The Ware Tetralogy - Rudy Rucker (popular ebook readers .TXT) 📗

was Friedl who got into the wowo in the first place. Kurt and I had been about to—we were in bed naked together and Kurt turned on the wowo to make a romantic light. And then suddenly Friedl starts carrying on like she’s fallen into a salami slicer. And when I looked over there, the wowo was down by the floor and it had gotten all big and warped looking and Friedl was—I don’t know, it was like she was stretched out over the wowo’s surface. All blown up like a picture on a balloon?” Willow held her arms out, making a big round shape in the air.

“But a wowo’s small,” said Phil.

“Not when it ate Friedl and Kurt,” said Willow. “Friedl was like _inflated—_except for her little head; it was sticking out barking like crazy. And I screamed for Kurt to do something and he grabbed at Friedl, and the stupid dog bit him—Friedl was like that—and Kurt couldn’t get loose, she’d sunk her teeth into him and Kurt was yelling and then all of a sudden the wowo went over from Friedl to Kurt—so fast. And Kurt swelled up big like Friedl had been and Friedl was her own right size, but she still wouldn’t let go of Kurt, she’d completely panicked. There was light inside Kurt, he had glowing eyes like in a monster viddy and he was yelling like—I didn’t tell this before—he almost sounded like he was happy? _Whooping. _And then he got smaller and smaller, except for his hand sticking out trying to shake Friedl loose, the hand and the dog flopping in and out of the ball, half in and half out, and then—_pop—_Friedl and Kurt’s hand exploded and blood spurted everywhere. After that I didn’t see or hear Kurt anymore. There was blood all over me, and tiny little pieces of them on the floor. And the shit-ass wowo went back to pretending to be normal. I ran out of the room and uvvied the popos. The wowo wasn’t doing anything more, so right before the popos came, I flushed the Friedl pieces down the toilet because I didn’t want them to say it was my fault for having such a dumb dog.” Willow stared at Phil, her eyes searching his face.

“It’s not your fault, Willow,” said Phil. “I’m not going to blame you.”

“Thanks.” Willow sniffed and blew her nose. “You should get rid of that ring fast, you know. Take it out onto the Golden Gate Bridge and drop it down into the outbound tide. I bet the thing that blasted the oak tree is the same fucker that came through the wowo. And it could come a third time. Things always happen in threes. Get rid of that ring today, Phil. It would be too awful if something happened to you.”

“I hear you,” said Phil, pocketing the ring.

All the way up on the train Phil looked at the ring and thought about it. He remembered a math story that his father had told him about the legendary A Square, an inhabitant of an imaginary two-dimensional world called Flatland. A Square’s eye was a dot at one corner, his mouth an inlet on one side. Whenever A Square was right side up, his eye was on his northeast corner and his mouth was on his east. But one day a Spaceland er called A Sphere lifted A Square out of Flatland, flipped him over, and set him back down. And from that day on, whenever A Square was right side up, his eye was on his northwest corner, and his mouth was on his west. He was his own mirror image..erauqS A

Something had pulled Kurt into hyperspace, had knotted his ring, and had later flipped the ring over in the fourth dimension. Maybe Kurt had only lost his hand—and no more than that. Maybe the hand had been crushed by the slam of a hyperdoor to hyperspace, and maybe Kurt was alive and healing—someplace?

Looking at the ring, Phil felt more and more fascinated. It was such a power object. The only remaining link to his father. And so what if the hyperspace thing did come for him? Was dying really so bad? No more work, no more hassles, no more trying to find the right girl. Phil recognized the insanity of the thought patterns, but for now he was too drained to do anything more than just let them run. He put the ring back into his pocket and stared slackly out the train window, thinking about death.

As soon as Phil got back to San Francisco, he went over to Babs’s. He needed to see Yoke. But Yoke was gone. Worse than that, she was out of the country.

“That’s right,” Babs told Phil. “She and Cobb and Onar went to Tonga. Onar goes down there all the time for Meta West Link. And since Yoke is so eager to go diving in the South Pacific—why not? They got inside Cobb and he rocketed them there. So fine, good-bye all, but get this, Randy Karl Tucker still thinks he’s welcome here.” A smile played across Babs’s lips.

“I can’t get rid of him. He has this ridiculous idea that I’m not completely revolted. He claims he has some ideas for my art.”

“Yoke left with Onar?” Phil could hardly take it in.

“Onar’s _wooing _the girl,” said Babs. “Somehow he heard Yoke was here visiting me, and he got Saint to introduce them. Saint and Onar work together at Meta West, you know. Well, not exactly together. Onar’s a tech and Saint’s a maintenance manager. Just don’t call him a janitor.”

“I thought Yoke liked me,” said Phil, his voice breaking.

“I’m sorry, Phil,” said Babs. “Yoke thinks you’re nice, and that you’re cute, but she didn’t want to break you up from Kevvie. She hates the idea of being the other woman. Maybe if you were single you’d have had a chance.”

CHAPTER TWO

YOKE

February 20, 2054

“Rather snug in here,” said Onar. “But I like it. Remarkable way to travel.”

