Jim and the Flims (22 page)

“Help me with this door,” Durkle was saying to me. “I can't get anywhere.”

Distractedly I knocked upon the hatch, if only to shut Durkle up. The little door flew open, revealing Bart, merry in his purple suit. “Party time!” he cried. He surveyed Durkle, me, and the peach-colored ghost. “Welcome one and all.”

“Come on, Jim,” urged Durkle, already wriggling into the hatch. “Don't blow this.”

“I'll catch up with you,” I said.

The hatch closed—and I was face to face with ghost of my dead wife, Val.

18: The Dark Gulf

A
lthough Val still had the hood pulled over her face, I sensed she was ready to talk. “You were right,” I said. “My machine scratched the side of an electron, and something evil came through. It infected you. It was my fault—in a way. But, Val, I had no idea. And these flims from over here—you've seen what they're like. They were gaming us. Manipulating me.”

And now, finally, she spoke .“I don't like it here in Flimsy,” she said in a barely audible tone.

“I've missed you so much,” I said, stepping towards her. Again she backed away.

“You're dead too?” she asked. “What happened to you?”

“I'm not dead!” I exclaimed. “I used magic to leave my body. I'm going back to Earth pretty soon. And, Val, I think I might be able to bring you back too.”

“Have you missed me?”

“Oh god. You have no idea. Can I see your face?”

“I'm sure I look horrible,” she said.

“Please.”

Val pushed her hood back a little ways. Her kessence body was a faint and wispy version of her real one. She had the same smart eyes, cute chin, soft cheeks and thoughtful lips. My Val.

I stretched out my arms and now, finally, she came to me, nestling against my chest. I began letting my kessence flow into her.

“That feels so good,” she softly.

“What's mine is yours.”

“It was hard getting out of that Dark Gulf,” said Val, her voice gaining strength. “I was just a spark of light. Everyone was trying to eat each other. Dog eat dog. I fought hard and I grew. The current kept trying to sweep me away. I swam in through a crack in the rocks—and I ended up in this nightmare mall.”

“It's crummy down here,” I agreed. “It's a little nicer up top. They have green fields and a sky.”

“That big fire-beet is always trying to eat us,” said Val. “The Earthmost Jiva. She almost got me today.” She seemed not to know that I'd been the one to save her. “I hate the jivas,” she continued. “I think one of them was growing inside me when I died.”

“We can start over when we get home,” I said. By now I'd fed nearly half of my kessence into her. She felt nice and solid. I wasn't about to tell her I was currently hosting a jiva myself.

“What was that about using magic to get here?” Val asked now. “Does that mean you slept with someone else?” She didn't have teep, but she'd always had a keen sense for hidden meanings.

“With a flim named Weena,” I admitted. “I think she's the one who caused all our trouble. I didn't realize that at first. She wanted me to come over here to do some kind of errand. But really I only came here to look for you.”

“By now, maybe Weena means more to you than me,” said Val ruefully. “I'm tired, Jim. I might let the Dark Gulf 's current carry me away. They say it leads to heaven. Or to the goddess of Flimsy. She gives you a clean slate. That'd be better than grubbing around in this cheesy rats' nest with my horrible memories. I don't believe you could actually bring me back to Earth. Did you get that fantasy from that new woman, that Weena, the one who's making you her errand boy?”

“Stay with me,” I said. “I hate Weena.” I sought to change the subject. “It seems like a miracle that you and I met here.”

“Not a miracle at all,” said Val. “It's the way Flimsy works. I've been seeing it happen all around me. This place is set up so that people always find their mates.”

“Like heaven,” I said, trying for an upbeat tone.

“Or not,” said Val gloomily.

I ran my fingers across her cheek. Just then the hatch in the floor popped up and Durkle stuck his head out.

“Join the party, Jim,” he urged.

“This is Val,” I told him. “My wife.”

“The more the merrier.”

“Want to give it a try?” I asked Val.

“Oh—okay.”

Bart's place was the size of a ballroom, crowded with chattering ghosts. A combo was playing a jig on thighbone trumpets, catgut fiddles and skull drums. Rather than a keg of beer, the ghosts had a fuming kettle that smelled of cloves and cinnamon—I recalled the punchbowl at the Whipped Vic surf party.

