Jim and the Flims (7 page)

“You have that good a memory?”

“Thanks to my jiva. You unaugmented people hardly use your brains at all. Just wait until you acquire a jiva like me.”

“I—I don't know about any of that,” I said, wanting to steer the conversation back to something comprehensible. I pointed at a spot on my wood floor. “So, uh, what color is
this
?”

“Capucine buff,” said Weena. “With shadings of mustard and barium yellow.”

On the fourth day of Weena's residence, I went down to the beach for a long walk. It soothed me to stare at the waves and at the curves of the seaweed on the sand. When I came home in the late afternoon, Weena had someone else in our bedroom with her. I could hear that they were having sex. I went shaky all over, with my chest feeling hollow.

I threw a chair across the kitchen so they'd know I was home, and then I went out on our little front porch and started putting an edge my biggest carving knife, using a sharpening iron that made a sinister slithery sound.

A minute or two later I heard voices from the house, and then the sound of the bedroom window opening. Someone exited unseen and ran away. And now Weena appeared on the porch, wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

“Are you contemplating a psychotic rampage?” she asked, half smiling. Her eyes were watchful.

“I want you to know that I'm taking this very seriously.” I set down the knife. “Don't you love me, Weena?”

“We've never spoken of love. Perhaps I thought you'd find it titillating if I bedded a stranger? In this manner presenting myself as a fallen woman of loose morals?” She gave me a mocking smile.

“Don't, Weena. I—I've grown very attached to you. Who was the guy?”

“Dick Simly. Your landlord.” Weena put on a contrite expression and walked over to me. “Oh, Jim, I comprehend your chagrin. No more teasing. I bedded this Dick Simly for a simple and practical reason. I was implanting eggs in his flesh.” She bucked her belly gently. “With my ovipositor. These are a very fast-growing kind of egg. Quite soon they'll hatch. Three of them.”

“You're crazy,” I said. But I sort of had to laugh. Weena was a step beyond spacy, that was for sure. But... ovipositor? Yuck. She was kidding, right?

I really didn't know what to think. And I didn't feel like talking it over with Weena. That night I slept on the sofa.

The next morning, after Weena left for work, Diane Simly came over from her house and struck up a conversation with me. It was the first time she'd spoken to me since I'd gone to the hospital.

“How are you feeling, Jim? I've been so busy lately. But truly we're concerned about you.”

“They say I had a kind of electrical storm in my brain, and it scrambled some of my nerve connections. But I'm getting it back together.”

“Was the attack, ah, brought on by, by—” She probably wanted to ask if I used meth.

“Just the luck of the draw,” I said blandly. “I'm very clean-living. Look at my stomach. Feel the muscle tone.”

I opened my sports shirt, revealing my rather slack gut, and of course Diane Simly took a step back. “I understand that you've found a new friend to keep you company,” she continued. “But I'm afraid that poses a problem in terms of your lease.” I knew full well that the Simlys wanted to evict me so they could raise the rent. But renters had strong rights in Santa Cruz. At least that's what I'd thought.

“The woman's only a temporary guest,” I said. “A friend.”

“I gather that she's very friendly indeed,” said Diane sourly. “I couldn't help but overhear what happened yesterday.”

“Yes, she fucked your husband,” I said. “And I asked her not to do it again. If you tell Dick the same thing, maybe we'll be okay. Until Weena's eggs hatch. You should be fucking Dick more yourself. Before the larvae turn him into hamburger.” Really I had no idea what I was talking about—I just knew that, despite my jealousy, I wanted to stand up for Weena.

“You're completely insane,” said Diane, fighting to control her voice. “And do you know what? I was ready to give you a break. But now you've gone far. I want you and that—that
whore
out of here within seventy-two hours. As soon as she moved in, you were in violation of the terms of your lease. Our lawyer is filing for a three-day eviction this afternoon.” She turned and stalked off, her motions stiff and angular.

That night Weena and I sat on kitchen chairs in my driveway, sharing a few bottles of hard lemonade. It was balmy, with the surf audible down the alley.

“
Muuur
,” said Weena cozily. A jokey mooing sound she liked to make.

