...