Hylozoic (23 page)

Sure enough, the quantum mirrors worked. The Pekklet was barred from Jayjay's head. And now, finally, he woke all of the way up. He hauled himself to his feet, glaring at Thuy.

“Damn you!” were his first words. “How could you!”

Something in her rebelled. Obviously she should apologize. But she didn't feel like it. “It wasn't my fault,” she repeated. “Those aliens smeared an aphrodisiac drug onto us. And Lusky pushed me. And meanwhile you were into your disgusting jerk-off Pekklet thing. The way you were watching us, it was almost like you were—”

“Shut up! This all started when you kissed that little boy in the woods. Nobody made you do that but yourself. Whore.”

“So that's where we stand?” said Thuy, her emotions boiling up. “Junkie. Loser. Pervert.”

“A match made in heaven,” said Sonic, trying to lighten the mood. “Meet the honeymooners. Come on, guys, can't we all play on the same team?”

“Play the fuck what?” said Jayjay, staring off into the warped reflections of the quantum-mirrored walls. “Play the fuck why?”

“I don't know how much you remember, Jayjay,” said Thuy, trying to control her voice. “Chu and I met this little alien manta ray, Duxy, in the woods, and she teeped you the atomic reset rune? And—”

“I hate Chu. Don't ever talk to me about him again.”

“That's progress,” said Sonic, glancing over at Stefan. “Don't you think? The
ever again
implies a future together, no?”

“Oh, Thuy,” said Jayjay, collapsing into tears, a heartbroken ghost of his brash old self. This was much worse than seeing him angry.

She hugged him tight. He felt good in her arms. Privately they teeped back and forth for a minute, sorting things out, rekindling their dreams, making a plan.

 

 

“Jayjay and I are going to the Hibrane,” Thuy then informed Sonic and Stefan.

“What?” said Sonic, truly surprised. “What does the Hibrane have to do with anything? That's a completely different parallel world.”

“It's all about untangling the links between Pekklet and Jayjay's particle strings,” said Thuy. “A higher-dimensional jump might help. Anyway, if Jayjay just stays here and keeps setting up Peng ranches, some mob is going to kill him.”

“Okay, but I heard that the Hibraners tilted our brane's timeline away from theirs,” said Sonic. “They did it so that our jump code won't work anymore. They were worried we'd bring nants over there.”

“Yeah, yeah, but nobody from here has actually
tried
to jump to the Hibrane since the tilt,” said Thuy. “Maybe it'll be okay. And if we end up in Subdee or something, we'll jump back. It's worth a try.” She was sounding a lot more confident than she felt. But she had her own reason for wanting to get out of here: she'd utterly disgraced herself.

“What about us?” said Stefan, his constant smile beginning to fade. “I thought you said Jayjay was going to wipe out the Peng when he got into this room.”

“Um—in case you haven't noticed, it's impossible to teek out from here,” said Jayjay. “Otherwise, yeah, I could cast the reset rune all over San Francisco and Yolla Bolly. Can you just tell the walls to let my teep and teek go through?”

“Well, no,” said Stefan. “Jayson and I kind of hypnotized the wall silps into this very stubborn state where they're totally unwilling to turn off the teep block, no matter who asks them. You'd pretty much need to knock a hole in the walls to get any teep in here. But of course that would—”

“—let the Pekklet's quantum entanglement back in,” said Sonic.

“Maybe her connection to Jayjay is already broken for good,” suggested Stefan.

“Jumping right out of the Lobrane sounds best,” insisted Jayjay. “It's what Thuy wants.”

Right about then the generator died and the perimeter flash dome failed.

“That's wrong!” screamed Jayson in the next room. “There's still a half liter of fuel!”

The Peng started woodpeckering the front door. Thuy heard the harsh screech of tearing steel.

“Outta here, Stefan,” said Sonic. “Let's you, Jayson, and me teleport our asses down to Cruz. All the hip kiqqies went there yesterday.”

“Hadn't thought of that,” said Stefan, brightening. “Yeah! We can leave the lab!”

“What a concept,” said Sonic, winking at Thuy. “Geeks.”

The two exited the mirrored room, slamming the heavy door behind them before the Pekklet could start anything new. Out in the control room, Sonic had to yell at Jayson for a moment. Even now, the bearded techie wanted to argue. But then the three of them were gone.

The next sound was of the Peng in the control room,
squawking among each other. One of the voices was deeper than the others, bossier—that would be Blotz. Maybe the Peng were a little scared of Jayjay.

“Time for the Hibrane, Thuy,” said Jayjay. “Do you still remember the code?”

“You mean the Knot?” said Thuy, not wanting to use the pattern's full name—which was Chu's Knot.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Jayjay. “Show it to me fast.”

As Thuy arranged the filigreed mental pattern for teeping, a first tentative tap sounded on the door, followed by a full-on blow. A bulge formed on the inside. Thuy's mind froze up. They weren't going to have enough time to put together their cross-brane jump. They were doomed.

A high, fearful, buzzing sounded outside the door.

