Shuteye for the Timebroker Read online

  Until the invention of the Goodspeed Drive.

  The Goodspeed Drive achieved a velocity approaching one million light-years per hour. Even so, circumnavigating the plenum would require nearly two years of constant flight.

  Goodspeed was up to the task. A dauntless explorer as well as a laboratory genius—he had been the first human to set foot on Ragovoy IV, where the living continents reacted with ire to any foreign tread—Goodspeed equipped his one-person ship, the Eternal Recurrence, with two years’ worth of food, entertainment discs, and objects of intellectual curiosity, then set off, basking in the acclaim of the entire human race.

  The voyage passed reasonably quickly. Cybernetic overseers kept the ship functioning and on course, leaving Goodspeed free to pass the time in idleness, sleep, amusement, and lofty thinking. By the end of the first year, he had disproven Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem and invented a self-flattening toothpaste tube which insured that not a squidge of paste was wasted.

  A remarkable feature of the Goodspeed Drive was that it went from zero to a million lights in no time flat, as soon as it was activated. Likewise, any vessel so equipped would come to a complete stop once the drive was shut off.

  Goodspeed halted at intervals during his trip, photographing strange galaxies that he used as landmarks in his progress and as proof of his journey.

  At the final moment dictated by his calculations, Goodspeed flicked the drive off for the last time.

  He was closer to Earth than the Moon itself. The instant he made radio contact with the home planet, the whole world erupted with joy.

  Goodspeed landed under conventional power, was whisked away and soon found himself the subject of a ticker-tape parade in Paris, the capital of the world community.

  After two years of hermitlike existence, Goodspeed discovered that it was somewhat hard to be instantly sociable. So at first he chalked up the curiously off-kilter conversations he was experiencing to his atrophied social skills. But as his car floated down the Champ de Mars, Goodspeed saw a sight that instantly confirmed his suspicions that all was not right with the Earth he had returned to.

  In place of the Eiffel Tower stood a hundred-foot-tall statue of a one-eyed demon of ferocious mien.

  Goodspeed whirled on his host, the mayor of Paris, and said, “My God, what is that monstrosity?”

  The mayor performed an arcane mudra, then said, “Monsieur Goodspeed, your historic accomplishments do not entitle you to blaspheme the figure of Collembola the Orgulous!”

  Quickly Goodspeed performed certain mental calculations in light of this new knowledge, and realized what had happened.

  The universe was spatially contiguous but temporally discontinuous. At some point, Goodspeed’s ship had jumped across an entire Big Bang/Big Crunch cycle and ended up in a new, partially convergent era, billions of years in the future. He was forever exiled from the familiar, comforting Earth he knew.

  Goodspeed shrugged. What could he do? It was just as Mark Twain had said in his classic novel, Tom Trickster of the Cree Confederacy: “You can’t go home again.”

  30.

  THE DAWN OF MIRACLES

  Hurting, despairing, Mica Moondragon had been trapped in the cavern for thirty-six hours now, and was starting to go a little insane.

  An amateur spelunker, Mica took every precaution in his underground forays. But even the best equipment and most cautious approaches could not contend with a sharp stalagmite, a severed rope, and the subsequent fall of some forty feet down a tall chimney that had resulted in two broken legs.

  Mica, a loner without many friends or any family, had told no one of his weekend expedition. His only hope was that when Monday came, his unexplained absence from work would result in a call to his home and a subsequent all points bulletin.

  But probably not. Everyone might surmise he had just flitted off irresponsibly. And even if anyone did decide to track him, what traces had he left to point to his current location? Very, very few.

  No, things did not look promising for Micas rescue.

  Mica had gone through his entire rations—two breakfast bars—in the first twenty-four hours. His liquid sustenance had come from a nearby drip that tasted like the bottom of a zinc pot. To conserve the batteries of his miraculously unshattered lamp, Mica had taken to lighting it only at two-hour intervals.

  Lying in the darkest darkness imaginable, Mica found his vision playing tricks on him. Phantom images, faces, and scenes from his past would arise and dissipate. After a while, he ignored them.

  But the latest apparition bore no relationship to his personal history. Which was why Mica knew he was cracking up.

  A luminescent nude goddess seemed to hover in the chilly air of the cavern. Radiantly blue, the ethereal female possessed an attenuated form, almost serpentine in the proportions of her limbs and torso. She seemed to writhe in midair.

  Helplessly hoping, berating himself for a desperate fool even as he did so, Mica extended his hand upward to the floating deity.

  He could see his hand dimly in the light cast by the goddess! Could she be real—-?

  Mica’s fingers touched those of the chthonic woman. There came a blinding flash of light. When Mica’s vision returned, he found himself outdoors, under the homely, gorgeous light of the sun!

  Flicking his forked tongue joyously to taste the thickly scented open air, Mica slithered happily away through the wet grass.

  31.

  CHARMING HAECKEL’S SERPENT

  India called.

  Ever since he could remember, Homer Haeckel had felt an uncanny kinship with a land and culture as far removed from his birthplace—Muncie, Indiana—as could be. From the very first time he had seen pictures of that exotic nation, Homer had sensed a deep connection between his soul and that of the Asian Subcontinent. When the concept of reincarnation was introduced to his young brain, Homer had an explanation at last for his affinity with all things Hindu.

