Turing & Burroughs: A Beatnik SF Novel (26 page)

And thus I learned that my mother and my son had witnessed Alan and Ned enjoying sexual intercourse and skugger conjugation while dangling from the guest bedroom ceiling. The details filled me with an irrational chagrin. I’d given my heart to a science boffin—a socially inept and ordinary-looking man—only to be jilted? Q
uelle horreur
, my dears.

Dutifully I made peace with my family. My stipend would continue as before. And that evening, Alan phoned me at their home. He was conciliatory, but frantic. The feds were on his tail. He had some hopes of escape. He begged me to meet him at his destination—which his messenger skuglet had told me was Los Alamos, New Mexico. And so I flew after this oddly enticing man, promising Mother that if I managed to settle down with my friend, I’d have son Billy come out for a stay.

Landing in the Santa Fe airport near Los Alamos, I picked up no teep. Where was Alan? And I had a distinct impression that I was being tailed by a rat-faced man who’d pushed onto my flight when I’d changed planes in Chicago.

Using my shapeshifting powers, I changed my look in the men’s room. Staring into the mirror, I imagined myself growing very, very old. Wrinkles enmeshed my eyes. My face sagged, my teeth melted into my gums, my slack lips hung open, my body frame dwindled and warped. I pushed it further than reasonable, ending up in the condition of a ninety-year old man. I turned my jacket inside-out and hobbled across the lobby. The rat who’d been tailing me walked right past. People don’t like to see their future.

Stepping into the whirl of snow outside, I saw a peripheral flicker of light. A shape that seemed continually to be edging into view without ever coming into clear visibility. A ghost.

“Is it Joan?” I asked aloud.

“No, man. It’s Vassar Lafia.” The answer came via teep, the voice hoarse and clear. “I was a skugger too.”

“You?” I replied with harsh disdain. I’d gathered from Alan’s skuglet-shared data bank that the dissolute Vassar had been another of Alan’s sex partners—this during the sea journey from Tangier. “You’re dead?”

“The pigs fried me this morning, man. Incinerated me and my man Ned with an Army-surplus flamethrower. The war on skugs. Alan’s still alive. I’ll take you to him. Get one of those truck Indians to drive you.”

The ghost was near my ear, as if perched on my shoulder. But if I turned to stare at him, he moved on behind my back.

There were indeed a couple of pickups idling at the curb. I hobbled over to the closest one, very elderly in my gait, digging the geezer routine, swaying my pelvis with vim.

“I’m skittish as a hog on ice,” I exclaimed to the Indian at the wheel. “Can you carry me somewhere?”

The driver gestured me into the truck, seemingly oblivious of Vassar’s ghost. Parroting the ghost’s teep, I told the Indian I wanted to go to Ricky Red Dog’s ranch on the next mesa. The driver—his name was Ken Kiva—said he could do it for ten dollars. To cement our deal I offered to buy us two pints of whiskey. “We’ll make it a dang fool joyride,” I cackled toothlessly.

As we pulled off into the blizzard, heading for the liquor store, I returned my appearance to its customary youthful vigor. Ken Kiva slid his eyes over, checking me out, and grinned. “El brujo, man,” he said. “Very smooth move.”

I gave him a twenty and he went into the package store. I waited in the truck with Vassar’s ghost twinkling around the edges of my vision—he was a gold, fluttering shape, thick in the middle. I’d gone on a kief binge with this Vassar Lafia in the Café Central last summer. I’d performed public fellatio on a dog on the floor. A highly evolved routine.

My Indian driver returned. By choosing a generic brand, he’d managed to get us two fifths rather than two pints. Although, as a skugger, I could get as high as I wanted by internal effects, I enjoyed the flare and burn of the whiskey in my mouth. The snowflakes, as seen in the truck’s single working headlight seemed festive and rare. The truck had no heater, but I found a verminous blanket.

As we traversed the deserted back roads, the whiskey began taking its toll. It developed that Ken Kiva didn’t precisely recall where Ricky Red Dog’s ranch was. So, for the rest of the drive, every now and then I’d wiggle my fingers by the sides of my head, stirring up the action in the borders of my visual field. Vassar’s ghost would light up and feed me more directions. I’m not sure if Ken Kiva could see the ghost or not—I asked him, but he didn’t like to say.

