Spaceland Read online

  I flapped after Momo, gasping with the effort. She idled along, tauntingly just out of reach, leading me up and vout to where the mountains and hills broke into canyons. We flew into one of great ravines, and just when it looked like we’d hit a dead end, Momo veered vinnward. I curved my body and sailed after her, cutting the air like a knife. The wall ahead of us opened into a huge vertical tunnel that seemed to go up forever. All at once I was too scared and tired to go on. I wanted to be home talking things over with Jena. I hung there in the overwhelming vastness, feeling like a dust speck in a mineshaft. Far beneath me I could still glimpse Spaceland, ringed all around by the rocks of the canyon that led to the shaft.

  I was in fact sinking downwards towards Spaceland. Though I’d felt weightless before, up here there was a faint gravitational pull back towards the center of the Cave Between Worlds. Momo was far above me, high into the great bright tunnel. It seemed the air up there was glowing like the air in the rest of the Cave. The walls around me were jagged rocks with a few grolly seedlings, everything shifting and morphing as I moved. What was I doing here? I continued to drift down.

  “You’re lagging, Joe,” said Momo, swooping back down to join me. “Are you weary?”

  “I want to go home now.”

  “Pish,” said Momo, gathering me into her arms. “Tush. Piffle. You still haven’t seen the town where I live. It’s called Grollyton—the gathering and distribution of grolly is our region’s most important business.”

  “How much further is it?”

  “Eight hundred miles.”

  “What!”

  “Look out!” Momo darted to one side, and three Kluppers on an oversized boatlike saucer came sailing down the shaft, barely missing us. They veered vout and disappeared around the lip of the canyon we’d come in through. “They’re here to ferry up the grolly harvest,” said Momo. “This tunnel is the principal path from our part of Klupdom to the Cave Between Worlds. My great-great-great-grandmother Helga discovered it. At top speed, it’s a half hour’s flight to the top, and perhaps twenty minutes to fly hack down. A bit of a labyrinth, but easy enough for those who know the way.”

  “I don’t want to go!”

  “You must experience the glory of Klupdom, Joe,” said Momo. “Once you familiarize yourself with my land, you may come to love it more than your Spaceland. To my family’s way of thinking, Spaceland is, after all, just a troublesome curtain which hides the machinations of the filthy Dronners.”

  It disturbed me that Momo had this odd resentment towards my universe, but before I could come up with an answer, we’d taken off upwards, as if on some nightmare elevator. The saucer’s windshield curved far around us, but even so, the air beat against me, threatening to tear me loose. I pressed my body against Momo. The walls flew by, a steady blur. I could feel myself getting heavier as we rose. As we moved, my third eye saw a textured mass of solids and gaps in which everything was streaming outwards from the center. We swerved left, right, vinn and vout with sickening lurches. Soon I could see a ball of light up above, and then we shot out of the tunnel’s spherical mouth.

  There was a cluster of buildings near the tunnel’s mouth: Momo’s family grollyworks and two barracks, one for the gray-suited grolly guards and one for the Empress’s crimson-uniformed troops. Some of the grolly guards were unloading one of the bargelike saucers of freshly harvested grolly sent up from down below. Others were setting neat packages of grolly into a smaller saucer with a cover on it. A delivery van.

  Momo didn’t stop to talk with any of the guards and soldiers, and they freely let her go. I don’t think they noticed me at all. Their buildings looked like great sturdy boxes that flexed and warped as we flew past—it would take me some time to get the knack of understanding four-dimensional perspective. Just a bit further on, we touched down in a field.

  It was a pleasant, grassy landscape, with rolling meadows and a river. A flock of small animals was hopping around where we landed, things with transparent wings on bodies like balls of rubber bands that shimmered with every color of the rainbow. They were busy pecking at the ground, digging into it with conical beaks. As we approached, they squawked and flapped away. In the middle distance were the towers of a town. Grollyton. Jena would have liked seeing this.