  He had spent one or more previous lifetimes in India. Of this he was increasingly certain, as the years passed and every encounter with the clothing, cuisine, and customs of India brought a jab of recognition way down low in his gut. The trappings of his American life began to chafe him.

  Finally, when he attained the age of eighteen, Homer Haeckel achieved the practical means and freedom to voyage to the land of his dreams.

  Bidding what he expected was a permanent good-bye to his tearful parents, Homer boarded his flight to the realm in which he would finally feel at home.

  Walking the streets of Calcutta, Homer moved in a daze of glory. Every rancid smell, every discordant sound, every glimpse of beggarly flesh or Brahmin robes convinced him that he was among his own kind.

  After some time, Homer encountered a sidewalk snake-charmer. The elderly, turbaned, bearded fellow sat cross-legged, a dhoti his only clothing, piping to a basket of serpents.

  Astonishingly, Homer began to feel an erection blooming. How could this be? There was nothing conventionally erotic about this situation. But it was as if his penis was responding directly to the swami’s music.

  The swami seemed to take notice of Homer’s embarrassing tent pole and, after finishing his act and accepting a few coins from onlookers, he beckoned Homer over. Homer approached the man and dropped down to the dirty mat where the swami sat. The swami whispered in accented but perfectly intelligible English, “I see your lingham has returned home at last.”

  “Huh? What do you mean?”

  “Your male organ. It is Hindu in origin. That is what has drawn you here.”

  “But, but—what about the rest of me? My soul—”

  The swami chuckled. “You are in the grip of an intellectual fallacy, young man. None of us has a unified soul. Instead, we are just a collection of disparate allegiances, each tethered to one particular organ or another. Every individual is a patchwork, reshuffled from a welter of ethnic parts at birth. You, I can see, for instance, possess a liver from Greece, a heart from Sweden, and a left foot from Ireland. Bu
t your lingham is definitely Hindu, of that I am certain.”

  Stunned, Homer rose and stumbled off.

  The forty-five-year-old Homer Haeckel is quite happy in his job as a janitor at the United Nations.

  It’s the only place every single part of him feels at home.

  32.

  INTO THE VALLEY OF FINKS AND WEIRDOS

  I stepped off the flying eyeball that I had ridden over from my workshop and pulled up a seat in front of the bandstand. Paul Revere and the Raiders were playing “Kicks,” and the teenyboppers were frugging and swimming like there was no tomorrow.

  And of course, there wasn’t.

  Since the Global Groove Bomb had exploded in 1967, we all lived in a perpetual moment of changeless change.

  Be Here Now. Forever.

  One of the beehive-haired waitresses roller-skated to my table and I ordered a platter of Big Boy Burgers, a side of fries, and an LSD shake.

  While I was waiting for my food, a member of the Rat Fink tribe ambled over, pulled out a chair, and sat down across from me.

  I gave the hairy, big-eared thing a soul grip. “Hey, Scuz, what’s shaking?”

  The Fink grinned—a three-foot-wide expanse of rotten green teeth—and said, “Drag race on Roth Boulevard at noon. Cosmic Gearshifter versus Magwheel Marvin. The prize is ten keys of Maui Zowie. Free samples for the crowd.”

  I yawned. “Done there, been that. What else you got?”

  “There’s the regular tsunami due at dusk down at Laguna. Massive curls for all the happy groms.”

  “Wipeout city, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Rat Fink frowned. “Gee, Dutch, you’re no fun lately.”

  My burgers showed up, but I wasn’t hungry anymore. I sighed. “I know, I know, Scuz. Even the joys of detailing hot rods have paled for me. Life has turned super-grotty in my eyes. I can’t find my kicks anymore.”

  Rat Fink waved one arm around at the surrounding spectacle sprawled across the palm-tree-dotted landscape. Dragsters zoomed, orgies churned, be-ins and happenings exfoliated.

  “Even with all this, you’re bored?”

  “‘Fraid so, old bopster.”

  “You are seriously harshing my mellow, Dutch. What do you want out of life?”

  “Contrast. There’s no contrast anymore. How can we be cool if there are no squares to freak out?”

  Rat Fink assumed a look of intense concentration. “I could pretend to be square…”

  I regarded six hundred pounds of snaggle-toothed, ball-snouted monster affectionately, then clapped Rat Fink heartily on his wire-furred shoulder. “Thanks, pal, but it just wouldn’t work. I gotta split now. Catch you on the flip side.”

  I rode the next eyeball out to Kesey’s place. When I got there Ken and the gang were just heading for the Fillmore. I went with them in the bus for lack of anything better to do. After the show, I fell asleep in the middle of making love to Janis Joplin.

  Man, it was either put on a suit and get a job or kill myself! But there were no more suits, and no more jobs, and nobody had seen death lately, either.

  Table of Contents

  Captain Jill

  Billy Budd

  Slowhand and Little Sister

  Underground

  Going Abo

  Distances

  We’re All in This Alone

  Walking the Great Road

  The Mysterious Iowans

  Shadowboxer

  Shuteye for the Timebroker

  The Days of Other Light

  The Secret Sutras of Sally Strumpet

  Eel Pie Stall

  The Farthest Schorr