Hylozoic (22 page)

Chunks of flesh tore loose. The alien manta was coming apart. Lusky shuddered, twisted, and corkscrewed into a downward death spiral, the wind beating in through her slack, gaping jaws. A harrier jet whooshed past with a gloating waggle of its wings.

“Hop!” Thuy screamed to the others, then teleported herself and Jayjay to the pavement. Fortunately she had the presence of mind to adjust her velocity to match that of the ground.

Chu and Glee did the same; touching down lightly at her side. They'd landed at Sixteenth and Valencia streets in the Mission district. A block away, Lusky hit a row of shops like a bombed airliner, sending up a gusher of glowing orange Hrull blood.

Jayjay had sunk back into his coma, and the effects of the gel on Thuy were fading fast. She felt healthier than usual—but dead tired. And guilty as hell. Jayjay had only been unconscious for one day—and already she was cheating on him? What kind of wife was she? And what about little Chu? Awful.

Chu was nude and smelled of sex. “Oh, Thuy.” His face twisted in distress. “I really just wanted to make out. And Jayjay saw us. And probably my parents. And Bixie.” Abruptly his voice rose to a shrill cry. “Your gross
Founders
fans are slobbering all over us!”

“I'm going to salvage the leftover gel,” teeped Glee, ignoring the drama, heading east down Valencia Street toward Lusky's shuddering bulk. “Come with me, Chu. I can get you out of here.”

“Salvage?” said Chu, slowly processing the word. “You're addicted to that stuff, right, Glee?”

Glee looked back over her green shoulder at him, showing her small white teeth in a knowing smile. “So are you, a little bit. A real pusher now.” Her teep voice was vaguely Eastern European.

“I can't stand it,” said Chu softly. “I want to die.”

“Don't worry,” teeped Glee, taking a step back toward him. Her triangular green face looked sympathetic. “You will learn to control the lust. The first gel session catches pushers by surprise. Those Hrull—they are slimy.” Glee made a sound like a squirrel's chirp. Her laughter. “You and Thuy were very erotic.”

The alien woman's smirk aroused Thuy's protective instincts. “You keep your hands off him, Glee.”

“Easily done,” answered Glee. Her three eyes twinkled. “Not to be rude, but you Earthlings—you are too fat. And you smell like a Pepple animal that resembles a tapir or a pig.”

“You smell like rotten broccoli,” said Chu.

“So chastity between us is easy,” teeped Glee. “Gel is enough. Come, Chu. We'll find Lusky's daughter Duxy and push to the Hrullwelt. I am glad to have you as a fellow worker.”

“Duxy is small,” said Chu hesitantly. “There's no way we could ever squeeze inside her.”

“With Mother Lusky dead, Daughter Duxy begins to grow,” responded Glee. “This is part of the Hrull life cycle.”

“Okay then,” said Chu, squaring his shoulders. “I'll come with you. I can't stay here anymore. Not now.”

“Good boy.”

“What about me?” clamored Thuy, feeling left out. “Aren't I hooked, too?”

“With luck you can kick this addiction,” teeped Glee, not all that interested. “You will feel an ache and a fever. Unbearable. You may break down and whistle for the Hrull. To beg for gel. Perhaps the Hrull don't come, and then in a day or two you are well. For me, a cure would take longer.”

“I see,” said Thuy, feeling very alone. Once more she turned to Chu. “Don't go with them,” she urged the boy. “Come on with me. We'll kick the gel together. We can live this down. It doesn't have to be the end of the world.”

“Good-bye,” said Chu, walking away, unwilling to look at her. “Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.”

Thuy watched Chu follow Glee a block down Valencia Street, then stand there, still naked, waiting while Glee rummaged within the broken whale-sized mass that had been
Lusky. The alien woman emerged with something cupped in her hands. More Hrull gel. Chu exchanged a last wave with Thuy, and then he and Glee disappeared beyond the manta's bulk.

Thuy was naked and alone, with the sun setting behind her, and Jayjay unconscious at her feet. She teeped down into her body, assessing her condition. Was something going on in her womb? No. That couldn't be happening. Absolutely not. She turned her attention to other things.

