Free Zen City by Eliot Fintushel Page A

seen the karst…”
    Big Man kicked mud. “He wasn’t even It when he tagged me.”
    “Who cares? Go,” Tenacity bellowed. He sucked his head into his torso and then telescoped down to the size of a tin can top. The whaddayagets dived into the muck, flew to the ceiling, curled and squeezed behind speleothems and one another.
    Big Man whirled after them, feeling his way behind their skins. Then he looked up at No Mind. There was nothing there.
    Wait, no, there was something…
    * * *
    Big Man was back with the old guys, back at the On Ramp, listening to the old guys joke and prattle, showing off their artificials, swapping memories, and swilling Circenses. One geezer with a celastic chin had been on the last Mercury-based scanner probe, in the Caloris Basin. “Top that. We were scanning for transcats. The tech was good. The food ate shit. Some of the guys went forty-ten-A when we seen them things up close.
    “Turns out, a guy’s foot would be part of one, or their brains even,or just the way they feel about their wife sometimes—it would be a transcat’s belly. You know how them things go. That’s why they call them transcategoricals. Hell, the whole mission, well, all but three days of it, was a transcat’s head cold. No, I’m telling you the Buddha’s truth.
    “The commander, one day, somebody sets the scan on him, just for a damn lark, and there’s not a damn thing there. I mean nothing. He ain’t himself. No, he ain’t a transcat either, exactly. I’ll give you the rest of my beer if you can tell me what he was.
    “No… No… No… No… Shut up then and I’ll tell you. He was a transcat’s turd—part—and part a diastema of another one. That’s the space between a transcat’s teeth. Well, that ain’t a transcat, no it’s not, because it’s a space. You shut up. I just about went forty-ten-A. Everybody just about went forty-ten-A. That commander had to be relieved of duty. I mean, there was nobody there.”
    * * *
    There was something in No Mind, but it wasn’t him. No Mind was a moon reflecting light or a lens focusing it. Whose light was it? Who was doing No Mind? Suddenly, Big Man’s stomach burned and tightened. He was about to speak…
    “Suspicion. Curiosity. Paranoia,” No Mind blurted out.
    Sorrow leapt from the muck. “He’s not playing fair. He just tagged. He can’t tag again. Hell, I could win that way. Anybody could, if you can do that. This stinks, Tenacity. You let everybody get away with everything, and you don’t let me get away with squat zip.”
    Tenacity popped from his can lid and glared at No Mind. “You’re warned, killer. Are you just shooting to cover? Don’t tag again till you’re It.” He was a can lid again, gyring and clattering into the bowl of his stalagmite.
    Who was doing No Mind?
Big Man looked up and saw No Mind staring at him. Big Man burned in.
What had Angela seen inNo Mind’s eyes?
    From the can lid—“Play the game, oaf.”
    “Humble friendship,” Big Man said without turning around. He had felt it through the back of his head, in Tenacity’s voice.
    “What?”
    “You left that out, you little
bugger—Veltschmerz,
quicksilver, aversion to light, genital crabs, death by water, compassion (just a tad of that, right?), and humble friendship. That’s your recipe…”
    The whaddayagets’ laughter was an emotional stroboscope. For one second each, Big Man experienced every feeling he was capable of. Small rock slides curtained the cave walls. No Mind fell through his hole and dangled below, hanging on by his forearms.
    “Stuff it, you bloody heart murmurs.” When they were still, only hiccoughs of laughter echoing from odd places, Tenacity sprang out to his full height and turned on Big Man. “You sonuvabitch, you’re a ringer. Only now I’ll tag you: Lost love. Wormwood. Burned your hand, now you’re shy of the flame.”
    “Go to hell.” Big Man rushed to cauterize his memory, to stem the images Tenacity had provoked, but