Mad Professor by Rudy Rucker Page B

found.”
    â€œGo in the ceiling?” said Tonel.
    â€œThere’s a crawlspace,” said Danny. “It goes to the ladies’ locker room. There’s a grate over their showers. The men’s is the same.”
    â€œYou’re still peeping?” said Jack, a balloon of mirth rising in his chest. “You really are a sex offender, Danny. Keep it up, and the Man’s gonna cut out your balls and give you Neuticles. For the public good.”
    â€œLaugh it up, bagwort,” shot back Danny. “Meanwhile Albert Chesney’s off with your girl.”
    Climbing into the ceiling was a dumb idea, but, hey. It was the end of summer. So yeah, they snuck to the furnace room,got up into the ceiling, and made their way across the hanging supports. Danny kept making snorting noises like a wild pig, and then Tonel would say “Neuticles,” and then they’d laugh so hard they’d flop around like fish. They were riding the Wheel-chair for fair.
    Eventually they found themselves above the ceiling vent in the shower room of the men’s lockers. There were voices coming up. Ragland and the mibracc. Still in here after all.
    Peeking through the grate, Jack saw Ragland in the shower with the old men, all of them naked. The men looked sluggish and tired. One of them–Mr. Gupta –had collapsed to the floor and looked oddly flat. Just now Ragland was pulling something like a cork out of Mr. Inkle’s navel. A flesh-colored bung. A stream of straw-colored fluid gushed out of the mibracc, splashing on the tile floor and running toward the drain.
    â€œ Smeel ,” whispered Danny.
    â€œYou mean lymph,” murmured Jack.
    â€œNo dog, that’s ‘smeel,’’” hissed Tonel. “The Dank-man knows.”
    They were trying to act like what they were seeing was funny—but they were realizing it wasn’t. It was awful. The air smelled of urine and alcohol, meat and feces. It would be very bad if Ragland found them watching. There was no more joking, no more chat. The boys peered through the grate in silence.
    Actually the smeel wasn’t all running down the drain. The smelly dregs were sliding away, but a clear, sparkling fraction of the smeel was gathering in pools and eddies near the drain, humping itself up into tiny waterspouts, circling around and around, the smaller vortices joining into bigger ones. A spinning ring of smeel slid across the tiles like a miniature hurricane. Itheaded right out of the shower stall and disappeared into the locker room.
    Meanwhile Mr. Inkle flopped over onto his side like a deflating balloon. Ragland pushed the skin around with his bare feet, then trod along its length, squeezing out the last gouts of smeel. He nudged the Inkle skin over next to the Gupta skin. After draining the three other mibracc—none of whom seemed to mind—he wrapped the five skins into tight rolls, and went out into the locker room. The clarified smeel gathered into watery columns like miniature typhoons and followed him.
    The boys heard a rattling of locker doors. The mibracc skins waited, their edges twitching ever so slightly. Ragland reappeared, still naked. He fetched the skins one by one, clattering and splashing in the next room. Each time they saw Ragland, there was one smeel tornado following him. Evidently he was stashing the mibracc and their smeel inside the golf bags.
    Next Ragland took a long, soapy shower. Then came the rustling of him getting dressed, followed by the unlocking and locking of the outer door. All was silent.
    Danny lifted loose the grate and the boys dropped down onto the tiled shower room floor. Jack happened to know that under his counter Ragland had a thing like a monster Swiss knife of plastic thumbs, one thumb for each club member—in case someone died of old age, which happened often enough to matter. Jack fetched the master thumbs and opened up Mr. Cuthbert’s locker. They peered into the golf