  Momo set me on the ground and I immediately fell over onto my vinn side, feeling the rocks and grass against my higher skin, the ground pressing against all of my muscles and organs. A nasty sensation. Momo was laughing at me. After a minute’s struggle, I managed to right myself. I bent one leg vinn and one leg vout, giving me some stability. To my regular eyes it looked as if my legs disappeared in the middle of my thigh, but my third eye could make out the way I had them splayed apart. In this world I was like a cardboard cut-out of a man, and it was hard not to fall over.

  I walked around a bit, getting the feel of things. As well as being able to step to my left, right, front, and back, here in Klupdom I could take sidesteps in the vinn or vout directions. My regular eyes saw an Earthlike landscape, but it was just one of an endless number of landscapes parallel to each other in the fourth dimension. For instance I’d see a tree in one of the landscapes, but it wouldn’t be there anymore when I walked a few yards to my vinn.

  My third eye was able to combine all the images into one; it was a little like looking at a series of translucent landscapes overlaid on top of each other. In this view I could clearly see a dirt road that led towards us from the town, a path that my regular eyes saw only in bits and pieces.

  Some Kluppers were coming along the path towards us. In the lead was a coffee-colored man with smooth, powerful motions. His shape was much fuller than Momo’s. He was followed by a tense, smaller man talking urgently to a calm, plump woman, and behind them was a bent older woman with white hair. Not that they were really men and women. Their arms and legs seemed to move right through their bodies as they walked. They wore richly colored clothes. Prancing along behind them was something like a dog. I felt very naked.

  Momo called a cheerful greeting in her native language as the dark man strode up to us. He returned the greeting and gave Momo a loving embrace. He walked around me, looking me over. “Behold the Spacelander,” he said in English after a minute, talking the same old-fashioned way as Momo. “Welcome to Klupdom, Joe Cube. I am Voule.”

  “Hello, Voule,” I said and held out my hand. His grip was strong. He gave a big coarse laugh, whirled me around, and slung me high up into the air. I was completely disoriented by the spinning, but when I felt myself. falling back down, I was able to start flapping hard enough to keep from smashing into the ground. I landed near the plump young woman.

  “Don’t be so mean, Father,” she called to Voule in English. “You’ll frighten him.” She reached out and ran her hand across my higher skin. I felt it as a tickling in my lungs. “I’m Kalla,” she told me, enunciating very clearly. “Momo and Voule’s daughter. Voule didn’t hurt you, did he?” Her dog sniffed at my leg and then gave me a lick that I felt all the way down to the deepest part of my calf muscle. Kalla pushed the dog away and scolded him. “Leave the Spacelander alone, Gogo. You’ll frighten him.”

  “I’m okay,” I said, though in fact I was starting to feel desperate. The mouth of the tunnel was only a few hundred yards away. Maybe I should jump in there and hope for the best? I looked at Kalla with my third eye. The tense man was muttering something to her. For a moment, Kalla looked almost like a person, but then she moved her head in some way that made it turn inside out. Her eyes, mouth and nose sank into her skin, tunneled through her head and emerged on its opposite side. Four-dimensionally speaking, she’d rotated her head to look at her mother Momo.

  “That’s right, Kalla,” Momo was saying. “This isn’t easy for the Spacelander.” She turned her attention to me. “So now Joe, you’ve been presented to Voule, and this fellows next to Kalla is her husband Deet, and this fine lady is my mother Eleia.” Spindly Deet saluted, and the gray-haired woman curved herself in a solemn bow that bro
ught her head down into her chest. I passed up on shaking their hands, in case they too wanted to throw me like a Frisbee.

  The five of them talked in their native language for a few minutes. Though four dimensional sounds weren’t quite as odd as four-dimensional sights, they were pretty strange. The noises had a way of seeming to tune in and out like a weak signal on a radio, but when they were tuned in they shook every bit of my body. Like loud, deep organ notes. Old Eleia took a shot at talking English to me.

  “Momo informs me that a Dronner’s been meddling,” she said to me.

  “It was Wackle,” put in Momo. “A cunning antagonist indeed. Wackle stole all the Spaceland money that we’d gotten, and then proceeded to instruct some other Spacelanders to attack our Joe Cube.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “And I was thinking. Maybe this is all a big mistake. I’d be happy to forget the whole freaking thing.”

