Spaceland Page 5

  It was thanks to Oley that Jena was as screwed up as she was. Oley didn’t like to admit that Jena was part Indian, so right off the bat she’d been told to deny half of what she was. He ragged on Indians every chance he got. And when Jena started blossoming out, the real trouble started. Oley had been totally unable to deal with the notion of Jena going out with boys. He’d even made some halfassed attempts at sexual abuse, and when Jena told her mother, her mother had taken Oley’s side. Jena had needed to stay away from Jean and Oley as much as she could. Chucky’s was a haven for her.

  Chucky’s was a slots, poker, keno and bingo place, with a big native crafts giftshop. The didn’t actually have blackjack there, but Jena had thoroughly researched the whole topic of gambling as her senior project as a Communications major at University of Arizona. She’d drawn up a draft for a pitch the Yavapis could make to the State of Arizona for a full range of games in their casinos, but thanks to a bunch of out-of-state lobbyists from the Vegas casinos, nothing had ever come of it.

  After half an hour of lessons from Jena, I was drawing each of my hands up to the maximum total possible without busting. With my subtle vision, I knew what the dealer had in the hole card, and I knew which cards were next on the deck. I was winning maybe three-fifths of the time. A nice edge for an even-money game.

  “How long did that alien say your power would last?” asked Jena. “Let’s hurry up before it goes away. Let’s get dressed and pack. I figure we’ll stay up at Tahoe for a couple of days.”

  “She didn’t say how long,” I said, following Jena into the bedroom. “It might be forever.”

  “Did the alien want something back from you? In return?”

  “It wasn’t that clear. It’s like she wants me to start a company. Build some kind of machine for the fourth dimension.”

  Jena guffawed. “What would you tell the investors?”

  “I could do it,” I said defensively. “I’m a good presenter.”

  “About the fourth dimension?” said Jena. “What is the fourth dimension, anyway?”

  “I have no idea,” I admitted.

  I was ready way before Jena, so I used the extra time to disconnect the 3Set and carry it out to the car. With the added strength of my higher muscles it was easy. When I got back into the apartment, it occurred to me to check my weight, but it was the same as before. Even though I had some extra body parts in hyperspace, the new mass didn’t seem to count towards my weight down here. Good deal.

  “Why’s that stupid machine in there?” asked Jena when we went out to the car.

  “I want to drop it off at Kencom before we do anything else. Ken Wong would fire me if he found out I brought it home.”

  “You’re not going to need a job once we get through playing blackjack,” said Jena. Her cheeks were pink with excitement. “We’ll retire!” She burst into song. “Take this job and shove it! …”

  “Even so, I don’t want to get into trouble,” I said. “Kencom’s right on our way. It’s Saturday. Nobody will be there but Spazz.”

  Driving wasn’t as hard as I’d thought it might be. I was getting better and better at filtering out the subtle vision of things I didn’t need to see—things like the engine under my hood, the rocks under the road, and the insides of the other cars.

  The only vehicle in the Kencom lot was Spazz’s red motorcycle. I got Jena to help me get the 3Set inside the building; she held the doors for me so I wouldn’t have to set the thing down.

  Spazz was there at his screen as usual, tapping his nose ring and occasionally typing. I could see into his body and sense how it felt. Hungry, lungs congested, a bit of a backache. But I Couldn’t read his thoughts any more than I could Jena’s.

  “Too late,” said Spazz, looking over at me. “Ken already called the cops.”

  “Oh no!” I cried.

  Spazz was seized by rhythmic spasms, making a noise that was a mixture of laughs and coughs. “Joke, boss-man, joke,” he finally got out. He was wearing a different T-shirt today, a cartoon of a man with his head up his butt and a label saying YOUR2CHEEK BUG.

  Now Spazz noticed Jena. “Hi, Jena!” he said. “Ready for that motorcycle ride to Big Sur?”

  “I have no idea what we said to each other last night,” said Jena, smiling prettily. “Don’t hold me to it. It was another century, my dear.” Thanks to my subtle vision, I could sense her heart beating a little faster. She was actually interested in Spazz. I hadn’t realized that before.