People were creeping out of their homes, and no doubt the local Peng would be coming soon. Where was Seven Wiggle Labs anyway? Thuy was going there whether or not Pekka and the frikkin' Pekklet were watching them. She'd just realized that—duh!—there was no way Pekka would kill Jayjay on purpose. At least for now, Jayjay was the go-to guy, the one and only channel from planet Pengö to Earth.

She could teep the Pekklet's presence within Jayjay's mind, so she went ahead and said something to her: “You can shove your chickenshit death threats up your cloaca, bitch.”

No reaction; the Pekklet was watching and waiting—blank-faced, eyeless, unreadable.

In any case, judging from Jayjay's limp posture, he was once again too wiped to start moaning and runecasting at the Pekklet's behest. So Thuy had a little bit of time to work with.

 

 

She was definitely too ashamed to ask Ond for help, so she teeped Sonic instead. He picked up on her signal right away, and moments later he was at her side, grinning and shaking his head. He'd brought Thuy an XXL T-shirt with a logo for his Animal Animats virtual game company.

“Hot little scene with Chu, Thuy, even if we didn't get to
see the start. An online classic. A hundred million hits already.”

“It wasn't my fault,” said Thuy, not that anyone was likely to believe her. They'd all seen her riding Chu.

“Nothing's anyone's fault,” said Sonic kindly. “The world's a metanovel that somebody else wrote. Poor Thuy. Upside: maybe you can use some of this gnarly drama in
Hive Mind
.”

“Hive Mind,”
said Thuy disconsolately. Her peaceful old life as a metanovelist seemed very far away. She was a pariah, a laughingstock. Sadly she donned the ugly shirt. Her life was ripped to shreds.

“Intruder alert,” said Sonic. “The San Francisco Peng are closing in: Blotz, Noora, and Pookie. They don't teleport, but they can float like blimps and run like motherfuckers. See them up the block?”

Three big birds were sprinting toward them, their legs flexing backward, their necks stretched out long and at an upward angle, their nasty beaks aimed directly at Thuy. She remembered that the Peng could shoot femtorays from their bills.

“Ond's patio,” she said to Sonic for lack of a better thought.

The two of them hopped to Ond's backyard on Dolores Hill, with Jayjay-the-millstone in tow. As Thuy had expected and hoped, nobody was home.

“Do
you
know where to find Seven Wiggle Labs?” she asked Sonic. “And do you think they'll let us into their quantum-mirrored room? I'm scared to ask Ond. Why don't you ask him? And I'll check with Gaia.”

Gaia showed Thuy the target location of Seven Wiggle Labs, but when she tried teeping the lab, the dorky owners didn't pick up. Meanwhile, Ond had bounced Sonic's teep contact as soon as he realized who the call was from.

Looking down at the city from Ond's patio, she saw the three Peng buzzing through the air toward them, their necks
like hungry, implacable snakes. Blotz, Noora, and Pookie. Ugh.

“Let's hop to Seven Wiggle,” she said. “Once we're there in person, maybe they'll let us in.”

Seven Wiggle Labs was on the bay, near the burnt-out hulk of the former ExaExa building. It was built like a bunker, low and round with no windows, ringed by a row of chrome bollards. Whoever was inside the place still wasn't answering teep calls.

“Hey,” called Thuy, leaning into the archaic intercom grill by the solid steel front door. “We have to use your quantum-mirrored room! It's important. We're Jayjay Jimenez and Thuy Nguyen.” The door's dark porthole showed no signs of life.

Three dots appeared in the sky above the smooth crest of Potrero Hill: Blotz and his family, relentless in their pursuit. They wanted to kill Thuy and take custody of Jayjay.

She began kicking the door. It stayed closed. Desperately, she teeped Jil down in Santa Cruz. Jil knew all the techies. Yes, they'd quarreled yesterday, but—

“Hey,” said Jil, not sounding at all friendly. “What do you want?”

“I have to get into Seven Wiggle Labs right this minute, Jil. Please help me. And, look, I'm sorry I yelled at you and I'm sorry I fucked Chu. I was wrong. I'm horrible. Forgive me. Remember how I helped you when you had those nanomachines in your head? I saved your life, Jil. Get us into Seven Wiggle. Do it for Jayjay.”

