Spaceland by Rudy Rucker Page B

between friendly and intimidating. Not a woman to cross. She was wearing a tight green T-shirt and light purple slacks. Her feet—well her feet didn’t look right at all. They were in black shoes, but turned sideways, almost backwards in fact. And she was hovering a few inches above the floor. Our gravity didn’t seem to have any effect on Momo.
    â€œGreetings,” she said in that rich, low voice of hers. “Joe Cube,
Jena Bonk, Spazz Grotty. I’m Momo from the fourth dimension.”
    Jena gave a little shriek of fear and surprise.
    â€œWhat?” said Spazz, looking at Jena. “She’s not with you?”
    â€œOh yeah, Momo’s a friend of ours,” I said, trying to wallpaper over things. “Let’s go, Momo. If you want to talk, we can do it in the car.”
    â€œSo you’re off for some card sharping,” said Momo. “Most excellent. I relish your low cunning, Joe Cube.” She must have picked up on my noticing her feet, for now she smoothly turned them around and settled to the floor.
    â€œCool moonwalk,” drawled Spazz, observing the move. “This woman is—who? One of your relatives, Joe?”
    â€œShe’s an alien,” said Jena, who’d backed off all the way to the other side of the room. “She did something to Joe last night while I was asleep.”
    â€œGnarly!” said Spazz happily. “Joe’s girlfriend from the psycho ward. This is turning into an interesting day after all. What was that about a dimension, Momo?”
    â€œI’m a four-dimensional woman,” said Momo quietly. “Like a god compared to you, Spazz. Not Joe’s girlfriend. Not a psycho. Perhaps Joe was right in saying that I should augment you. It might be well to have more than one agent in your world.”
    â€œNot me,” said Jena, her eyes defensively slitted. “Don’t augment me.”
    â€œDon’t augment either of them,” I said. “One of us is enough.” I didn’t want to see Spazz horning in on my new-found power.
    Spazz cocked his head oddly, obviously trying to execute a difficult mental reset. It did my heart good to see his confusion.
    â€œFourth dimension like time?” said Spazz finally.
    â€œNot time,” said Momo firmly. “Yes, one can model time as a higher dimension. But I’m from a fourth dimension of space. Time
is a different type of dimension entirely. I’m as subject to time as you are.”
    â€œIf your fourth dimension isn’t time, then what is it?” asked Spazz.
    â€œWe call our world’s cardinal directions up, down, East, West, South, North, Ana and Kata,” said Momo. “But just as do you, we have a somewhat different set of names for the directions relative to our own bodies. In daily life, we speak of up, down, right, left, back, front, vinn and vout.”
    â€œFlatland,” said Spazz suddenly. “What you’re saying reminds me of that book about a world that has polygons living in a plane. The hero’s called A Square.”
    â€œExactly,” said Momo enthusiastically. “I know this book well. It’s one of Spaceland’s finest works. I’m like the sphere who intersects A Square’s plane, Spazz. What you see before you is but one of my three-dimensional cross sections.” Momo gestured at her ample body.
    â€œWhy aren’t you all crooked and bulgy?” I interrupted. “Why do you look different from last night?”
    â€œLast night I didn’t take the trouble to come in at a right angle,” said Momo. “I wasn’t quite perpendicular to your space. Nor was I standing so still as I am now. Think once again of the prime analogy. Four is to three as three is to two. If a cube cuts a plane at a right angle, it forms a square cross section. But if the cube is tilted, the creatures in the plane see something else. A rectangle, a trapezoid—”
    â€œOr a