“Tank up,” said the convivial Bart, gesturing. “It's full of tweaked kessence. I scored it from some yuels. I'm high as a kite.”

Sure enough, two pairs of blue baboons were tangoing across the floor, kicking their feet to the ethereal music. Crazy little Durkle had started dancing with a fifth yuel who was there as well. Durkle was excited to be hearing live music.

I was standing to one side with Bart and Val. “This guy knows a lot,” I told Val after I introduced them to each other. “He's an old-timer here.”

“I've never seen yuels before,” said Val, regarding them warily. “Should I be scared?”

“Yuels are an organic part of Flimsy,” said Bart. “They've been here from the start. The thing you have to dig about Flimsy is that it's a single organism. I was telling Jim here that the jivas are like Flimsy's neurons. And the yuels are like Flimsy's sap. I see Flimsy as a giant plant. This big hollow ball of air and living water is like a cosmic root, you dig.”

“I've heard that Flimsy is inside every electron of our universe,” I put in.

“And you had to go and make a hole in an electron,” said Val, frowning.

“I feel horrible about that,” I said. “But it wasn't like I had some evil plan. Weena set me up.”

“Don't even talk about her to me,” said Val, still angry but not entirely shutting me out. I was glad to be talking things over with her, to be getting into the familiar give and take.

“Flimsy's in the electrons, yeah,” said Bart expansively. “But you can flip it around and upside down. Our good old universe is the foliage that Flimsy grows. We ghosts who travel to Flimsy are like the sweet sugar from the big plant's leaves. Flimsy grows our universe to feed herself. Really, everything is a part of Flimsy.”

“Here come those yuels again,” said Val. The blue baboons were twirling towards us. They'd let their arms flow out long to swirl like streamers.

“They're fully mellow unless—” Bart and suddenly broke off. “Oh hell, I just noticed that Jim has a jiva inside him. Why didn't I—”

“You do, Jim?” said Val, her face turning cold again.

“The jiva is helping me,” I assured Val. “Like a partner. It's not at all like it was with—”

“You are really too much,” said Val. She flipped her hood back over her head and stalked off to the other side of the room.

“Intense,” said Bart, shaking his head as he watched her go. “Me, I've somehow managed to avoid my past wife. I just hope your jiva doesn't bring down the heat.”

“My jiva can keep quiet,” I assured him, hoping this was true. “Right, Mijjy?”

“Destruction devil yuel,” said Mijjy inside my head. “Panic alert.”

This didn't bode well at all. I sincerely hoped that the Earthmost Jiva was sound asleep—and that Mijjy wasn't going to rouse her.

Perhaps Bart should have started some evasive and defensive measures at this point. But he was too high to focus. He led Durkle and I to the kettle of punch and dipped in his whole head, soaking up the tweaked kessence. He grew another notch brighter, and more solid. And now, in his pleasure from the rush, Bart utterly forgot any worries about a raid. A woman ghost called out to him, and he left us on our own, executing a few flamenco-style maneuvers with the yuels on his way.

The punch-kettle was a smooth, shiny zickzack construct. Stinging from Val's rebuke, I scooped up a bit of the tweaked kessence in my cupped hand. The stuff was more like a heavy gas than like a liquid. It formed a pool of distortion in my palm. Before I could actually try tasting any, it had soaked into my skin.

Not that I felt any huge effects. A shot of kessence meant a lot more to a gauzy low-level ghost than it did to a kessence-filled jiva-enhanced winner like me. Or, wait...maybe this special kessence
was
doing something. I was seeing sparkles of colored light beneath my feet. Or had they been there all along?

The five blue yuels danced past me yet again, twirling and stamping their clawed feet. I could hear them talking to each other.

“Spin, slide, bump,” said one.

“Aging, dying, being born,” answered another.

“The floor is a jellied layer of living water!” hissed Durkle, standing at my side. “We're standing on the Dark Gulf!” He and I knelt, the better to peer through the floor. In the black waters below, a powerful current was sweeping a steady flow of colored sprinkles to the right.

“My plan's going to work,” gloated Durkle. “We'll bust through this floor and ride the current out of here.”

