The Hollow Earth Read online

  The Hollow Earth

  The Narrative of

  Mason Algiers Reynolds

  of Virginia,

  Edited by

  Rudy Rucker

  ********

  * THE HOLLOW EARTH is Copyright © 2006 Rudy Rucker.

  * This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  * 1st Edition Published by W. Morrow, New York, 1990.

  * 2nd Edition Published by MonkeyBrain Books, Austin, Texas, 2006. The paperback version of the may be purchased from

  www.monkeybrainbooks.com/Hollow_Earth.html

  * Electronic version of the 2nd Edition released on January 17, 2011 under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No-Derivative License as described at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0. You are free to share the work under the same License. You must attribute the work as “Copyright © 2006 Rudy Rucker”. You may not alter the work. You may not use this work for commercial purposes without permission from Rudy Rucker.

  * Further information at

  www.rudyrucker.com/thehollowearth

  ********

  Contents

  1: Leaving the Farm

  2: Murder

  3: On the River

  4: Eddie Poe

  5: The Bank of Kentucky

  6: Virginia Clemm

  7: Aboard the Wasp

  8: Antarctica

  9: Symmes’s Hole

  10: Seela

  11: Inward!

  12: Tekelili

  13: Through the Spindle

  14: MirrorEarth

  15: The Conqueror Worm

  Editor’s Note to the First Edition

  Editor’s Note to the Second Edition

  1: Leaving the Farm

  I went to Poe’s funeral yesterday. There was a minister, four mourners, and a grave digger. The grave digger called me a damned nigger and chased me off. Otha should have been there to see.

  Eddie wanted to write the account of our “unparalleled journey,” but he’s dead any way you look at it and Otha’s in the Umpteen Seas. That leaves me and Seela living as penniless, free Baltimore Negroes, with the winter of 1849 coming soon. I’m writing as fast as I can.

  My name is Mason Algiers Reynolds. I am a white man; I am a Virginia gentleman. My unparalleled journey started thirteen years ago, when I left my father’s farm in Hardware, Virginia. There were five of us on the farm: Pa, me, Otha, Luke, and Turl.

  I woke in the dark that last day at home. I’d been dreaming about being buried alive. The dream was tedious more than it was scary. In the dream I couldn’t see anything; I could just hear and feel. First there was the noise of the folks praying over me, and then came the bumping of the coffin being carried out and lowered into the ground. There were some hymns, and then they shoveled the dirt in on me and it was nothing but black.

  Right after I woke up, everything felt like a coffin—my bed, my room, Pa’s farm. But then I got happy, remembering that I was fifteen and that tomorrow I would drive the wagon to town.

  I got up to pee out the window. The moon was low, and the predawn breeze brought the smell of rainsoft fields. We’d made it through another winter, we Reynoldses, and tomorrow was today. Pa was sending me and Otha to Lynchburg to sell three barrels of whiskey. We needed seeds, a new plow, some books for me, and a wife for Otha if we could find one. All winter I’d had nothing but our accumulated subscription copies of The Southern Literary Messenger to read, which is where, come to think of it, I’d gotten the idea of being buried alive: from Edgar Poe’s tale “Loss of Breath.”

  Beneath the surface, my thoughts were still running down the tracks of that bad dream, wondering about the worms that eat corpses. Were corpse worms the same as the purple crawlers that Otha and I used for fishing? Or were corpse worms the fat white grubs with hard heads that bite? I’d once read in the Messenger that if an angel from another star were to come and do a census of Earth, she’d think this was a planet of worms, since there’s more of them than of any other living creature. Beetles would come in second, as I recall.

  In the barn, our new-farrowed sow was grunting, warm and slow. I said a prayer and went back to sleep.

  Turl woke me up for real, yelling up the stairs that it was time for breakfast. She was a handsome yellow woman who never tired of telling all of us that she was too good to be a slave. According to Turl, her grandmother had been a Hottentot princess and her grandfather a Spanish buccaneer. It was no secret what she thought of the rest of us: Pa was a drunkard, I was a dreamer, Otha a baby, and Luke a mule. The only one of her relatives she ever said anything nice about was her sister’s little son, Purly, at the Perrows’ in Lynchburg. We all put up with her because with Ma dead, Turl was the only woman to care for us men. When she was feeling sweet, she could cook and sew and clean to a fare-thee-well.