“I love you, Weena,” I said, and I meant it. I'd been thinking about our relationship all day. I was happy to have this young woman with the strange grammar here, no matter what she did.

“Dear Jim,” she answered, running her hand along my arm. “I appreciate that you speak of love. And I'm flattered that you're jealous.”

“But we might have to move,” I said. And then I recounted my conversation with Diane Simly.“She says we have to move tomorrow,” I concluded. “But I doubt if she can make that stick.”

“And you told this woman of my three eggs?” asked Weena.

“I wanted to shake her up. She's always so smug. What are the eggs supposed to grow into anyway? New Weenas?”

“No, no,” said Weena. “They're jiva eggs. What I jestingly call my ovipositor is in truth the tail of a jiva that's lodged within me. Her name is Awnee. She's my ally—she's been a part of me for many years.” Weena lifted up her latest T-shirt, patterned in horizontal green and yellow stripes. “Fix your attention upon my navel.” And now a tapering pink tendril slipped a short way out from Weena's belly button. The jiva tail—if that's what it was—bore a fuzz of tiny, luminous hairs. It had a tiny dark spot at its tip. An orifice.

“Oh put that away!” I cried miserably. I rose unsteadily to my feet.

“It's high time I told you the entire truth,” continued Weena.

“Enough truth,” I said, backing away from her. “To hell with truth.”

“Tomorrow you will lead me back to that crumbling Victorian house where you first glimpsed the yuel,” intoned Weena. “The house with the round door to Flimsy. You will open this portal again.”

“Maybe,” I said, starting to feel cornered. “How about some truth for you? It was that big surfer at that house who launched the yuel. Header. He had the yuel in his handkerchief or maybe in his nose.”

Weena hardly looked surprised. “I might as well tell you that I had the Graf eliminated before I came. But his spirit seems to control one of those surfers. I'd already sensed some of this in your mind. Believe me, Jim, your eviction is but the smallest of our worries. When I join battle with this surfer and his blue sea lion of a yuel, we'll—”

“Oh, can't we stop talking crazy?” I implored. My emotions were spilling over. “You've never once said that you loved me, Weena. That's what matters. That's what I'm waiting for!”

“I
should
love you. You have an admirable forthrightness and vim. But—”

“Look,” I said with a weary sigh. “I'm going to bed. Is it safe to sleep next to you?”

“Indeed.”

“You won't implant jiva eggs?”

“Have no fears in this regard,” said Weena cheerfully. “I'm quite finished with that task for now.”

7: Yuel

T
hat night I dreamed about sea lions barking. “
Ork ork ork
!” Weena woke me at dawn, bending over me, whispering my name. Her brown hair was tousled, her face calm. My dream of sea lions was real. Outside every window I could see whiskered snouts. The house shook as the beasts rubbed against the walls, the air rang with their hoarse cries. The sky was gray, filled with morning fog.

“The yuel's harem has accompanied him,” chattered Weena. “He knows your fear of sea lions. He'd like to drive you away from me before I've prepared you for your mission. That unfaithful Graf took advantage of me, I told him about the secret tunnel. And then that stupid farmwife who's supposed to be guarding the tunnel took a bribe from the Graf. And somehow he smuggled through a yuel. It must have been hidden within his kessence body.”

All of this was sheer gibberish to me. Droog was on the front porch, frantically scratching at the door. I opened the door to let him in. The blue sea lion was out there too, raised up on his flippers, glaring at me. An overexcited sea lion cow came wallowing around the corner of the house, her dark eyes fixed on the blue sea lion, whimpering her adoration, her body rippling with the effort of motion, her teeth prickly in her little mouth. God, sea lions were stupid. I slammed and locked the door. Outside, the creatures barked more furiously than before. An approaching siren wailed.

“Hurry and clothe yourself,” said Weena. She was dancing around, pulling on layers of clothes, and cramming her extra shoes into a shopping bag. “We'll go to that green house and await further events,” she said.“I can't readily kill a yuel with but one jiva.We have to wait for the others to hatch. You do recall our conversation of last night, no? Dress warmly. I believe you'll be sleeping in that basement for some days.”