Sometimes we’d have to wait several minutes at a questionable road fork, companionably drinking while I made my summoning gestures. Vassar’s ghost was at times slow on the uptake—he told me he was alternating between guiding me and helping Alan.

Ken Kiva fishtailed his truck up the final grade to Ricky’s with some difficulty, arriving at low farmhouse buildings, smoothed and rounded by the drifts of snow. “Ricky Red Dog’s,” exclaimed Ken. “I’ll sleep here too.”

In the house I met a handsome Indian named Naranjo. He was smoking tobacco with his cousin Ricky, who lived here with his family. Ken muttered briefly with Ricky Red Dog, then flopped down on a blanket and passed out, fully at ease.

“Where’s Alan?” I asked Ricky and Naranjo. “Alan Turing? I’m to meet him here.”

“He left with the girl,” said Naranjo curtly.

Staring at Naranjo, I realized he was a skugger too. And I could teep that he was holding something back. His cousin Ricky spilled the beans.

“Naranjo sent them into the storm,” said the round-faced Ricky. “They’re to walk to Los Alamos. The next mesa over.” The difficulty of the task seemed to amuse him.

“Greenhorns,” said Naranjo, shaking his head. “They thought they were too good to stay here.”

Obviously Naranjo held a grudge against Alan and Susan. But rather than asking more questions, I listened to Vassar’s ghost, glowing at my side. I could see him better all the time. He resembled a small stingray. He said he was making progress in guiding Alan and his friend Susan Green. Susan was Vassar’s widow.

“It’s wild in the canyon between the mesas” said Vassar’s voice in my head. “One of those cave doors is glowing with ghost vibes. Like an apartment window lit by TV. Shit, man, I should be in New York. Not dead in a snowstorm being a St. Bernard.”

I didn’t answer Vassar. I’m not one for talking back to the spirit voices in my head. I sat there with Ricky and Naranjo for a time, quietly staring at the fire in the stove, passing around the rest of my whiskey, and me enjoying my Man within.

I probed Naranjo’s mind some more, feeling a little sexed by his rough look. He was a small-plane pilot with gangland links in Mexico City. Sometimes he smuggled junk across the border, sometimes he did contract jobs for the U.S. heat. A man for all seasons. He was angry at Alan for skugging him, and at Susan for denigrating cousin Ricky’s ranch.

“Can you do me?” Ricky Red Dog asked me, interrupting my reverie.

“Eh?”

“Make me, what do you call it?”

“He wants to be a skugger, too,” said Naranjo, curtly. “But I won’t be the one to infect my cousin, not me. It’s bad.”

“You’re a very sulky boy,” I said, just to needle Naranjo.

“Ken Kiva said you’re a brujo,” Ricky told me, his moon-face credulous. “He said you changed your face and talked to ghosts. Come on, Bill, I want to be a skugger. Why you and Naranjo holding out on me?”

I would gladly have sent a tendril into Ricky. But now I was distracted by the vibes of Alan and Susan. Only a few hundred yards away and coming closer. Something weird about their teep.

A minute later, we heard a frantic scratching at the door. Ricky rose to open it, and a pack of hairy beasts came rushing in. I had a nasty moment in which I imagined they were supernatural demons. Anything seemed possible.

The six doggy animals raced around the room, sniffing, yipping, shedding clots of ice.

“Mad coyotes!” yelled Ricky, pulling his rifle from the wall. “Rabies!”

“Wait!” I cried, dog’s best friend. I sent my arm out like a python, snatching the rifle off Ricky and, while I was at it, sinking in my finger to skug the guy already.

Meanwhile three of the coyotes bunched up by my legs, and pressed their snouts together.
Plup, plup!
The three heads fused—and their bodies merged like being zipped together. The ill-shapen combine shuddered like a contortionist—and became Alan Turing. Out in that blizzard he’d shapeshifted into an archipelago.

I felt an unexpectedly strong rush of affection. Like a schoolboy crush. I wrapped my arms around Alan and kissed him.

Meanwhile the other three coyotes merged into this dark-haired pale woman Susan Green. Ricky’s wife and kids boiled out of the sleeping quarters, everyone in a tizzy. Ricky Red Dog cool everyone down.