  But today wasn’t one of Turl’s sweet days. Breakfast was a sloppy cold porridge of watery grits and rank fatback. Turl slapped some of it in bowls for me and Pa, and took the rest of it out to the slave cabin, holding her mouth stiff and stuck out. I was glad to be leaving today.

  “How’s the boy, Mason?” said Pa, coming in from the bam. He’d already been out to feed the stock. He was big and strong and he had a black beard. Sometimes I wondered how Ma could have stood to kiss him—in the picture we had of her, she looked so delicate that it seemed like a rough beard would have torn her face. I took after Ma; I was blond and short, with pale brown eyes. Ma’d died aborning me. Occasionally I worried that Pa hated me for it; not that he was ever harsh with me—far from it. Pa could be rough on other men, but he still had his gentleness to let out, and mostly it came to me.

  He walked over and rested his callused hand on my neck. “Are you ready for the trip, son?”

  “Lord yes, Pa! I’ve been packed for two days! Soon as we eat our breakfast, I’ll help load the barrels into the wagon.”

  “Luke and Otha and I can do that, Mason. My boy’s too fine to coarsen up his hands. He’s going to be a university man!”

  “Aw, Pa. You sit down and eat, too.”

  We sat and ate for a bit, and pretty soon Pa commenced to chuckle. “Tastes like Turl’s upset.”

  I stuck my lips out to imitate Turl’s mad face, and Pa laughed harder, making a deep rumbling sound like a bear. I set my dish down on the floor and let Arf finish it. He’d been lying under the table waiting, the way he always did.

  “Looks like Turl’d want her son to have a wife,” Pa said. “With her womb all dried up, that’s the only way we’re going to raise any more head of pickaninnies.”

  “Otha’s scared,” I told Pa.

  “He won’t stay scared long, young buck like him.” Pa wiped his mouth off and stared at me. “Would you be scared of a wife, Mason?”

  “No sir. Leastways I don’t think so. Not if she was as kind and beautiful as Ma.”

  “Be careful of the women in the Liberty Hotel, Mason. They beautiful, but they not kind. After you sell the whiskey to Mr. Sloat, go straight to Judge Perrow’s and stay on there with his family. I’m putting a demijohn of my best mash on the wagon for him.”

  “Yessir. I’ll give it to him.” The good thing about Judge Perrow was his daughter, Lucy, a reckless blond girl several years my senior. Last year Pa’d brought me into town for Christmas, and Lucy had played a kissing game with me.

  “Good. And, Mason, it might not be a bad idea to just buy Otha a gal from the judge’s household, or from one of his friends. Those poor niggers at the slave auction, there’s no telling what they’ve been through. I recall the judge had a nice pickaninny gal called Wawona. Look at the Perrows’ Wawona before going off half-c
ocked.”

  I winced at the thought of doing business with sour old Judge Perrow. It was no secret that he thought of me as an unmanly bookworm. Last Christmas dinner when I’d tried to talk about one of Edgar Poe’s stories in the Messenger, the judge had launched into a long tirade against Poe’s character and against literary thinking in general. I was already known to all our family and friends as a good reader and writer; indeed, whenever Pa or my uncle Tuck needed a letter written, they came to me. When I’d taken exception to the judge’s remarks about literature, he compared me to a chicken-killing dog and asked if I’d eaten a dictionary. It was hard to see how he and a girl as nice as Lucy could even be in the same family. Pa saw my expression and sighed. “Just make sure the new girl is broad-hipped and healthy. Mason, and try not to pay more than sixty dollars. Don’t give Otha too much say-so; he changes his mind every ten minutes anyhow.”

  There was a whoop out in the barnyard, and then Otha was at the door. “Lez go, Mist Mason! Lez go to town!” He was dressed in his Sunday clothes, Pa’s castoffs carefully patched by Turl. Otha was three years older than me and a foot taller. He was lanky like Turl and coal-black like Luke. His head was small and round, and his big mouth went a third of the way around. Yesterday he’d been scared, but today he was raring to go.

