“What’s that?” asked Randy.
“Those are lumps of chipmold mycelium, technically known as sclerotia, but commonly called camote in the Americas and moksha in India. They are a powerful psychedelic, greatly prized by the sadhus.”
By now the camote nuggets had been devoured by four lucky sadhus who lay prostrate in adoration at Parvati’s feet. Randy and Parvati picked their way around them and headed back toward the Tipu Bharat. It was getting late, and beggars were bedding down for the night on the sidewalks. When a man in a turban rode past on a unicycle, Parvati pulled Randy into a dark doorway.
“Look out for that one,” she whispered. “He’s a dacoit—a mugger from a gang.”
They lingered in the shadows after the dacoit was gone, hugging and kissing and feeling each other, until suddenly a moldie came plummeting down out of the sky and landed in front of them. He was shaped like a lithe nude Indian man, but with leathery wings, four arms, and a shiny crown like Parvati’s. He had an enormous uncircumcised penis. Parvati cupped her enlarged new breasts and ingratiatingly hefted them at the interloper. He glared at her with his mouth open, apparently talking to Parvati via direct moldie radio waves.
“It is none of your affair,” shouted Parvati suddenly. “You should be grateful to me!”
The four-armed moldie gave Randy a rough shove that sent him sprawling, then leaped up into the air and flew away.
“Who in the world was that?” asked Randy, shakily getting to his feet. “Looked like one mean motherfucker!”
“That was my husband, Shiva the destroyer. Ridiculous as it may seem, he’s jealous of you. As if sex with a human could possibly mean anything to me. Shiva thinks I should come back to our nest right away? I’ll teach him a little lesson in etiquette. I’ll spend the entire night with you.”
Back in Randy’s room they had sex again, and then Parvati started looking bored. “I’m bound and determined to stay here all night, Randy, but I’m not conditioned to sleep anywhere other than in the security of my home nest. What shall we do?”
“Maybe we should take like a drug trip together,” said nude Randy. “You give me a lump or two of that camote stuff, and I’ll put the leech-DIM on you.” He held the postage stamp-sized leech-DIM out to her on the palm of his hand.
“What an odd idea,” said Parvati. “For a moldie and a human to ‘take like a drug trip together.’ You’re quite the singular cheeseball, Randy Karl Tucker.” She peered at his leech-DIM. “Let me try it just for a minute at first. Put it on me and count a minute by your watch, then remove it right away. I want to see if I like it.”
Randy pressed the leech-DIM against Parvati’s left shoulder—like a vaccination. The leech-DIM had been dry and papery to the touch, but as soon as the leech touched Parvati it softened and then quickly twitched itself into a position of maximum contact.
Parvati’s skin lit up like a Christmas tree, and her limbs sank back into her body mass. She lay there on Randy’s bed like a living mandala. Once the minute was up, it took a bit of effort to pry up an edge of the leech, but after that was done Randy could easily peel it off. Parvati’s usual shape gradually returned, her limbs and head slowly growing out from the mandala.
“Goodness me,” said Parvati. “That was really something.” She gestured fluidly, and two chipmold sclerotia appeared in the palm of her hand: one black and one a hard gemlike blue. “Eat these, Randy, and put the leech-DIM on me. We’ll make a nightlong debauch of it.”
Randy ate the camote. It was crunchy, juicy and bitter with alkaloids. He started feeling the effects almost immediately. With wooden fingers he put the now-soft leech-DIM back on Parvati and lay down on the bed with her, wrapping himself tight around the pulsing egg of her body.
The camote took Randy on an express ride to a classic mystical vision—he saw God in the form of an all-pervading white light. The light recognized Randy and spoke to him. “I love you, Randy,” it said. “I’ll always love you. I’m always here.” Years later, Randy would learn that Stahn Mooney had a similar voice-of-god experience on a merged trip.
Here in Bangalore filigreed multidimensional patterns of tubes surrounded Randy like pipes all around him, wonderfully growing and branching pipes leading from Randy out through the white light and in the distance homing in on—someone else. Parvati. “Randy?” came her voice. “Is that you? Are we in this dream together?” “Yes oh yes we are,” answered Randy. “Let’s fly together,” said Parvati, and her essence flowed through the pipes to mingle with Randy’s, and then they were adrift together in a sky of lovely shapes, endlessly many shapes of infinite intricacy, all gladly singing to the pair of flying lovers.
When Randy woke up, he was lying on the floor with Parvati’s tissues completely surrounding his head. He was breathing through a kind of nozzle Parvati had pushed into his mouth. For a moment Randy feared she was attacking him, and then, peeling her off of him, he feared she was dead. But once he removed her leech-DIM, Parvati livened up and began pulling herself back together. The hot morning sun streamed in Randy’s window, and the thousand noises of the street came drifting in—the chattering voices, the bicycle bells, the vendors’ cries, the Indian radio music, the swish and shuffle of moving bodies—a moiré of sound vibrations filling the air like exquisite ripples in a three-dimensional pond.
“Wow,” said Parvati.
“Did you have a good time?”
“It was—wonderful. But it’s so late, I have to run. Shiva will be worried sick. I’ll come see you again day after tomorrow.”
3
Tre
Tre Dietz had very long hair that was straight, sun-bleached, and tangled. He had lively brown eyes, a short mouth, and a strong chin. He stood about six feet tall and enjoyed the easy good health of a young man in his twenties.
Tre was a classic American bohemian. Like so many before him, he grew up in the rude vastnesses of the Midwest and migrated west to the coast, to sunny Californee.
Tre’s mother was a teacher and his dad was a salesman. Tre was at the top of his graduating class in Des Moines. He got accepted at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and the Des Moines Kiwanians gave him a scholarship. While at UCSC, Tre smoked out, sought the spore, and transchronicized the Great Fractal, as did all his circle of friends—but Tre also managed to get a good grounding in applied chaos and in piezoplastics. Before he could quite finish all the requirements for a degree in limpware engineering, he got an offer too good to refuse from Apex Images. It happened one rainy, chilly day in March 2049.
Tre was on spring break from UCSC. He was living in a cottage down the hill from the university, down in a flat, scuzzy student part of Santa Cruz, rooming with Benny Phlogiston and Aanna Vea. Aanna was a big strong-featured Samoan woman, and Benny was a tiny Jewish guy from Philadelphia. All three of them were limpware engineering majors, and none of them was in a romantic relationship with any of the others. They were just roommates.
Tre was already dating his future wife Terri Percesepe, although Tre and Terri hadn’t realized yet that they were fated to mate. Terri was taking art courses, living with a girlfriend, and working for a few hours every morning selling tickets for the Percesepe family’s day-excursion fishing boats. People still liked to fish, even in 2049, though these days there was always a slight chance of snagging a submarine rogue moldie and having to face the rogue’s inhumanly savage retaliation. Each fishing boat was equipped with a high-pressure flamethrower for just this eventuality.
The day when Tre’s life changed, the uvvy woke him. Tre was on his thin sleeping pad, and the uvvy chirped, “Tre Tre Tre Tre . . . ” Tre grabbed the uvvy, which was about the size of an old-fashioned telephone handset, and told it to project. You could use an uvvy one of two ways: you could ask it to project a holographic image of your caller or you could set it onto your neck and let it make a direct electromagnetic field connection with your brain.