  “You’d dig it on my bike,” Spazz was slowly murmuring, his body buzzing as much as Jena’s. “It’s like flying. But maybe today’s a little too chilly. Especially with your husband in here.” He turned his attention back to me. I was screwing with the cables, getting the 3Set hooked back up, not looking directly at him.

  “So the 3Set didn’t work so good, huh?” said Spazz from behind me, his expression a mixture of pity and contempt. “I’ve been thinking about some things to try. I’m glad you brought it back. I’m gonna see what happens if I trade off some of the frame rate for increased resolution. You mentioned that you left it running while we were at the bar. Did it look any different when you got home?”

  “Uh—no,” I said. Jena and I had agreed that we’d keep my subtle vision a secret for now. “It looked the same.”

  “Let’s have a look,” said Spazz, turning it on. The Rose Bowl parade appeared, little floats moving across the bottom of the 3Set tank.

  “Jena and I better get rolling,” I said. “We’re driving up to Tahoe for the day.”

  “Snowboarding?” said Spazz, mildly interested.

  “We’re gonna hit the casinos,” said Jena, pursing her lips. She didn’t say more than that. I knew it was killing her not to talk about our plan. Jena hated to keep secrets.

  Spazz let out a sudden bark of a cough, staring at something over my shoulder. “Who’s your friend?” he asked. I’d been so busy watching Spazz and Jena look at each other that I hadn’t stayed aware of the door behind me. Hut now I put some of my attention back there, and, oh God, it was Momo.

  I turned around and looked at her with my regular eyes. She was presenting herself differently from yesterday. She didn’t look all jiggly and deformed. She looked, in fact, almost like a regular woman. A blonde, imposing woman, somewhat overweight, with a wide mouth and bright eyes. The mouth was hard to read; it was somewhere between friendly and intimidating. Not a woman to cross. She was wearing a tight green T-shirt and light purple slacks. Her feet—well her feet didn’t look right at all. They were in black shoes, but turned sideways, almost backwards in fact. And she was hovering a few inches above the floor. Our gravity didn’t seem to have any effect on Momo.

  “Greetings,” she said in that rich, low voice of hers. “Joe Cube, Jena Bonk, Spazz Grotty. I’m Momo from the fourth dimension.”

  Jena gave a little shriek of fear and surprise.

  “What?” said Spazz, looking at Jena. “She’s not with you?”

  “Oh yeah, Momo’s a friend of ours,” I said, trying to wallpaper over things. “Let’s go, Momo. If you want to talk, we can do it in the car.”

  “So you’re off for some card sharping,” said Momo. “Most excellent. I relish your low cunning, Joe Cube.” She must have picked up on my noticing her feet, for now she smoothly turned them around and settled to the floor.

  “Cool moonwalk,” drawled Spazz, observing the move. “This woman is—who? One of your relatives, Joe?”

  “She’s an alien,” said Jena, who’d backed off all the way to the other side of the room. “She did something to Joe last night while I was asleep.”

  “Gnarly!” said Spazz happily. “Joe’s girlfriend from the psycho ward. This is turning into an interesting day after all. What was that about a dimension, Momo?”

  “I’m a four-dimensional woman,” said Momo quietly. “Like a god compared to you, Spazz. Not Joe’s girlfriend. Not a psycho. Perhaps Joe was right in saying that I should augment you. It might be well to have more than on
e agent in your world.”

  “Not me,” said Jena, her eyes defensively slitted. “Don’t augment me.”

  “Don’t augment either of them,” I said. “One of us is enough.” I didn’t want to see Spazz horning in on my new-found power.

  Spazz cocked his head oddly, obviously trying to execute a difficult mental reset. It did my heart good to see his confusion.

  “Fourth dimension like time?” said Spazz finally.

  “Not time,” said Momo firmly. “Yes, one can model time as a higher dimension. But I’m from a fourth dimension of space. Time is a different type of dimension entirely. I’m as subject to time as you are.”

  “If your fourth dimension isn’t time, then what is it?” asked Spazz.

  “We call our world’s cardinal directions up, down, East, West, South, North, Ana and Kata,” said Momo. “But just as do you, we have a somewhat different set of names for the directions relative to our own bodies. In daily life, we speak of up, down, right, left, back, front, vinn and vout.”