“Like you care about him so much,” said Jil tartly. But now she softened, picking up on Thuy's bewilderment and fear. “Oh, all right, if it's that bad I'll help. I haven't forgotten what you did for me. We women have to stick together.”

A moment later the lab door swung open. Sonic, Thuy, and Jayjay made it inside just ahead of the Peng.

“Perimeter flash dome!” shouted the excited geek who'd ushered them in—a skinny guy with orange hair, bulging eyes, and high-water chino pants.

“Perimeter flash dome!” echoed his cohort, a fat, bearded guy in a black T-shirt and voluminous cutoff jeans. There were only the two of them in there, surrounded by pallets of unformed plastic, rolls of wire, bins of crystals, and newly made weapons: kluspers, stonkers, gobble guns, and more.

A sizzling sound arose. Looking out through the door's thick round quartz window, Thuy saw a curtain of purple light, tethered to the chrome bollards and arching overhead like a circus tent.

“It works!” exulted the skinny guy, letting out a happy cackle. He glanced over at Thuy and Sonic. “I'm Stefan,” he said. “Jil says you're good people, face-to-face.” He stared out the window, assessing the light-curtain's strength. “Beautiful hack, Jayson! Femtotech on parade.”

The bearded man came over to peer gloomily out the quartz porthole. “Those Peng—they're out there pecking and blasting their rays and they can't get in,” he said softly. “That part's vibby, yeah. But now they'll cut our power lines and then, after our generators run down, they'll peck us to bits. We've got enough fuel for twenty minutes, max. I told you not to let these people in here, Stefan. But then sexy Jil Zonder gives you a call and—whee!—you throw our lives away.”

“Jayjay knows a way to take down the Peng,” said Thuy.

Jayson glared at Jayjay on the floor. “The mighty runecaster, eh? Too bad he's brain dead.”

“He's fine,” insisted Thuy. “It's just that he's totally exhausted. Also he's being pushed into a coma by a Subdee agent for the Peng's home world. The Pekklet. If the Pekklet gets Jayjay to start moaning again, we're screwed. So let's get him into that quantum-mirrored room of yours really soon, okay? It's
the only way to block the Pekklet's quantum entanglement with him.”

“Not a problem,” said Stefan brightly. The guy seemed to wear a perpetual grin. “Let's give it a try.”

“Next time, Stefan, ask me before you let in refugees,” grumbled Jayson. “I mean, like, in our next life. Assuming God hates me enough to reincarnate me as your business partner.”

“Lighten up, kiq,” said Sonic.

Jayson squinted at Sonic, then made a grimace that was almost a smile. “Hey, I know you! Sonic's Animal Animats. I took one of your tours—I was teeping a walrus stalking this cute polar bear cub. A rare moment of personal bliss.”

“Today's mission is even more fun,” said Sonic. “We're saving the world from alien invasion!”

“Take us to the quantum-mirrored room,” repeated Thuy. She picked up Jayjay's feet and Sonic got hold of him under the arms.

“Lead them in, Stefan,” said Jayson, drifting back to his desk. “I'll stay out here and monitor the power.”

“Good deal for me,” said Stefan happily. “I'll get to see what Jayjay's like when he wakes up. This is the same guy who unfurled the eighth dimension, kiq. He and Thuy are big stars on
Founders
. She just did a live porno scene, too, in case you didn't happen to—”

“Shit!” yelled Jayson. “They got our power lines!” He gestured in the air, tweaking a virtual console that only he could see. Beneath the floor a motor coughed into life.

Roused by the hubbub, Jayjay twitched his arms and opened his mouth as if to moan.

“Hurry, Stefan!” screamed Thuy.

Stefan hustled them into the quantum-mirrored room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were slick with iridescent square-root-of-NOT
varnish. Multiple reflections bounced off the walls, sour-colored pastel images overlaying each other in endless regresses.

“This place is doubly shielded,” he bragged. “We've got quantum-mirror varnish against quantum entanglement, and the walls themselves are tuned to block out teep. This is, like, the most private room on Earth.”