  “You’re only fortunate the Dronners are such skulkers and cowards,” said Voule. “Otherwise Wackle might act more directly.” He chuckled and gave me a poke in the stomach. “I can’t get over how Hat you are. How can you Spacelanders stand it? It’s hardly like living at all.”

  “Spaceland is God’s mistake,” added Deet. Kalla and he made a striking pair; like the dot and comma of a semicolon, with Deet constantly whispering to Kalla. He had a fixed, twisted smile. “Were there no Spaceland, the Dronners. wouldn’t find it so easy to sneak up and steal our grolly,” he said. “Isn’t that right, Grandmother Eleia?” I had the feeling Deet was a recent addition to Momo’s family. A gung ho yes-man. I acted a little that way myself when I was around Jena’s mother. She owned a ranch, and I’d grown up in a rented crackerbox.

  Thinking of the house I’d grown up in reminded me again of that dream I’d had about Flatland last night. At some level the dream had helped keep me from getting stabbed. I tried to remember what else had been in it. Maybe there was something I could use now.

  “Don’t let’s try and tell him the whole story at once,” Eleia was saying. “Remember, his poor brain is but three-dimensional. Come with us now, Joe Cube, we’ll repair to Momo and Voule’s dwelling. Your special antenna crystals are ready. The sooner you disseminate them, the sooner we can put an end to the Dronners once and for all.”

  “Cannons open fire!” cried Deet. “Deet at your service!” He did a little war dance. Gogo the dog pranced around him, joyfully bark ing.

  “Yes, yes, we have a golden opportunity,” said Momo cheerfully. “How do you like Klupdom, Joe?”

  “The real question is how do you like Spaceland,” I said. “You guys keep talking about my universe like it was a scab or something.”

  “Ah, but wait till you see the antennas I made,” said Voule. “They’ll make your fortune.”

  “You aren’t out to hurt Spaceland are you?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” said Momo—too quickly? “The Empress would execute anyone who dared to harm Spaceland.”

  “What was that about the antennas helping you to eliminate the Dronners?”

  “Well, if you must know, I’ll tell you,” said Momo, and then paused for a moment. To make up a lie? Voule said something to her in their native language and she resumed talking. “The antennas will project towards the Dronners’ half of the All—to your vinnward side, the side that lies hidden beneath Spaceland. Our notion is that the presence of your telephone signals darting about next to Spaceland will frighten away the timid Dronners. And, yes, they’re sensitive enough to notice the electromagnetic radiation. It’s just as one might repel marauding crows from a cherry tree by tying bright pie plates to the branches. That’s the whole of our plan. And your role? That was my brainstorm of this morning. Although it would be easy enough for us to implant the antenna crystals in your film of space, we need for Spacelanders like yourself and your future customers to pump energy through them. You’ll get rich by selling the new broadband 3G cell-phone technology! We’ll do something for you and you’ll do something for us. It’s what you’d term a ‘win-win,’ Joe.”

  The others listened intently to this explanation, and then burst into speech in their own tongue. I had no idea what they were saying. At least they weren’t outright laughing. As they were talking, some of the birds came back. With everything morphing and appearing and disappearing and turning inside out I felt like throwing up.

  “Come this way,” said Eleia regally, and started off towards the city of Grollyton, followed by Momo and Voule, Kalla and me, Deet and Gogo the dog. Momo’s little saucer tagged along on its own. As we walked through the fields, Momo handed out her fresh grolly to her family members; they all ate it eagerly. Even though they controlled the grolly import business, the stuff was still a treat to them. I got a piece too; Deet and Voule guffawed at the messy way I ate it. I did my best this time not to lose any of the pieces.

  Our path dipped down near the river; it was like many rivers at once. The sight of the four-dimensional water made me uneasy. I had the feeling that if I fell in there I might have trouble finding my way back to the surface. And then of course a gust of wind knocked me over onto my vinn side again and my grolly went all over the place. I screamed for help, afraid I was going to slide into the river. Old Eleia suggested that I ride in Momo’s saucer if I was going to make such a fuss every second.