“I don't know if I can find the house,” I said, pulling on jeans, a red T-shirt, and a checked flannel shirt. “I went looking for it a few days ago, and—”

“In one manner or another you will find it, Jim. You're the one who made the tunnel between the worlds.”

“All I did was open that door in the basement for you,” I said. “I didn't make the tunnel.”

“Oh yes you did. With that strange tool of yours. You weakened an electrical particle so that my border snail could push through. The snail is the tunnel. And those filthy surf punks live in the rickety house that's the snail's shell.”

Before I had any time to ponder this, the front door splintered and the blue bull sea lion came flopping in. Weena yelled sharply—and the creature's flesh flickered and folded, reknotting itself. And now the yuel was a muscular beast on all fours—a hairless baboon with sharp, red snaggle teeth and his skin that same shade of Krishna blue. He had a knob near the end of his tail. He made a noise at me—a snarl? Or was he trying to talk?

I rushed out the back door and Weena was with me, running down the block. Glancing back, I saw a cop car and an animal rescue van pulling up at my house. The yuel followed us, easily loping along.

“The baboon shape is the one preferred by the yuels,” said Weena. “Although sometimes a number of them fuse together to make a shape like an elephant. I don't fully understand yuels.”

“That baboon has sharp teeth.”

“Remember that I have my jiva. I will assuredly inflict damage if the yuel engages us.”

We cut down a side street, turned left, turned right, doubled back, and raced down an alley, Droog at our side. But now, just like on the other days when I'd tried to find the green Vic, I didn't know what came next. I leaned against the trunk of a palm tree, catching my breath. Tenuous strands of fog drifted past.

“I wasn't really paying attention when I found the way to the green Vic that day,” I confessed.“I was just playing around. The path kind of popped into my head. And now it's hard to concentrate with that thing—”I craned to see down the street to see if the yuel was still following.

“Never fear,” said Weena. She was bulky from all the clothes she'd pulled on—a pair of orange pencil-leg jeans protruded from beneath a pair of skirts. “I well know that the path struck you as a sudden inspiration. That's because I put it into your head. I reached out to you from the other side.” She pulled a glassine envelope of sparkling powder from the pocket of a little red jeans jacket she was wearing, and dipped into it with the moistened tip of her finger. “Allow me to inspire you again.”

“Are those things moving?” I asked, peering closer. “The sprinkles are alive?”

“Oh yes,” said Weena.“Life is the essence of their virtue. I'm eating some to engage my higher powers. I have a robust supply. Ordinarily, a sprinkle hops straight over to Flimsy. But these sprinkles are well-fattened. They have enough psychic inertia to linger here on Earth for a time. Prime yourself with some of them, Jim.”

“No way. You nearly killed me with sprinkles last week.”

“I still maintain that they saved your life,” said Weena. She licked the twitching little gems off her finger and let out a sigh of pleasure. “I enjoy how the sprinkles talk in my head. Do try some! We'll wander the streets, babbling at random. It's no longer possible for me to see the clear path, now that I'm reincarnated in your mundane world. I've lost my teep contact with the border snail—the creature in the basement of what those punks call the Whipped Vic. She's the one who generates the spacewarp camouflage, you know. They like to hide, the border snails, so that the flims and the living humans don't take advantage, using the snails as tunnels between the worlds.”

I had trouble making sense of this. “The Whipped Vic is hiding from us?”

“You could say that. But I'll surely notice if we're getting near. Perhaps the route still lurks in your deeper mind. Perhaps Snaily hasn't changed it all that much.”

“There's millions of routes through these blocks,” I complained. “More. Do the math.”

“Ah yes, he fancies himself a scientist, too.” Weena let out a peal of mocking laughter. “Small man, big dreams, tiny job.”

The glowing baboon appeared at the end of the block, trotting towards us on all fours, his bulb-tipped tail waving high in the air. I started running again, leading Weena in intricate loops, and eventually we arrived at Yucca Street.

But, shit, it wasn't the
special
Yucca Street. That stupid old vacant lot gaped where the green Vic should have been. Just an empty lot with ratty eucalyptus trees. I stood there, stymied. Droog sat by our feet, waiting to see what came next. The yuel kept his distance, still watching us. And, for the moment, Weena was too stoned from her sprinkles to be much help at all.