Read Online Mad Professor by Rudy Rucker - Free Book Online Page B

who should be upset; I’m the one with the deformed, yelling penis. But the transformation is such that my cock seems to have a stronger personality than me. Nothing new, really. I’m in shock, and for a moment this seems almost funny.
    But now it gets much worse. The little Poe penis knots his brow in fury, gathers his strength and–snaps himself loose from my belly. No, no, no!
    Somewhere below the horror I think of a lighthouse with a hollow base breaking loose from brittle chalk.
    There’s a hole at my crotch. The hole is moving around, adjusting itself, becoming a vagina.
    I catch hold of Eddie before he can run away and, screaming like a woman, I stampede bare-assed down the halls and up the stairs to Teage’s room—not forgetting to bring my laptop. I must preserve every bit of this, at all costs.
    For finally I have a story to tell.
    +   +   +
    Teage has drawn back his curtains and is standing by his open window, staring into the humid night. He turns to face me, Burroughs in his mouth again.
    Bill calls a word to my Eddie: “ Tekelili .” I recognize it from Poe’s only novel, his tale of a sailing trip to the farthest South. Poe used tekelili to represent the cries of birds at Earth’s nethermost frontier.
    â€œ Tekelili ” responds the figure in my hand. And now, vivified by the exchange, the little Poe grows hot to the touch, twists from my grasp, and buzzes through the room’s air. An instant later he’s flown out Teage’s open window, blinking like a firefly,like a lighthouse. He pauses out there, waiting for us to come and follow.
    A sharp pain knifes across my belly.
    +   +   +
    I brought the laptop in the car with me; Teage is driving, led by the darting light. I’m still naked. My pains come in rhythmic waves. I fear what comes next. But I keep writing, saving the file after every sentence.
    We drive down Broadway and turn right on Baseline. The great triangular rocks of the Flatirons are gold in the waning moon.
    Thick clear fluid seeps from my vagina. I’m giving birth.
    +   +   +
    In the middle of the field hovers glowing Eddie Poe. Between my wet thighs twitches a newborn sea-cucumber—a warty, foot-long creature with a fan of tendrils at one end—the very species found in Poe’s novel of the great hole beyond the Antarctic walls of ice. The contractions continue. More life stirs in my womb.
    The Burroughs thing watches quietly from within Teage’s mouth. I force a mugwump out through my birth canal, then a centipede and a cuttlefish.
    +   +   +
    As they leave my body, the creatures crawl to Eddie’s beacon, no two of them the same. Unknown energies pour from their tendrils, hands, mandibles, tentacles. The beams drill through Earth’s thin crust, friable as a chalk tablet.
    A glow is visible from the tunnel my children have made.
    Teage has gone and I must follow. My body is changing, my mind can barely form the words to type. I’ll end my manuscript and cast the minidrive clear.
    And then, ah, then–raving, inchoate, my womb expelling an endless stream of life, I’ll leap into the Hollow Earth.
    Shambhala.

THE MEN IN THE
BACK ROOM AT THE
COUNTRY CLUB
    â€œYO , Jack” said Tonel as they lugged two golf bags apiece toward the men’s locker room. It was sunset, the end of a long Saturday’s caddying, Jack’s last day of work this summer.
    â€œI didn’t get a chance to tell you,” continued Tonel, shouldering open the door. “About who I saw sweatin’ in Ragland’s backyard this morning.” It was fresh and cool in the locker room. A nice break from the heavy, thick August air.
    â€œIn Ragland’s yard?” said Jack Vaughan, setting down the bags and wiping his brow. “I don’t know. His ninety-year-old mother?” Jack suspected a joke. Ragland was the master of the locker room, ensconced behind his counter. Tidily