  Luke was out in the barnyard waiting with the wagon and the three barrels of whiskey that Pa’d distilled this winter. In the summers we grew corn, and in the winters Pa turned the corn into whiskey. It wasn’t just that Pa liked whiskey; this was the handiest way of getting our crop in to market. One barrel of whiskey was worth the same as five hundredweight of corn.

  Otha helped Pa and Luke roll the barrels up some boards and onto the wagon. Arf got excited and started barking. He had the noble profile and the feathery legs of a retriever. His legs and ruff were white, but his head and body had the tawny coloring of a collie. I’d grown up talking to him like a person. He had a way of moving his eyebrows and his feathery tail so expressively that I often felt he understood me. Now in the farmyard, his tail and eyes were merry as he pumped his barks skyward, There was no sign of Turl. Pa went back in the house to get Judge Perrow’s demijohn.

  “Gon’ get us a sweet gal, Mist Mase?” said Luke. He was a strong man with a dazed air about him. It was as if he’d given up thinking years ago.

  “Ain’t no us, Daddy,” cried Otha. “Gon’ get me! I’m the one fixin’ to jump over the broom with the new gal.” In our part of Virginia, a master married slaves to each other by having them jump over a broom handle that was held a few feet off the ground.

  “Sho you is!” said Luke. “Just like me an’ yo mam.” He glanced back at the slave cabin and lowered his voice. “Don’t bring back no thin mean yaller bitch, Marse Mase, I swear to God. Bring me a black gal with a big butt.”

  “Ain’t gon’ be yo gal, Daddy,” said Otha one more time. He tried to laugh, but the sound came out all cracked. I knew he wanted to leave as bad as I did. Things were too tight on our little farm.

  I went in the bam and got our mule. His name was Dammit. Pa’d given him a big breakfast of corn, and he was in a mood to ramble. Otha and I hitched Dammit to the wagon tongue and drove him forward a little, checking how the barrels rode. They were heavy enough so that Otha and I’d have to walk, but that was no matter. It was turning into a sunny April day and the mud had stiffened up pretty good.

  Finally, Pa came out with the judge’s demijohn. I could smell from Pa’s breath that he’d sampled it. Without me there to watch over him, he’d probably stay drunk for a week, Poor Pa. I hugged him goodbye, and Otha started Dammit toward the gate. We all knew Turl still had her licks to get in, and now there she was in her cabin door with her face all wet.

  “Otha!”

  “Mam?”

  “Otha, ain’t you gon’ say goodbye?”

  “Goodbye, Mam.” Otha looked desperately unhappy.

  “Otha, why you wanna leave yo mam?” She started across the barnyard toward Otha. If I was man enough to take the wagon to town, I was man enough to stand up to Turl. I stepped in between her and Otha, blocking her way.

  “We’ll be back in a few days, Turl. Goodbye.”

  “Get outten my way, you whelp.”

  She raised her hand as if to slap me, and I wondered what I could do about it. Pa spoke up before it went that far, “Turl!”

  She stood there a moment, a proud thin woman afraid of losing her son. Otha urged Dammit on through the gate, and then I was out of the barnyard, too. Arf slipped out the gate after us. his tail held demurely down. I scolded him, and he cringed, but he kept right on coming. Luke and Pa and Turl stood there watching us, Turl with her hand still up in the air. Finally, she started to wave. I prayed we wouldn’t bog down in the muddy farm track that led over the hill to the highway—not that the highway was anything more than a dirt road three ruts wide. If we could only get out of the grown-ups’ sight!

  Otha was thinking just like me, and if Dammit had balked then, I think we would have stove in his ribs. But Dammit pulled and the wagon rolled and in just a few minutes we creaked up over the crest of the rise that separated our farm from the highway. We looked back and gave the parents a last wave, little realizing we’d never see them again, not that we would have stopped even if we’d known. We were right sick of life on that farm.

