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

“Um, okay Bou-Bou,” said Yoke, taking a seat on the other end of the couch. Onar sat in the middle. Yoke lolled back and looked up through the room’s transparent ceiling at the banyans and the night sky. She thought she could see a flying fox hanging from a branch in the nearest tree.

“It’s exciting to be here,” said Yoke presently. “These domes remind me of the Moon. My family has a friend who built a big house out in a crater. An isopod, is what we called it.”

The King nodded. “I know of the place. The Willy Taze dwelling. I studied lunar architecture at Stanford, among other things. How did Onar persuade you to come here, Yoke? Did he put you on the Meta West payroll?”

“You’re the third person who’s asked me that,” said Yoke. “Am I missing out on something? I’m interested in diving the South Pacific, and since Onar had this anteater gig, he talked me into coming down here with him. I have a moldie friend named Cobb who rocketed us here from California, so it’s not costing much of anything.”

“Ah yes, Cobb the born-yet-again loonie moldie,” said the King. “Thanks for not bringing him along tonight, Onar.”

“But why?” protested Yoke. “Cobb’s interesting. He built the first boppers, after all. And he’s the first human to have his soft ware installed into moldie flesh.”

The King gave Onar a frank look. “You’ve talked to her?”

“Yes,” said Onar. “She’s promised to keep mum.”

“Cobb’s a wild-card, Yoke,” said the King. “He has so many contacts. We’re afraid about whom he might tell our secrets. Frankly, we’d prefer to keep him out of the picture.”

“Oh come on,” said Yoke. “Cobb’s like my bodyguard. And he’s a family friend. I don’t care what I promised Onar just now. I wasn’t thinking straight. If you tell something to me, I can’t keep it from Cobb. He needs to know what’s going on so that he can protect me.”

The King looked questioningly at Onar and Onar said, “We don’t really have a choice, do we?”

“I suppose not,” said the King. “But please, Yoke, don’t you or Cobb tell this to any of your loonie friends. The secret is that we’ve contacted an alien intelligence. A being named Shimmer. She’s living deep below the ocean here, in what’s known as the Tonga Trench. She knows you. She had an encounter with you and your parents just a little over three months ago, at the Willy Taze isopod you mentioned. November sixth, 2053. Your parents tried to kill her.”

Shimmer! Yoke’s stomach flip-flopped. She’d had a feeling this was coming. “She wants to get even?”

“Why would Shimmer be into that kind of kilp, honey?” said Vaana soothingly. She was standing behind the King’s couch. “Shimmer’s way too big for that. I bet she just wants to see you, Yoke. She probably digs your mind. When Shimmer was here talking to Bou-Bou she acted nice as pie.”

Yoke felt frightened and angry. So Onar had been lying to her all along. She gave him a rough shove. “You deliberately lured me here! You don’t like me for myself one bit. You fetched me like some bauble for your precious King. And I’m so stupid, I came for free.”

“That’s not the whole truth, Yoke,” protested Onar. “I’m very attracted to you.”

“And you killed Mr. Olou on purpose, didn’t you!” Yoke’s words popped out fast, and she saw something on their faces. She was getting in deeper every second.

“I think everyone could use some dinner,” put in Vaana. “The table’s set.”

The King smiled and got nimbly to his feet, making a polite gesture for Yoke to follow him into the dining room, which was the next dome farther along. Following behind the big man, Yoke could make out his underwear through the thin fabric of his trousers. Purplish bikini briefs worn very low down on the crack.

“It’s nice to finally meet you in person,” said Onar to Vaana, as if trying to steer the conversation back to a normal mode. “How do you come to know HRH?”

“Well, my family nest was down in the flats of Oakland,” said the womanly green moldie. “I got it together and landed a phat job in the wetware engineering labs at Stanford U. I met Bou-Bou when he was taking Wet E 202. I helped him invent a new kind of coconut for his class project. Less grease and mo’ protein. Ought to been a miracle for the Tongan diet.”

“Except the Tongans won’t eat my new coconuts or even feed them to their pigs,” said the King over his shoulder. “The flesh is a ghastly greenish hue. Wet E was never my thing. Here we are then, the royal dining room. Our main course will be Tongan lobster in a coconut cream sauce over steamed taro root. Nontweaked coconut, of course. I think we have some local melon as well. A glass of champagne, Yoke?”

“All right. Why not.”

The three humans sat down at the dining table and Vaana discreetly withdrew. A kind-faced Tongan woman named Kika served them their food. Yoke and Onar were very hungry, and the King ate with a ready appetite as well. The first course of the meal was a green melon with tiny orange balls on it which were, the King informed them, the fruiting body of a special kind of Tongan seaweed. The second course was a curried pork broth.

“What was it like, Yoke?” Onar asked presently. “When all the moldies at Taze’s isopod turned into aliens that day?”

“It was wavy,” said Yoke. With the food and the champagne she was feeling a little more relaxed. “They were so interesting, so wise. Shimmer especially. Shimmer comes from a place where they have two-dimensional time. The extra time dimension is like possibility, of worlds that could be. That’s why my parents couldn’t shoot Shimmer. Even though the time in our part of the cosmos is only one-dimensional, Shimmer can see the ghosts of all the future maybes and she can actualize the right one. She’s always where the bullet isn’t.” Kika removed the soup plates and began bringing in the lobster. Yoke was, on the whole, glad to be eating this meal. “But now you two answer some questions. Shimmer’s the one who’s siphoning off Cappy Jane’s bandwidth, right?”

