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

to me when I’m dreaming. But it’s slow going because I’m always drunk. Hard to think logically. The shock. I keep thinking we’re all dead.”

“Pass around the wine, Tempest,” said Darla.

“I’m half in a bag already, Phil,” said Kurt apologetically. “I should explain that we’ve been partying hard. Tempest figured out how to make wine. Well, it’s similar to wine, anyway. We’ve been drinking enough of it.”

“Could you make me some food?” asked Phil. His stomach was rumbling. “I haven’t figured out how to find it.”

“These things are tolerable good,” said old Tempest. She made a gesture and a bright alla mesh pattern formed to whoosh out a big crisp golden shape, fat in the middle and pointed at both ends. Phil nibbled at it. It seemed to be something like a deep fried sweet potato. Fibrous, oily, not too bad. He took a big bite, and then another and—_crunch—_hit something like a vein of wiggly cartilage.

“Like a rubber bone in there, huh?” said Tempest. “Reminds me of a hog snout.”

Phil peered at the greasy object he’d been eating. “What is it?”

“Hell if I know,” said Tempest. “I call it a yam-snoot. You should of seen some of the other vittles we tried. Alien food, I guess.” She took a pull from her sack of liquid and tried passing it to Phil. “Hope you ain’t a tight-ass, Phil,” she said as he refused the sack.

“No, no,” said Phil, though his heart sank at the thought of being in here with three drunk pheezers. “Da, tell me more about that hole?”

“It’s a kind a flaw, a place where the space of this sphere has an edge. According to my reasoning, when you stick your head out there, your head is in four-dimensional hyperspace. I’ve only tried it for a few seconds. It’s cold and you have to keep coming back for breath. And there’s this freaky light. I wouldn’t try it, Phil. But if, God forbid, you do stick your head through the hole, be very sure to hang onto the tree so the rest of you doesn’t slide out.” Da squirted a stream of wine into his mouth, and then some into Darla’s. A rivulet dribbled down her chin and onto her big breasts. “Don’t stare at us like that, Phil. I know I shouldn’t be getting fucked up, but I’m far enough into this run that I’ve got to finish. After I sleep it off, I’ll get myself together and we’ll talk about our chances of getting you back to Earth.”

“Hey, Da!” said Phil. “This is xoxxed. Can I at least make you and Darla some clothes?”

“Oh bless his heart,” cackled Tempest. “Hear that, Darla?” Darla responded by striking a coy pose with one hand over her crotch and one over her boobs.

Phil quickly found the clothing area of Om’s Metamartian catalog and actualized two of the colorful loose caftans. He made Darla one with a pattern of unearthly biological shapes that might have been purple flowers; Da got one with flickering red shapes like flames. The fabric was some unknown material that was slippery but not sticky. A bit like silk, but with no sign of threads.

“Give me one too,” said Tempest. “A blue one.”

“All right,” said Phil, and made Tempest a Metamartian robe that resembled a waterfall. “I’m outta here for now, losers.”

He pulled himself toward the other end of the oak tree, pausing to study the glowing holographic knot of the oversize wowo. It was a roughly doughnut-shaped pattern of steadily changing mathematical curves and surfaces. Tre Dietz may have turned off all the wowos he’d sold, but he hadn’t been able to reach this one. It was going strong. Phil liked to think a wowo looked a little like a glass pelican continually crawling farther and farther up its own butt, while at the same time emerging from its own beak, somehow changing into its own mirror image in the process. Mind-boggling and gnarly.

Phil proceeded onward to the other end of the tree. The toy Humpty-Dumpty was sitting there, clamped onto a branch like an owl. Phil gave him a gentle poke, and the egg smiled ingratiatingly. A low husky laugh floated up from Darla at the other end of the tree. Fortunately there were enough dead leaves between them that Phil didn’t have to see what the old folks were doing.

Just as Kurt had said, right beyond the end of the tree was a flawed spot like Phil had seen in his own little hypersphere. He took a deep breath and stuck his head through it.

CHAPTER FOUR

YOKE

February 23, 2054

After dropping Phil at the dock in Neiafu, the navy motorboat ferried Yoke, Cobb, Onar, and Kennit to a big aluminum ship anchored in the harbor. The flagship of the Tongan Navy. Its rounded lines made Yoke think of a beer keg. Amidships was a tower of cabins surmounted by the bridge; aft was a flexible whip-cannon poised like a cobra head.

The King was waiting for them on board. He was wearing a white coat and peaked cap for this nautical occasion. His green moldie girlfriend Vaana was at his side.

“Good morning, Yoke,” said the King. “And it’s an honor indeed to meet the famous Cobb Anderson. Welcome aboard.” He glanced around the deck. “We can speak quite freely. The sailors barely know English, while Kennit and the bodyguards are completely to be trusted. Greetings, Onar! Anyone need a coffee? Champagne? No?” He led them aft to stand by a big open hatch in the deck. Above the hatch was a crane mounted on a high triangular brace. “You’ve brought the alla, Yoke? Ah, it’s that little tube thing. Excellent. I look forward to seeing it in action. Slugs of gold and imipolex all morning long. Yum yum!” He smiled and rubbed his hands. A dozen Tongan sailors were sitting around, ready to start work. Kennit joined two of the King’s bodyguards, who were ensconced up on the bridge, playing a game of cards with a Tongan man in a captain’s hat.