“Can I bring Val?” I glanced over at her. She was leaning against the far wall, pretending not to watch me.

“Sure. And remember that you can breathe living water. It's even better than—”

A splintering crash sounded from above, and a huge tentacle came rooting in through the smashed hatch in the ceiling. The angrily lashing tail sprouted a thicket of root hairs that wove throughout Bert's room, taking an instant census of everyone and everything here.

And now, via teep, I picked up the voice of the Earthmost Jiva. She was furious at Mijjy—who'd woken her for a mere five yuels.

“Mijjy noise ruination sleep,” ranted the giant jiva.“Mijjy reportage yuel army.”

Pop, pop
, two of the yuels burst, sending vortices of kessence whirling through the room. The remaining three yuels took a stance against a wall and began singing yuel lullabies—those repellently sweet tunes that the jivas couldn't stand.

The room devolved into chaos. Although the Earthmost Jiva kept her distance from the singing yuels, her thick root lashed around the room, sweeping up ghosts and savagely draining them.

Some of the shades were trying to squeeze out the hatchway—a risky maneuver, as the big jiva's tentacle filled most of the hole. To brush against her was to risk being consumed. Other ghosts were caroming around the room like trapped birds. Inside my head, Mijjy was frantic—the overlapping sound of three distinct yuel lullabies was driving her mad. She would have crawled out of my body, but for the moment she didn't see a safe haven to flee to. Keeping my focus, I headed off across the room to get Val.

Just then the jiva's fat root smashed the floor out of Durkle's room. With extreme rapidity, it withdrew through the door in Bart's ceiling and slammed the hatch, leaving us to our fates.

The waters of Dark Gulf rushed in. Fierce currents tugged at us, sending us helter-skelter into the depths. Figures were tumbling every which way. I focused my attention on Val. She was quite some distance from me, and perhaps she was avoiding me. Be that as it may, I intended to catch up. Leaving Durkle to his own devices, I swam for her as hard as I could.

Before long I had a problem. Intellectually I knew that the living water was breathable—I'd already tried it while passing through the tunnel from Earth. But my body's reflexes where having none of it. And now, in my excitement, I ended up holding my breath until I was on the point of blacking out. I lost my coordination, my limbs spasmed to a halt, and only then did I finally draw in a tentative trickle of living water. It was chilly—but vivifying. In a way, living water was better than air. Quickly I began sucking in heady draughts and swimming as rapidly as before, following the peach-colored beacon of Val's receding light.

Thanks to the current, we were bowling along at considerable speed. It was as if we were within a chamber of some huge, pumping heart. Durkle had kept pace with me, he was right at my side. I might have caught up with Val quite soon—but now a swarm of sprinkles set upon me.

I was somewhat weakened, as I'd given Val half my kessence. There was a real possibility that the sprinkles might do me in. So I broke off my swim strokes once again—this time to focus on getting Mijjy to wrap a net of protective mesh of tendrils around me. I included Durkle within the shield as well. And now I resumed the chase.

But, to my dismay, I couldn't see Val anymore. Glowing like fireflies, the incalculable numbers of sprinkles were bunching themselves into great skeins and lacy swirls, hampering my vision. Perhaps some vagary of the currents had propelled Val further ahead than before. But I felt reasonably sure that I'd still find her.

As I swam steadily along, my emotional turmoil began fading away. Perhaps it was the effect of the living water, or perhaps it was the sinister grandeur of our surroundings. Below us was the sparkling abyss of the Dark Gulf, and above us were the odd, jagged shapes of the Flimsy underworld. Even if the underworld was akin to forever-under-construction immigration terminal, it's intricately fitted surfaces had the majesty of a great barrier reef.

Suddenly Durkle squeezed my hand and pointed into the depths. Far, far below we could glimpse the outlines of a leviathan, dark against the sprinkles' haze of light.

At first I thought I was seeing a sea serpent, a miles-long snake with a body some hundreds of meters diameter, with its head somehow out of view. And then I noticed the bulge of its main body, outlined as a shadowy form amid the flashing sprinkles. Could it be a long-necked swimming dinosaur? But the body's flank stretched much father than seemed at all plausible—the thing was the size of a small moon.