  Kalla lifted me up into the shiny, hovering vehicle and handed me a piece of the grolly I’d dropped. For the rest of the way to the city, I drifted along behind Momo and the others, still nibbling on my grolly. I felt as helpless as a little boy in a stroller with his lollipop. Come to think of it, the saucer resembled a coin-operated ride like a kid might sit on outside a supermarket, a tiny round thing with a double seat. But the seat was four-dimensional, and in the absence of Momo, I had more space than I could possibly use. My four-dimensional cloth sack rested on the seat next to me.

  I thought of Jena again. If I’d had her there to talk to, I wouldn’t have felt so lost and bewildered. And she would have noticed a lot of stuff that I didn’t see. We could walk down a block together, and at the corner Jena would be able to tell me some little story about everyone we’d passed, while I—I wouldn’t have even noticed any of them unless they happened to be beautiful women, and even then all I’d really have seen would be whether they’d noticed me back. Jena was always telling me I had a problem with seeing anything that wasn’t about Joe Cube.

  I sighed and turned my attention to the saucer’s controls. It was a simple ball on a stick, like a gearshift knob. Apparently you pushed it left/right, up/down, forward/backward and vinn/vout to move. I could have tried pushing on it—perhaps to fly back down the tunnel to Spaceland on my own. But it seemed overwhelmingly likely that I’d smash into a wall. Better just to see what happened next. Momo would take me back soon. The more grolly I ate the better I felt. Even if I didn’t have Jena, it was pretty amazing to be vout here in the All of hyperspace.

  I relaxed into my seat and gazed comfortably at the green fields of Klupdom. They were dotted with unearthly flowers. One flower had overlapping crystals for its petals, another was knots of worms, another was a nested series of spiral cones like calla lilies, another had a single blossom that was a big angular doily with small doilies at each of the big doily’s corners—and a lot more corners involved than you might expect. And then I saw some hyperspace roses. The blossoms were like every stage of a rose at once: the tight bud, the perfect bloom, the seed pod surrounded by blowsy, dropping petals. It was wonderful. Of course the thought of roses sent me back to Jena again. Would I ever get over her? Could I get her back? Let it go, Joe, I told myself. Live in the moment.

  That lasted for about a minute and then I started worrying again. Assuming time was the same here as in our own world, I figured it to be almost two o’clock. There was something I’d said I’d do by one o’clock—oh yeah, give that deposit to Kay Harmid. Not that I had the money yet. lt suddenly occurred to me that—once I got back—I could peel myself vout into the fourth dimens
ion and take money out of bank vaults as easily as Momo had. Just for a loan till the Mophone started making money, you understand. But there was still the problem of Wackle. Would he rob me again? Maybe this time Momo could stop him.

  The buildings of Grollyton were up ahead. We were just close enough now for me to make out some details. It looked to be a tidy, walled town of stone houses and spires, with the grassy fields running right up to the town wall. The wall was set with towers, spaced to the vinn and vout as well as to the left and right. A few hundred of them in all, ornate spiky stone things like you’d see in Europe, but with brilliant, complex crystals at their tops. Jena and I had gone to Austria one summer; it had been awesome, every single little thing different from what you were used to. Actually Jena had liked it more than me, but seeing her wake up happy and excited every day had made it worth it. I’d been hoping to do some more traveling with her after Kencom went IPO, maybe something easy like England this time. But who knew if we’d ever even go out for coffee together again.

  Enough about Jena, dammit! Like I said, Grollyton looked kind of medieval. I could make out a big dark spot in the wall, probably the town gate. It was still a ways off. We paused and Momo dug around in the saucer to produce a rope.

  “I must bind you now,” she told me. “Please stick out your hands.”

  “What?”

  “lt will be easier if I tell the guards that you’re my captive. Otherwise they might ask too many questions.”

  “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”

  “Of course not, Joe. If I wanted to hurt you, I could have done so a thousand times already. I’ll release you as soon as we get to our family’s house. The binding is just for show.”