  It was a fine day, the last day in April. There was enough wet in the ground so the sun had a weak, watery feel to it. The highway was muddier than I’d expected, and every so often Otha had to get behind the wagon and push while I urged Dammit from the front. Arf liked it best when Dammit would balk and I’d have to pull at the mule’s bridle. Arf would help out then, barking and snapping and coming as close as possible to getting kicked, all the while glancing up at me for approval. Going down hills, Otha and I would hop on the wagon and drag the brake levers against the wheels. It was hard, muddy work, especially for Otha, but our spirits rose higher and higher the closer we got to Lynchburg. Otha began chaffing me about Lucy Perrow—I’d had no one else but Otha to confide in that time she’d kissed me—and I let him in on Pa’s plans about Wawona.

  “What she look like?” Otha wanted to know.

  I only remembered pigtails and a wide smile, but I talked her up to Otha, secretly hoping we wouldn’t have to go to the auction. There’d be ugly rednecks there, and I’d be cheated sure as night.

  The green-hazed woods were full of blooming white dogwoods, peeping out at us like shy girls. There were bright red-buds, too, and best of all, the big purple bell-blossoms of the paulownia trees that only bloomed every few years.

  I knew the way to Lynchburg from having made the trip with Pa before. The highway meanders along next to Rucker Run Creek for some eight miles, at which point you find yourself on a high bluff looking down at the James River and at the town of Lynchburg on the river’s other side. The creek cascades right down the cliff, but a body has to drive left and loop all around to get past the bluffs to the James.

  Before hopping on the wagon to ride the brakes down the loop, Otha and I paused a moment to rest. I unharnessed Dammit, and we led him over to the last pool of Rucker Run for a drink. He slurped for a bit and then began cropping at some of the early plants that stuck up green through the mud. Arf splashed across the creek and into the underbrush, in search of small critters. When Arf hunted, he flexed his ear muscles so that his flap ears would hang an extra half-inch farther out from his head. It gave him a harried, overalert look.

  Otha and I washed some of the mud from the road off ourselves, and then we skirted around the edge of the pool, right out to the edge of the cliff where the creek went waterfalling down. It was a lovely view of Lynchburg from up there, all framed by the water and the flowering trees. The little town was on a hill that sloped down to the river.

  “I’m a bird,” sang Otha. “I sees everything, and when I poops, look out!” He pointed out across the river toward the top of the hill. “Looky there, Mase, see the carriage ridin’ over the hil
ltop with the two dogs runnin’ after? I bet that’s yo Judge Perrow. Wawona, here I comes! And, Lord Lord, see all the folks down to the market, Mase. You reckon it’s Saturday? Whoooee! See there down in the river, they loadin’ up a boat! How ‘bout you send me and my new gal to Richmond fo’ a honeymoon?”

  The boat Otha was pointing to was the sort known as a bateau. The bateaus weren’t cruise boats, they were flat-bottomed barges designed to carry tobacco down the shallow, rocky James to Richmond. They were rough and uncomfortable; crews of slaves poled them downstream and up.

  The tobacco warehouses were on the first street up from the river, as were the cigar factories and the flour mill. The next street held the wholesale merchants: the feed stores, the slave traders, and the like. Another block up was Main Street, with its market square, its fancy stores, and the Liberty Hotel. Higher yet was the crest of the slope on which Lynchburg flourished, and on this crest was the great domed structure of the county courthouse, flanked by the offices of the bankers and lawyers who fattened on the city’s trade.

  We were brought back to the present by the howls of Arf. With great floundering and yelping, he came crashing toward us through the underbrush. His ears were flat to his head. Close behind him was a filthy half-naked boy of ten.

  “An Injun!” exclaimed Otha.

  Arf splashed across the pool and threw himself down at my side, panting with his mouth wide open. Now that he’d stopped running, he looked totally relaxed. Had the Indian boy threatened him? Or had it been the other way around?

  “Hey,” I called to the dirty red boy in the breechcloth. He wasn’t so much dirty as he was marked. That is to say, the black marks on his chest and face were regular stripes rather than random splotches. “Why you chasin my dog?”

  The boy made a gesture and melted back into the woods. “Injuns’ll eat dogs,” said Otha. “Especially in the spring.”

  “What was that he did with his hand?” I asked. “Was he waving goodbye?”

  “Maybe he puttin’ a hex on us. Lez move on, Mason.” Otha didn’t call me Mist or Marse when it was the two of us alone.