Yoke and Onar were packed in back-to-back, with Cobb’s moldie plastic flesh wrapped all around them. They were streaking through space near the top of a long parabolic trajectory that led from San Francisco to Tonga. Cobb had an ion-jet in his feet, and the algae in his moldie body provided a steady flow of oxygen.

The moldie flesh near Yoke’s face was transparent, like a faceplate. Looking down at the great fat curve of Mother Earth’s body, Yoke could see the familiar black of space above the bright curving line of the atmosphere. Phil had called it Gaia’s skin. Yoke felt bad about not saying a proper good-bye to him. But the scene with Kevvie last night had been too gnarly. How had a straight babe like Phil ended up with a bloblolly? “Bloblolly” was an insulting expression for “female merge user” that Yoke’s twin sister Joke liked to use; Joke herself had gotten the expression from a loonie viddy show called _Kid Skid. _Occasionally Joke had dared to call their mother Darla a bloblolly to her face, and a fierce Darla tongue-lashing would ensue. Joke was brave. Yoke felt a sharp pang of loneliness as she thought of her sister and her mother; this was the longest by far that they’d ever been apart. Seeing the black of outer space was making her homesick for the Moon. Getting back to Phil, the fact that he lived with a bloblolly probably meant there was more wrong with him than met the eye. He seemed a little passive, almost paralyzed. No doubt bailing had been the best thing for her do. Still, there was something sweet about Phil. He’d been so eager for her to like his food.

“Did I tell you that I’m friends with King of Tonga?” Onar asked just then. “The Tu’i Tonga himself. He’s a delightful fellow.” His voice sounded fruity and intimate in the little cavity of air that surrounded his and Yoke’s heads. Spongy little palladium filters in their nostrils eliminated Cobb’s characteristic moldie smell.

“You did tell me that,” answered Yoke. “Twice.” She wasn’t quite sure about Onar. “Why does Tonga have a King anyway?”

“It’s the only Polynesian nation never to have fallen under the rule of a foreign power,” said Onar. “Right, Cobb?”

“That’s right,” said Cobb, talking to them via uvvy. “Do you want to browse a guidebook, Yoke?”

“No. I like real things better than virtual things. I’m done with school.”

Pretty soon they were arcing back into the atmosphere, heading down toward the multitudinous islands of Tonga, tiny dots in the vast Pacific Ocean, visible through the gaps in the clouds. The clouds were arranged with a surprising regularity, like cabbages in a farmer’s field. Onar guided Cobb to the biggest of the Tongan islands, Tongatapu, on one side of which was Tonga’s main town Nuku’alofa.

They landed in a sandy shell-strewn parking lot next to the city dock. Cobb split open to disgorge his two passengers and the two carry-on bags they’d brought. And then he formed himself back into his original old man shape, grown a bit beefy from the sheet of imipolex he’d gotten from Babs. Judging from the stature of the golden-skinned Tongans whom Yoke could see nearby, Cobb’s new size would fit right in. For the moment the locals were just staring at them, too startled to approach.

“Here we are,” said Onar. “This is the Queen Salote Wharf.”

“It’s quiet here,” said Cobb. “I like it.”

Besides the Bay Area, this was the only place on Earth that Yoke had visited so far. She was surprised at how primitive things were. Like in a travel viddy. A rusty Tongan Navy ship floated in the harbor; in addition there were a ramshackle ferryboat, a few motorboats and one or two yachts. That was it for the capital city’s port. The rutted and potholed road along the waterfront carried a light traffic of battered electric trucks and cars, old models from the 2030s. A low shack across the road offered drinks and food; next to it was a “Guest House” that looked barely big enough to house the owner’s family. Farther down the waterfront was a weathered white building like a Victorian mansion, and inland from it was what looked to be the town center, a dingy cluster of patched-up buildings.

“Welcome to da neighborhood,” said a huge man with a horizontal wrinkle in his forehead. _”Malo e lelei.” _He was wearing a torn white shirt and a brick-red polyester skirt. “My name is Tiko.”

“Greetings, Tiko,” said Onar. “We’ve met before, no? I was down here six months ago visiting with HRH.”

Yoke knew by now that Onar used “HRH” to stand for “His Royal Highness,” meaning the King._ Ugh_. For whatever reason, Yoke hated all things British—with the single exception of Lewis Carroll.

“That’s right,” said Tiko. “Onar Anders. My wife Waloo is working at the New Beach Guest House. You gonna stay wid us again?”

“Yes indeed,” said Onar. “We’ll walk there from here. As you see, we traveled light.” He nudged the two little bags at his feet.

“All the way inside dis moldie,” mused Tiko, gingerly patting Cobb’s shoulder. He leaned close to Cobb, sniffed him, and burst out laughing. “Low tide at da lagoon.”

“I’m actually a human in a moldie body,” said Cobb, drawing back. “Cobb Anderson. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

“No sir,” said Tiko. “What are you known for?”

“I built the first robots for the Moon, sixty years ago,” said Cobb. “The boppers? And then the boppers chewed up my brain and extracted my software. I’ve had a series of robot bodies since then. This one is the best. Look.” Cobb flipped his