So Naranjo lay down on the floor by the stove beside Ken Kiva. And Susan, Alan and I settle into a side room.

Our room had gaps in the log walls, lice in the blankets. Susan lay on her own, gently vibrating, in tears. Possibly she was making it with Vassar’s ghost. With, like, his tail plunged into her spine.

Alan and I launched into a full-body conjugation, even better than sex. We shared our recent memories—and I scored some boffo wetware upgrades.

In the night I rose to piss, and here came something swooping at me. A spectral flying cuttlefish—a creature with W-shaped pupils and a wad of tentacles for a face. About a foot long, colored in shades of mauve and ultraviolet, just visible at the edge of my vision. My wife Joan.

This was the first time I’d seen Joan’s ghost since turning skugger. She’d tightened up her appearance, and her vibes hitting me much more intense than ever before. I teeped her voice in my head, a gibbering screech.

“You killed me, I hate you, I’m stuck—” Like that.

“It wasn’t really me,” I teeped, deploying my stock defenses. “I was aiming very carefully five inches above your head. Towards the top of the glass. But as I pulled the trigger—something moved my arm.”

“Your hateful, selfish brain moved your arm, crumbum,” said Joan, her voice as clear in my head as if we were back in our kitchen drinking coffee. “I’m going to pay you back.” And now she went back to dive-bombing my head and screeching. The same old bum kicks.

Now that Alan had upgraded me, I could do teep blocks and, thank heavens, I could wall out Joan’s ghost. Still in a tizzy, I put on my coat, relieved myself off the porch, and stood there mooning at the moon. I wished I had some H. This bullshit about a Man within wasn’t fully making it. My skug had no real concept of what it meant to get properly high. I wondered how soon I could score.

In the morning we gathered in the main room, and Ricky’s wife made us a breakfast of hominy and, like, goat kidney on the wood stove. A strikingly fresh and delicate woman with two shiny-eyed kids in tow. I sat at on the floor with Alan, Susan, and the three Indian men.

“Vassar spent the night with me,” Susan told Alan, “He’d rather be with me than go to heaven.” She looked so happy that I found myself wondering if she were unhinged. Even though I’d seen glimpses of Vassar myself.

“This guy was was murdered yesterday?” said Naranjo.

“But he’s not really dead,” insisted Susan. “My understanding is that ghosts hang around on Earth for a while and that then they go to the some higher level. If they want.”

“I know about the hanging around,” I put in.

“Ned’s already moved on, and Vassar’s still here,” continued Susan, all beatific. She was fiddling with a little drum of Ricky’s, tapping intricate beats. “The pigs killed Ned and Vassar with flamethrowers. Ned went on towards—paradise? Vassar says that’s the most dangerous road of all. Hardly anyone makes it to the highest heaven. Vassar wants to look around here some more before he leaves. He told me he noticed a far-out Indian ghost in that canyon between here and Los Alamos. He wants to talk to him.”

Alan was silent for a moment, staring off into space—and then he got into one of his talking encyclopedia routines.

“I’m developing a theory regarding ghosts,” intoned Prof Turing. “Granted that they’re real—what are they, physically speaking? I rather suspect that ghosts are based on exotic microtubule structures in the air, vortex filaments linked in a mesh. And I posit that the nodes of the mesh are exotic particles that we may as well call
memnons
. One’s memnons waft forth upon one’s dying breath, carrying an encoded representation of the soul. Microtubules spring up among the memnons—and you’ve risen from the dead. Your ghost is a gossamer
lacework
. Think of a spiderweb glinting with dew. And, it goes nearly without saying, this phenomenon is very highly enhanced in the presence of skugs.” Alan smiled, the very image of the enlightened engineer.

“Think of a flying cuttlefish instead,” I said, putting my hands under my chin and twiddling my fingers like tentacles. “That’s my wife Joan. She was ragging on me last night. With enhanced soundtrack.”

“William’s
better half
,” said Turing. “Nature’s bachelors are fools to marry.”

“Where’s Joan buried?” asked Susan, still eerily perky. Like so many hipsters, she knew the lurid William Burroughs backstory.

“Mexico City,” I said shortly.

“What if we go down there and lay Joan’s soul to rest?” suggested Susan. “Instead of rushing straight into Los Alamos. The cops could be setting up another trap.”