  “Flatland,”said Spazz suddenly. “What you’re saying reminds me of that book about a world that has polygons living in a plane. The hero’s called A Square.”

  “Exactly,” said Momo enthusiastically. “I know this book well. It’s one of Spaceland’s finest works. I’m like the sphere who intersects A Square’s plane, Spazz. What you see before you is but one of my three-dimensional cross sections.” Momo gestured at her ample body.

  “Why aren’t you all crooked and bulgy?” I interrupted. “Why do you look different from last night?”

  “Last night I didn’t take the trouble to come in at a right angle,” said Momo. “I wasn’t quite perpendicular to your space. Nor was I standing so still as I am now. Think once again of the prime analogy. Four is to three as three is to two. If a cube cuts a plane at a right angle, it forms a square cross section. But if the cube is tilted, the creatures in the plane see something else. A rectangle, a trapezoid—”

  “Or a triangle or a hexagon,” put in Spazz. He’d regained his composure. But he still thought we were kidding him. “Great rap, Momo. Where did you really meet her, Joe?”

  Momo stepped towards Spazz, no longer holding herself rigid. A great bulge moved down her arm, and when it reached her hand, the hand disappeared like a melting ball of wax. She was lifting it vout of our space.

  As I watched Momo in action, I paid attention to the ways in which my new Subtle vision affected my view of her. My third eye projected Momo’s unimaginable four-dimensional shape into a very odd three-dimensional form. I could see a whole solid, just like when I looked at Jena—but I didn’t see innards. Momo was, rather, like the tangled roots of a stump, with her arms and legs and torso seeming to grow through each other. Very gnarly, very hard to describe.

  Momo must have noticed me staring at her, and she answered my unspoken question, even as she continued bearing down on Spazz. “There’s more of me up above your space, Joe, covered with skin just like the cross section in your space. That’s what your subtle vision is showing you. You can see inside Jena and Spazz because your extra eyes up above space peek over the three-dimensional shells of their skins. They are quite open to the fourth dimension, on both their vouter and vinner sides. Unlike you, in your newly augmented form.” As usual, Momo’s explanation didn’t make much sense to me.

  Right about then Spazz made a muffled noise and began trying to spit something out. With my subtle vision I could see one of Momo’s fingers inside his mouth, a pink fingertip resting on his tongue like a stone sausage.

  “Oh my god,” said Spazz after Momo removed her finger. “The attack of the hyperdimensional dental hygienist.” The guy never let up on maintaining his cool. You had to hand it to him. “Suppose I believe you’re from the fourth dimension,” said Spazz to Momo. “So then what? Are you here to conquer the planet? Eat our brains? Rape us? Or is this just a sightseeing trip?”

  “She wants me to teach about her world,” I said. “She calls it the All. I’m supposed to organize a start-up to develop a new kind of technology.” The idea was starting to appeal to me. With the proper use of sound business principles, there was no reason I couldn’t start my own dot-com! That was a hell of a lot cooler than cheating at blackjack. “Maybe you could be, like, my assistant,” I told Spazz.

  Spazz guffawed in just the same way that Jena had when I’d mentioned my plans before, the guffaw shading into a long series of wheezy chuckles.

  “Shut up,” I said. “I could do it. Momo augmented me last night. Vinn and vout. I have subtle vision. I can see the pipe and the bud in your pants pocket, for instance. I could fire you for that. The Kencom campus is a zero-tolerance drug-free zone, in case you’d forgotten. It’s in the contract you signed.”

  “Um—” Once again Spazz was at a loss for words. I was loving it. He gathered his wits and changed the subject. “So, Momo, can we see the rest of your cross sections? Can you move completely through our space like the sphere does for A Square in Flatland?”

  “Indeed,” said Momo. And then she did it.

  She quickly shrank out of sight—and then she came back, slowly showing us one cross section at a time.

  What did it look like?

