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

class="calibre1">The wind was gusty outside, and Phil had to tether the blimps to his left arm lest they be blown away. The helium-filled imipolex DIM bags beat against him like balloons. It would be impossible to walk far this way, especially while carrying the duffel. Maybe he should let the blimps fly off into the wind? They were only toys. But still. He’d made them.

Just then one of the Snooks moldies accosted him. “Want a blow job, Phil?” It was Isis Snooks, a moldie curved into a fairly impressive female form. She had pouty lips and long, dark, slanted eyes.

“Would you like these blimps?” asked Phil in return.

“You want to trade blimps for a blow job? How much imipolex is in them?”

“I don’t want a blow job, Isis. You know I’m not a cheese-ball. I just need to get rid of the blimps. I’m moving out. Now, I don’t want you to _eat _the blimps, I want you to take care of them. They’d be a nice decoration inside the _Anubis. _You have to feed them some quantum dots and helium every few weeks.”

Isis cocked her head, studying the wind-whipped gas-bags.

“Are the skins programmable?”

“I’ll uvvy you the access codes right now if you promise to give them a good home.”

“Fun,” said Isis after another moment’s thought. “I’ll do it.” So Phil uvvied her the control codes and handed her the blimp tethers. Something else occurred to him.

“Wait a second,” he said. “This big one uses ballast.” He took the knotted ring out of his pocket and pushed it in through the intake valve of his biggest blimp, the polka-dotted one named Uffin’ Wowo. Perfect. “Enjoy them, Isis.”

“Come by and visit anytime.” Isis was smiling at the blimps, already uvvying new patterns onto them. Hieroglyphs. “Wavy, huh? Where you moving to, Phil?”

“I’m following a woman I met.”

“Yoke Starr-Mydol,” said the moldie.

“How would you know that?”

“Thutmosis saw you with her Thursday night. True looove.”

“I’m goin’ for it, Isis,” said Phil. The moldie looked so smart and friendly that Phil regretted giving her the dangerous ring—but he couldn’t bring himself to take it back and throw it into the ocean. “Make that one big blimp stay up near the ceiling,” he obliquely warned. “It could hurt someone if it pops.”

Phil headed for the closest haven he could think of: Babs Mooney’s warehouse. The door was locked and he knocked hard and long. Finally it cracked open, revealing a man’s pale face. Randy Karl Tucker.

“Haaah gaaah. Don’t go runnin’ out there, Willa Jean!” Randy Karl Tucker’s plastic chicken appeared at the bottom of the door, staring up at Phil with its fixed little eye.

“Hi, Randy. Is Babs home?”

“She done took off for the art gallery. I spent all yesterday helpin’ her make miniature worm-farms. Tryin’ to earn my keep. I got my Master Plumber’s certificate back in Louisville, you know. Yesterday I rented me a plumber’s pipe-gun, a thing that pushes out whatever kind o’ pipe or tube you want. I grew ole Babs some xoxxin’ gnarly little mazes for her worms. What you call smart art.”

“Babs is actually letting you stay here?” Normally Babs lived there all by herself. Her father, ex-Senator Stahn Mooney, had bought the place for her outright. Babs didn’t need money and she didn’t like roommates.

“Don’t need to sound so surprised, Phil! I’m not as dumb as I sound. And being a cheeseball don’t make me a pervo right across the board. I think Babs is takin’ a shine to me. Come on in if you like. Scoot, Willa Jean!”

“Thanks,” said Phil. “I’m homeless.”

“Hell, there’s enough room in here for ten of us,” said Randy, gesturing at Babs’s immense warehouse with its bright, fabric-hung walls. “Pick yourself a corner and settle on in.”

“Well that’s kind of you to offer, Randy, but I do know that Babs likes her privacy. How long did she say you could stay for?”

“I’m expecting to be here till Cobb gets back from Tonga,” said Randy. He threw himself down on a couch and Willa Jean hopped onto his lap. “Maybe a week? I’m pretty well burnt on Santa Cruz. San Francisco looks like a king-hell place. Never mind the Moon.”

“I don’t mean to sound harsh, Randy, but Babs is bound to give you the boot. Maybe you don’t know what she’s usually like.”

“I helped Babs a _lot _with them worm-farms, Phil. I’m more than just a plumber, I’ve worked as a process engineer. I’m a demon with the nanomanipulator. I helped Babs put sparkles in her worms. And to top it off, I’m gonna get her some superleeches.” Randy tapped the ragged purple patch that was merged into Willa Jean’s back. “Illegal imipolex. Just for Babs to use in her art, you wave. We’re thinkin’ about a gallery show that’s a whole henhouse of superleech chickens. The viewers put on the control uvvies and it’s _squawk-awk buk-puk. _Might could get some superleeches from my ole bud Aarbie Kidd.”

“Don’t you get Babs in trouble, Randy,” snapped Phil. “Take some time and figure out our scene before you start acting like a complete criminal. If you do anything to hurt Babs, Senator Stahn will take you down for true. Depend on it.”

” _Tat tvam asi,’ ” _said Randy equably. “Means ‘And that too’ in Sanskrit. Did you know I lived in India for two years? I respect your concern for your friend, big gaaah. You think you’ll be movin’ in?”

“Well, no, my plan is to go to Tonga.”

“You too? What all’s in Tonga?”

“It’s Yoke,” said Phil. “I have to see her. For once I know exactly what I want to do.”

