you like cosmic rays. She’s using your body like a swinging door. I’d be all pins and needles if it were me. Are you feeling kind of… nostalgic?”
Big Man tilted his head sideways and looked at the ceiling. “There was this woman. We used to sit together. Not Angela. No, I mean, a while ago. Lord, she lived in one of the last real houses up over Route 90…”
“That’s the transcat’s belly, that mood of yours. Not the whole thing. Part of it. I see some of the rest of it twitching through a black void on the cold side of Pluto, five or six years from now.” The wrinkles shifted, bunched, and reshuffled into a tent-like configuration. “Don’t distress yourself. It’ll pass. It’s not you.”
Tenacity was cooling down. “Old wrinkly feels everything all over the universe practically. We call him, ‘Scope. Wanna guess what he’s made of?”
No Mind flicked some dried mud off Big Man’s shoulder. “Who was she, Big Man?”
“Come on, guess, Big Man.” Tenacity pushed No Man aside.
Big Man shook off the cobwebs and looked straight at ‘Scope. “Melancholy. Clarity. Detachment. Information. Elasticity. Beeohtees. I don’t know the proportions. And a little girl in there, something like a little girl—was that a mistake when they statted you?”
“Hoo! That’s my skinbag. Don’t he have the eye.” Tenacitykissed Big Man on the lips and backfired. An anxious murmur rose from the whaddayagets’ pit. “Pipe down, you yellows—it was me.”
‘Scope started pulsing out words, deep and clear. His wrinkles undulated like oscilloscope lines. “It was a mistake. I was a trial run. There’s a number like me they use in the City, only without the little girl bred in. Mind you, it’s only the sugar and spice parts I got—no Miss Prissy, no Miss Bossy—so there.”
Tenacity rolled onto his side. “Tell these lubbers all about it, ‘Scope. We got nothing to do till the transcat’s gone.”
“I was gonna. They made me early on, but that’s not how come I’m old. I was born old. They had to do me that way. It was just after the Mercury Anomaly, the second one, the big one, when the transcategoricals shimmered in, and Descartes and Newton and Einstein and Hume and everybody in the whole history of Western Civilization who ever mentioned a point or a line or a frame of reference or a sequence of one thing after another—they were all quite suddenly vestigial… I bet you wish you knew half of what I do.”
‘Scope covered his “mouth” as if he had hiccoughed, and then went on. “Everybody Earthside had always thought the world was built up out of particles of one kind or another—sensations or quarks or souls. Well, now they saw that that idea was upside-down: the world is built down from one big, undifferentiated whole, down into particles. And the particles are provisional. The borders between things are unreal, like pocks on a putty ball: squoosh! and they’re all rearranged. Nobody had ever thought that big since the Upanishads or the Mahayana Sutras. That’s where Buddhism started to come into favor.
“But who were these transcats? You know what I mean? That’s what people were saying. How can we get rid of them? That’s what everybody wanted, right off, as if that was ever an option. It would be like trying to gnaw off your brains and heart. We’re laced through with transcats like brine with salt. I was supposedto be a kind of search-and-destroy machine, but all I want to do is dress up Betsy McCall.”
“It’s gone now, isn’t it?” No Mind said.
“No.” Old ‘Scope pursed his wrinkles to wet them. “Sit tight—that’s the best thing. This one’s just passing through. It won’t be long.
“It’s ironic when you think about it. The tech they used to make me, the skinbags got it all from transcats—from watching them, and from being watched by them, the funny way that works. As if water could taste you because you swallow it. They had to rewrite all the
Big Man tilted his head sideways and looked at the ceiling. “There was this woman. We used to sit together. Not Angela. No, I mean, a while ago. Lord, she lived in one of the last real houses up over Route 90…”
“That’s the transcat’s belly, that mood of yours. Not the whole thing. Part of it. I see some of the rest of it twitching through a black void on the cold side of Pluto, five or six years from now.” The wrinkles shifted, bunched, and reshuffled into a tent-like configuration. “Don’t distress yourself. It’ll pass. It’s not you.”
Tenacity was cooling down. “Old wrinkly feels everything all over the universe practically. We call him, ‘Scope. Wanna guess what he’s made of?”
No Mind flicked some dried mud off Big Man’s shoulder. “Who was she, Big Man?”
“Come on, guess, Big Man.” Tenacity pushed No Man aside.
Big Man shook off the cobwebs and looked straight at ‘Scope. “Melancholy. Clarity. Detachment. Information. Elasticity. Beeohtees. I don’t know the proportions. And a little girl in there, something like a little girl—was that a mistake when they statted you?”
“Hoo! That’s my skinbag. Don’t he have the eye.” Tenacitykissed Big Man on the lips and backfired. An anxious murmur rose from the whaddayagets’ pit. “Pipe down, you yellows—it was me.”
‘Scope started pulsing out words, deep and clear. His wrinkles undulated like oscilloscope lines. “It was a mistake. I was a trial run. There’s a number like me they use in the City, only without the little girl bred in. Mind you, it’s only the sugar and spice parts I got—no Miss Prissy, no Miss Bossy—so there.”
Tenacity rolled onto his side. “Tell these lubbers all about it, ‘Scope. We got nothing to do till the transcat’s gone.”
“I was gonna. They made me early on, but that’s not how come I’m old. I was born old. They had to do me that way. It was just after the Mercury Anomaly, the second one, the big one, when the transcategoricals shimmered in, and Descartes and Newton and Einstein and Hume and everybody in the whole history of Western Civilization who ever mentioned a point or a line or a frame of reference or a sequence of one thing after another—they were all quite suddenly vestigial… I bet you wish you knew half of what I do.”
‘Scope covered his “mouth” as if he had hiccoughed, and then went on. “Everybody Earthside had always thought the world was built up out of particles of one kind or another—sensations or quarks or souls. Well, now they saw that that idea was upside-down: the world is built down from one big, undifferentiated whole, down into particles. And the particles are provisional. The borders between things are unreal, like pocks on a putty ball: squoosh! and they’re all rearranged. Nobody had ever thought that big since the Upanishads or the Mahayana Sutras. That’s where Buddhism started to come into favor.
“But who were these transcats? You know what I mean? That’s what people were saying. How can we get rid of them? That’s what everybody wanted, right off, as if that was ever an option. It would be like trying to gnaw off your brains and heart. We’re laced through with transcats like brine with salt. I was supposedto be a kind of search-and-destroy machine, but all I want to do is dress up Betsy McCall.”
“It’s gone now, isn’t it?” No Mind said.
“No.” Old ‘Scope pursed his wrinkles to wet them. “Sit tight—that’s the best thing. This one’s just passing through. It won’t be long.
“It’s ironic when you think about it. The tech they used to make me, the skinbags got it all from transcats—from watching them, and from being watched by them, the funny way that works. As if water could taste you because you swallow it. They had to rewrite all the
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