“Won’t the ship sink if it gets too full?” Yoke asked the King.

“Oh, I’m not so inordinately acquisitive,” said the King, a cheerful twinkle in his eye.

“Captain Pulu gonna keep an eye on the tonnage,” said Vaana, waving toward the bridge. “And Yoke, child, I want you to make twice as much imipolex as gold.”

“You owe me an apology, Vaana,” interrupted Cobb. He’d been staring fixedly at the sexy green moldie since they’d come aboard the ship. “You almost killed me with that betty the other night.” Yoke recalled that Cobb had also mentioned having sex with Vaana.

“Ain’t my look-out,” said merry Vaana. “You was partyin’ with the best. We do it again sometime, hey? You a lift, old Cobb.”

“A man your age should have the maturity to own the consequences of his self-destructive behavior, Cobb,” said Onar primly.

“You’re a devil, Vaana,” said the King. “Let’s get started with our day’s work, shall we, Yoke? I’d suggest your rhythm be to create a pair of hundred kilogram cylinders of imipolex followed by a single hundred kilogram ingot of gold. One-two-three, one-two-three, and so on. The sailors will load them onto pallets and lower them into the hold.”

“I forget,” said Yoke. “Why am I doing this for you?”

“It’s thanks to HRH and me that you have the alla in the first place,” said Onar.

“I thought it was Shimmer who gave it to me,” said Yoke.

“Yes, but we guided you to her,” said the King. “Be a sport, Yoke. Just one day’s work. And then you’re perfectly free to go.”

“But Cobb and I could leave right now, if I wanted to,” said Yoke. “Right?”

“You should know that HRH’s bodyguards are well-armed,” said Onar. “And this is, after all, a warship, complete with a whip-cannon that can shoot a sea gull out of the sky.”

“No need to take that tone, Onar,” said the King. “As you and I discussed earlier, our policy is persuasion, not force.”

“Speaking of bodyguards, where are Tashtego and Daggoo today?” wondered Cobb.

“They’ll be here in a bit,” said the King. “They flew over to Fiji very early this morning. They’re looking into the imipolex market for me.”

So Yoke grasped her alla and started turning air into gold and imipolex at a rate of one pulse every second or two. The sailors stepped lively, stowing the booty. With each transmutation, a hundred kilograms worth of air would rush into a bright-line alla control mesh, making a big _whoosh _and _thud _that caused the ship to bob. Yoke figured out in her head that a hundred kilos of air took up about as much space as an apartment’s living room. The cumulative rocking effect of the repeated gusts became a little sickening after three-quarters of an hour. Yoke took a break and alla-made herself a glass of fresh orange juice.

The King was sitting in a deck chair smoking a cigar. Vaana lolled on the deck beside him, looking like a thick, sexy serpent. Cobb stood behind the pair, discussing something with Onar. Now Onar patted Cobb on the back and took a chair next to the King. Cobb remained stiffly erect, his face gone oddly blank.

“Are you all right, Cobb?” called Yoke.

“Yes,” said Cobb shortly. Perhaps he and Onar had argued?

“Captain Pulu’s estimates make it that you’re one-third done, Yoke,” said the King, squinting up at the man on the ship’s bridge.

“What are you going to do with all this stuff?” asked Yoke.

“Refurbish Tonga’s credit in world banking circles!” said the King happily. “I’m going to ship this load straight to Suva in Fiji and sell it. Tonga will be in the black for the first time this century. Not that our debt is all that large, mind you; it’s well under a hundred million dollars. We’ve been prudent, but we can never quite get onto the good side of the ledger. This will make me a hero to my people.”

“You’re going to give every bit of it away?” asked Vaana. She sounded surprised. “I thought you said half the imipolex would be for the Tongan moldies.”

“Strictly speaking, there are no Tongan moldies,” said the King. “Only a native-born flesh-and-blood Tongan can be a citizen. This isn’t the U.S. with its quixotic Moldie Citizenship Act. I have to take care of my own people first. You moldies are only our guests.” He held up his hand to stave off Vaana’s anger. “You of course can have all the imipolex you require for your personal needs at any time, dear Vaana. And I promise you that once I’ve taken care of the Tongan national debt, I will try and do something for our very honored guest moldies.”

“A promise ain’t enough,” snapped Vaana, standing up in her full womanly form. “My people been counting on me to get us a fair deal.”

The King shook his head. “My local standing is already shaky due to the gossip about our relationship, Vaana. For my own political survival, I can’t be put in a position of seeming to give a too preferential treatment to—”

At this point Yoke lost the thread of their conversation because a nightmarish call came in on her uvvy. It was Phil, standing on a beach looking desperate. He’d encountered Shimmer and the aliens in a cave at the end of the island. The powerball was about to eat him.

When Yoke sprang across the deck and pulled Cobb around her, the old man moldie was maddeningly sluggish in his responses. “Faster, Cobb,” urged the frantic Yoke. “You have to fly