February 22

So Phil ditched most of his stuff at Babs Mooney’s warehouse and set off for Tonga with a few travel supplies in a knapsack. He took a conventional rocket-plane, with a change in Hawaii.

He arrived at Nuku’alofa early Sunday morning, Tonga time. The airport was old-fashioned and casual. He hadn’t uvvied Yoke yet because he’d been scared she might tell him not to come. But now it was time.

The uvvy signal quickly found her, and Yoke picked up. She looked even better than Phil had remembered. Her calm eyes, her fine jaw, her wise mouth, her ivory-olive skin. She was wearing a purple bikini. She seemed to be sitting on a tropical patio eating breakfast. Alone?

“Hi, Yoke, it’s Phil. I missed you so much that I flew to Tonga! I broke up with Kevvie.”

Yoke took the news with aplomb. “Josef told me you were about to call,” she said, tapping an imipolex beetle that was perched on her shoulder-strap like a tiny parrot. “He can see about five minutes into the future.”

“Oh right,” said Phil. “Did Babs blab? Where’s Onar?”

“He and I are through. I think he’s staying with the King. I’ll tell you everything when you get here. I already asked Cobb to pick you up. You should wait somewhere obvious, like out in front of the airport? Cobb says he can get there in like fifteen minutes. It’ll be wavy to see you, Phil. I’m glad you came.”

A short while later Cobb plummeted down out of the sky and opened himself up like a mummy case. He looked considerably bulkier than before. Phil took the palladium nose-filters Cobb offered him and got inside the moldie-man, along with his pack. Huge acceleration and then they were arcing north across the Tongan archipelago.

“How’s Yoke?” Phil asked Cobb.

“She’s doing well.”

“And what’s with the beetle?” asked Phil.

“You mean Josef,” said Cobb. “He’s an alien from Metamars. A place where they have two-dimensional time. Apparently the Metamartians live a whole lot of parallel lives at once. They think our part of the cosmos is very odd!”

“Aliens! Are these the same aliens who were on the Moon back in November? There was one that got away?”

“Exactly. Shimmer’s still here, and she’s been decrypting other alien personality waves into imipolex bodies. Not just _any _aliens though, she only unpacks Metamartians. There’s six of them now. This is like a bus-tour for them—or maybe an anthropological expedition. Shimmer, Ptah, Peg, Wubwub, Siss, Josef. Josef’s taken a shine to our Yoke. He’s a very useful individual to have around. Even though we only have one-dimensional time here, there’s always a cloud of ghost futures around the next moment. And Josef’s able to see the virtual futures and to actualize the best one. That’s been making it easy to avoid hassles with Onar and the King.”

“Tell me about Onar.”

“Onar sucks,” chuckled Cobb. “Just ask Yoke. She can’t stand him anymore.” Cobb did an imitation of Yoke’s voice. ” ‘Onar’s dishonest and a bad lover and he acts British and all British things suck. Except for Lewis Carroll.’ ”

“Who’s Lewis Carroll?”

“Tsk, Phil. _Alice in Wonderland? _And your father a math teacher. Never mind. Onar and the King are so bummed about Yoke getting the alla.

They want one of their own, but for now they have to be satisfied with Yoke making stuff for them. Mostly imipolex. She gave me some too.” They’d reached their apogee, and now they were hurtling down toward the great blue sea with its tiny white-edged dots of green islands. “The alla makes realware; it uses direct matter control.”

“Oh man, this is too much,” complained Phil. “You’ve only been down here two days and I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about anymore.”

“I haven’t even mentioned the powerball yet,” said Cobb. “The hand of Om. Om is the god of the Metamartians. She ate your father.”

“You mean the wowo thing?”

“The wowo was what attracted Om. Like a flower for a hummingbird. Or a candle for a moth. Or a book for a scientist. And Om is—well, the Metamartians say she’s God. Whenever the Metamartians go somewhere, Om shows up too. The powerballs are like fingers of Om.”

“Cobb!” shouted Phil. The islands were rushing up insanely fast. “Stop the bullshit and pay attention! Slow down!”

“Aw, I’m getting really good at this,” said Cobb, unfurling a bunch of wildly flapping imipolex ribbons. The ribbons flexed themselves, tearing at the air. Cobb continued to drop like a stone, but at least he’d stopped accelerating. They were fluttering toward a large, hook-shaped island with subsidiary islands scattered around it like appendages. It reminded Phil of a flea seen through a microscope, a big flea riddled with watery lagoons and intricate inlets, the island’s harbor like a stomach. There were yachts floating in the harbor, and a small cluster of buildings beside it.

“The island of Vava’u,” said Cobb. “The little town is Neiafu.”

Cobb’s ribbons fused into great wings, and he sailed serenely over Neiafu and across the harbor to home in on one of the tiny islands that peppered the harbor straits. Cobb’s target island stuck out of the sparkling water like a verdant muffin; it had a high, round crown leading down to vertical, undercut sides. The summit of the island had been cleared down to the bare stone, and perched there was a single house, a sturdy yellow concrete building with a tin roof, much weathered. Beside the house was the aquamarine gem of a small swimming pool, seemingly carved right into the rock. Steps ran down the steep side of the island to a dock floating in the blue sea. Cobb touched down beside the pool, right next to a young woman sitting at a wicker table. Yoke.

“You’re welcome,” said Cobb, disgorging a shaken Phil onto the