“Very clever, Yoke,” said Onar. “Yes, the King gave Shimmer permission to gather and process data through Cappy Jane, so there’s been a lot of traffic between those two. Cappy Jane’s been winnowing out certain kinds of space signals that Shimmer’s interested in. Not that Cappy Jane realizes who she’s working for. Shimmer and the King have her convinced that Shimmer’s a human scientist doing a study of high-energy cosmic rays.”

“The Tongan Extragalactic Signal Survey,” said the King, smiling.

“Moldies are even more leery of aliens than the humans,” said Onar. “With good reason. Their computational architecture is very susceptible to invasion. If Cappy Jane knew this stuff was for Shimmer, she probably wouldn’t help us no matter how much we pay her.”

“Vaana knows about Shimmer,” said Yoke. “And she’s not objecting.”

“Yes,” said the King. “But Vaana expects to share in the benefits of helping Shimmer. Now that _you _know, Yoke, that makes five humans and four moldies who are in on the secret. You, Onar, me, Oofa, Kennit, Vaana, Tashtego, Daggoo, and Turklee. Nine in all. And as soon as we get something from Shimmer, I’ll have to tell a few more of my people. Secrets don’t last on Tonga for very long. That’s why we have to move forward so rapidly.”

“Mr. Olou didn’t know,” said Yoke. “And instead of telling him the truth, Onar killed him.”

“Mr. Olou was unreliable,” said the King. “A loose cannon. He did know that some source in the Tonga Trench has been using up a large amount of the Cappy Jane bandwidth. He was very persistent in repeatedly bringing this problem to Meta West’s attention. Too much so, and against my express wishes. Fortunately, I had a prior relationship with Onar, and I made sure that he was the anteater whom Meta West sent down here to deal with Mr. Olou’s problem. I thought it would be a good idea to have Onar intimidate Mr. Olou within the framework of Olou’s highly idiosyncratic visualization system.”

“So what was in that pale vine signal?” asked Yoke.

“That was a red herring,” laughed Onar. “I didn’t really unpack the vine signal at all. Wouldn’t know how to. What I did in cyberspace with you and Olou was just theater. The jellyfish thing, that was something I brought along stored in that inlaid coffin like a jack-in-the-box. I copied it off some phreaks who were using it to protect their clubhouse. I’d never tested it before, you understand, and I had no idea it would be lethal. The idea was just to frighten Olou and to impress you, Yoke. I was reckless and negligent, yes. But please don’t think I’m a mind-assassin.”

“So it really was you who killed Olou?”

“Don’t blame me,” said Onar. “It was the phreaks who made that stinging jellyfish.” He gave a sudden giggle. “It talked Olou’s ear off. More than his ear.” He gave himself a playful slap on the cheek. “Sober up, Onar. It’s not my fault at all. How was I to know that Olou had a weak heart? And he shouldn’t have kept complaining about those extra signals.”

“But what’s in the signals?” demanded Yoke. “Can’t anyone tell me?”

“Shimmer’s been using Cappy Jane to download the personality waves of more aliens from her home world,” said the King. “Isn’t it obvious? Shimmer’s specified a certain class of gamma ray burst events for Cappy Jane to record, preprocess, and transmit. And these signals are of course alien personality waves. Apparently Shimmer’s been able to decrypt five or six of her fellows by now. That’s what she wants to discuss with you, Yoke. Champagne?”

“Indubitably,” said Onar, holding out his and Yoke’s glasses. “Let’s drink to the noble Shimmer! Oofa can take Yoke down into the trench to meet her tomorrow.”

“We’re supposed to be sitting here planning to help aliens invade the Earth?” said Yoke. “You two are xoxxed! Where’s your sense of self-preservation?”

“It’s what’s happening, baby,” said Onar. “There’s no stopping Shimmer. If you want to blame someone, blame Gurdle-7 or Willy Taze. They’re the ones who decrypted Shimmer’s signal in the first place. But now she’s here, and we’re going to have to live with her, at least for a while. It’s a new stage in history. Hop aboard or get plowed under.”

“Shimmer’s got good things for us,” said the King. “She’s promised to give us realware.”

“What’s that?” asked Yoke.

“It’s some kind of magic or super science that Shimmer has,” said Onar. “Direct matter control. We don’t know much more than that. I think maybe when you dive down to see Shimmer tomorrow she’s going to give it to you. She trusts you or something. You’re up for this, right?”

Yoke sat quiet for a minute, thinking. She’d loved talking with the aliens that time on the Moon; she’d been sad and angry when her parents attacked them. Onar was probably right about there being no way to stop Shimmer now. And Yoke knew that even if she wanted to try and stop Shimmer, the only thing to do was to go farther in. “Okay,” said Yoke slowly. “But I’m only diving if I’m safe inside of Cobb. And before we dive, I’m going to tell him every detail about what