“The pitchfork!” cried Jayjay.

The Peng cawed and screeched; they stopped pecking the door. By the sound of things, they were fruitlessly threatening the pitchfork. The pitchfork's drone grew still louder; the Peng's voices became fuzzed and weak. And now Thuy heard their footfalls running away.

There was a moment of silence, and then something very tiny wriggled up from the floor. It was—the pitchfork, tunneling in via the subdimensions.

“Yee-haw!” he said aloud as he grew to human scale. “I stirred up the lab's vibes so them Peng don't feel comfortable. I been feeling guilty about helping the Pekklet weave her particle strings into yours, Jay.”

“He really talks like this?” said Thuy, somehow more surprised by the hillbilly accent than by anything else.

“Yeah,” said Jayjay, smiling for the first time today. “Groovy the pitchfork. I kind of hate him, but he makes me laugh.”

“Go away,” Thuy told the pitchfork.

“I'm the onliest friend you got,” said Groovy. “After we
hook up with the harp in the Hibrane, I'll aktualize you two. You gonna be like gods. And then Thuy here is gonna tear that Pekklet apart.”

“I'm for that,” said Thuy.

She gathered her wits and teeped Jayjay the details of Chu's Knot: a pattern that resembled an intricately woven twine bracelet.

“I see it,” said Jayjay. “Now what?” He hadn't made the trip to the Hibrane before.

“Focus on the image,” said Thuy softly. She felt happy and sure of herself. “Let go of your inner voice. Put yourself into the gaps between your thoughts.”

Jayjay got into the groove—and they jumped into a higher dimension, with the pitchfork following in their wake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

J
ayjay
and Thuy flew side-by-side, their arms outstretched like superheroes, the pitchfork keeping pace. They were skimming across a vast, rolling ocean: a Planck sea of subdimensional eddies.

Although Jayjay was upset about Thuy's unfaithfulness, his overall feeling was one of immense relief. The combination of the quantum-mirrored room and the jump out of the Lobrane seemed to have unknotted the ties to the Pekklet. For the first time in two days, he was free. Feeling like a pelican hugging a wave, he waggled his body closer to the glittering Planck frontier.

Some shapes, like lumpy plants, popped through the surface—Jayjay had seen similar beings near the beanstalk.

“Oh hell!” said Thuy. “The subbies. Don't let them touch
you. They'll try to drag you under.” She gestured to fly higher.

The tuber-shaped subbies morphed into heron heads upon wiggly necks, with white-gloved cartoony bodies beneath the waves. The subbies knifed along, leaving wakes of quantum foam, tracking the travelers with hungry eyes.

“My first trip to the Hibrane went really fast,” said Thuy, uneasy at these presences. “But on the way back I got lost. And the subbies tried to eat me.”

“I can keep them mofos down,” called Groovy, his vibrating prongs wreathed in glowing mauve. “Looky here.” He swept close to the Planck sea and spat a spark. Restless as a spider, the crackling energy webbed the surface. On the instant, the subbies dropped from view.

“What
are
you, anyway?” Thuy asked the pitchfork.

“Might could say I'm a devil and the harp's a god. I like to strum her real goood.” He drew out the last word with relish.

“Get real,” said Thuy.

“Okay, then,” buzzed Groovy. “Here's real: the harp and me are humanoids from a world like yours, but right now we're on a trip out past infinity, we're superpowered aliens, playin' with your world. Bringing you lazy eight and aktualization. Turnabout is fair play—you're gonna do the same for us pretty soon. After the maelstrom.”

“If you're a humanoid, why do you look like a pitchfork?” challenged Jayjay, not even wanting to think about the rest of what the alien had said.

“Once you an aktual, you can look like anything you like,” said the pitchfork. “A harp, a pitchfork, a crow, a bagpipe—but never mind all that. We gotta worry about crossing this here Planck sea. What with the two branes all catawampus, the jump's much farther than before. But you can do it, Jay. Use what I taught you on that beanstalk. Pull the wife along and I'll follow.”

Jayjay took Thuy by the hand, visualizing the endless beanstalk. Feeling light and nimble, he revolved his vision of the great vine to aim its axis in the direction they flew. And now, as he imagined a Zeno-style scramble up the stalk, he and Thuy shot forward as if in a particle accelerator.

 

 

They touched down upon a stone street in a town with no lights or teep. The mild, damp air bore the smell of human waste. It felt like spring or early summer.

A gentle thump sounded at their side: the pitchfork. Somewhere nearby, men were roaring a slow, deep-voiced song. A full moon hung above the stair-stepped gables, the buildings oddly tall.

Suddenly it struck Jayjay that his lazy eight memory was gone—taking with it a lot of the new science he'd learned. But not all of it. Looking up past the walls to the panoply of stars, he recognized the constellations. He used the north star to find the points of the compass, noted that the moon was in the west, recalled that at this time of year the full moon sets an hour or two before dawn, and drew a conclusion.

“It's about four
A.M
.” he told Thuy.