  The first thing we saw was a little ball of light purple, hovering in the air at waist level. The silky fabric of Momo’s pants. Her belly. The ball expanded and a cap of light green appeared on top like a polar ice cap. Her shirt. Quickly the pants lengthened and the shirt grew, gently swelled by Momo’s breasts. This was all in miniature to start with; the initial cross section of Momo was no more than three feet tall, hanging there a foot or two above the floor. Her arms sprouted from the arms of the shirt and a little head-ball appeared, hovering above the body, not yet connected. No eyes or mouth on the head, just a ball of skin. A neck grew in to fill the gap between body and head. A mouth bloomed in the bottom part of the head, and then a pair of eyes appeared. It was a child-sized Momo, with a face that was finer and more delicate than before. The tip of Momo, as it were. As yet, she had no hands or feet.

  “Unbelievable,” murmured Spazz, nervously touching the stud in his ear.

  I was kind of tuning in and out of my subtle vision while this was happening. When I looked at Momo with my third eye, the successive cross sections were overlaid on top of each other, nested together like Russian dolls.

  Momo’s cross section continued to grow in stature, with the curves of her figure growing more pronounced. Finally her hands and feet appeared. As she continued moving through our space, the shadings of her skin kept subtly changing through different tints of pink. She was wearing lavender pants and a green blouse all the way vinn and vout. Before long she’d reached her greatest size, which was even a bit larger than what she’d shown us before. The maximum Momo was a heavy-featured blonde just a bit under six feet. A statuesque woman. Momo moved on with her passage, shrinking and growing less rounded, and then her arms and legs were gone as well. Her face blanked over with skin, and then her head separated off, shrank and disappeared. Her arms drew back into her shirt, and the striped ball of her shirt and pants dwindled to the size of a bowling ball, an egg, a grape—and stopped at that size.

  “Unbe-freaking-lievable,” said Spazz.

  “She’s an angel?” said Jena.

  The grape gave a sudden sharp jiggle, as if something had poked it. It warped, twisted, and split in two. And now, more hurriedly than before, Momo came back through our space. This time she showed us a different sequence of cross sections. It was a disturbing sight.

  It started with two irregular leather shapes hanging in the air, folding and flexing. The combined feet of all the cross sections we’d just seen. The foot-things were bowed down in the center, just far enough to touch the floor. Like casters. The feet drifted upwards and morphed into lavender balls: pieces of Momo’s legs. The balls rose and merged to become a version of Momo’s butt, big and bouncy, but sculptured in warped planes and twisting curves. Some familiar looking globs appeare
d beside it: fingertips. The fingers merged and became pieces of hands; a cap of green grew down over the purple butt and it became belly and breasts. The hands turned into sections of arm that drifted in towards the pale green blouse. In an abrupt transition, all this collapsed into the glob of Momo’s neck, which quickly grew out to a head-ball that was, to start with, just blank skin. The skin’s color flowed and morphed through shades of pink and tan, the colors drifting across it like clouds across the Earth. And now the head split and grew a mouth, crooked and uncommonly wide.

  “Are you three beginning to understand my power?” said the great mouth. Teeth glittered inside it—far too many teeth. “Do you accept that Joe Cube must build a company to develop the technology of the fourth dimension?”

  The head wagged to one side and warped down to a fraction of its size, becoming a tan cone with a mouth around its rim: a version of the trumpet shape I’d seen last night. A wart on the side of the trumpet bulged out, forming a lumpy projection with an eye in it. And then the lump with the eye crawled over to the other side of the cone. A second eye-lump appeared, then a big beak of a Picasso nose, and the mouth shrank down to a little triangle-shaped corner. A cloud of bright lines began swarming around the nightmarish head. Momo’s hair: brown and blonde. The hair thickened up and covered everything, then shrank to—nothing.

  Looking at Spazz and Jena, I could clearly sense how they felt. They were scared to death. As was I. And then Momo was back again, only her head this time, lumpy and crooked and cubist.

  “What steps will you take to commence the Great Work, Joe?” asked Momo.

  “I don’t see why we shouldn’t still go to Tahoe,” said Jena in a small voice. She was way on the other side of the room, squeezed into the corner and biting her nails. “Listen, Momo, if you want Joe to start a company, he’s going to need seed money. Even before the first round of funding. We’re not just talking research and development, we’re talking focus groups, marketing studies, prototypes, and a business model.” The touchstone words put Jena on familiar ground. She ran with it.