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

“Yes,” said Josef. “That’s where we began. But now we travel forever. Our near-term goal when we depart is to get back to a zone of two-dimensional time.” He flew from Yoke’s pillow to Babs’s shoulder, and started talking to her about higher dimensions, with Haresh and Siss listening and adding comments.

While they talked, Yoke crouched down and touched Cobb. He didn’t seem nearly so shaky and blotchy as he’d been in Tonga. Presumably this time he hadn’t taken an overdose. So she left  Cobb to sit there, grinning and shivering.

Yoke needed fresh clothes. The alla was still lying on the floor where she’d thrown it; she picked it up. She popped out black tights, silver boots like Phil’s, a shrimp-colored skirt, and a thick black wool turtleneck.

“So you do enjoy the miraculous alla,” said Peg. “And our superb catalog.”

“They’re okay,” said Yoke casually.

“Can I have an alla?” asked Babs, interrupting Josef’s science lecture. She’d been closely watching Yoke make her clothes.

“Well… ” said Shimmer. She was sitting on the edge of Yoke’s bed, keeping an eye on Randy.

“You barged into my house and stole my man,” said Babs, not entirely joking. “It’s the least you can do.”

“Oh _ja, _let’s give Babs an alla,” said Josef. “Om wants us to. Yoke’s alla has worked out well enough and Om feels it’s safe to try more.”

“I’m down with it,” chimed in Wubwub. “Allas for the people. Why not one for this Randy-neck too? That could be kinky, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“Here, Babs,” said Shimmer, rolling her thumb against her fingers. A subtly flickering silver tube appeared in her hand. “Om made it look different from Yoke’s so you don’t get mixed up. Take it. You’re wearing an uvvy? Good. That’s what the alla uses for an interface. An alla registers itself as owned by the first person who picks it up. It’ll show a rapid-fire series of images so Om can learn your personality, and then it’ll feel around in your body to teach Om your physical form. Once that’s done, it’s registered.”

Babs held the tube in her hand, eyes closed to better see the uvvy visions in her head. “Cathedral window, tree-branch, sand,” she murmured, each word faster than the one before, and then she was going too fast to talk out loud. The descriptions sounded familiar to Yoke; probably the alla was showing Babs the same images it had shown her. Yoke could tell when the body-mapping part of the alla registration happened, because Babs briefly twitched all over.

“Stuzzy,” breathed Babs, opening her eyes and looking down at the little alla tube. “I’ve been memorized by Om.”

“Now I’ll transfer our human-oriented alla catalog to your uvvy, Babs,” said Ptah. “Josef and I made the catalog, and it’s quite complete. We got it by combining every existing catalog we could find on the Web. Basically, I figured out how to make everything. Here it comes.”

“Once you get the hang of it, Babs, you can design original realware of your own,” added Shimmer. “And now for Randy’s alla.”

“Nay, nay!” protested Peg. “That youth is base and foul. His crafting will be full unsavory.”

“Peg’s right,” said Ptah. “I realize that you don’t need for me to defend you, Shimmer, but I really feel that this kind of degenerate individual is a serious threat.”

“It good practice to include deviant in test population, I think,” said Siss. She listened into herself as if silently conversing with something. “And, yes, Om agree.”

“I’ll do it,” said Shimmer. She rolled her thumb against her fingers again, producing an alla tube in gently fluctuating shades of copper. She gracefully leaned over to tuck the vibrant tube into the sleeping Randy’s shirt pocket. “Let’s wake him up so he can register it,” she urged.

“Don’t wake him now,” said Yoke. “Not while he’s still lifted. I’ll make sure he registers it later. And I’ll uvvy him a copy of the catalog.”

“Whu-Whu-Whu about me?” said Cobb, shuddering away on the floor.

“No,” said Wubwub. “We ain’t ready to start in with moldie allas too.”

“I’m nuh-not a moldie,” protested Cobb. “I’m human.” It was just like back in Tonga, when Onar had told Cobb he couldn’t come to the dinner at the King’s because it was for humans only. It made Yoke sad to hear Cobb insist he was human. Why not face the truth? As far as Yoke was concerned, being human meant being made of flesh and blood. And poor old Cobb hadn’t had a human body since 2020.

“If you want something, I’ll make it for you, Cobb,” said Yoke gently. “But for now, you don’t get an alla. Especially not when you’re lifted. Maybe you should go get in the shower. Wash those spores out.”

“Yeah,” said the old man moldie. “I gotta shake this betty shit.” He shuffled off towards Babs’s bathroom.

Meanwhile Babs had been sitting silent on the floor, uvvying around in her alla catalog. And now she produced a bright-line shape that became a cup of coffee in a ceramic mug shaped like the head of an ant. Babs liked ants as much as Yoke did.

“Oh. My. God!” said Babs. “I love it!”

“Don’t get so grateful that you let the Metamartians stay here,” cautioned Yoke. “If they don’t kill you, someone else will by coming after them. I like Shimmer’s idea. The Metamartians should go out and blend in. You don’t have to look like _exactly _a pig, do you, Wubwub? And Peg, could you possibly bag the unicorn thing? I mean why not pass yourselves off as regular moldies? Unless you just want to be birds or insects. Nobody cares about them. Nobody would notice if a bird is plastic.”

“I am proud to be a bird,” said Haresh. “From scanning through your Web, I am learning very much about them. The only small cloud is that to be called a ‘birdbrain’ is by no means a compliment. Nevertheless there is a very famous poem of this name. _Birdbrain! _by your immortal Hindu bard Allen Ginsberg. So I am even proud to be a birdbrain. But I do not accept your suggestion to be a small plastic bird which nobody notices. I too would like to be freely mingling with humans and moldies on an equal basis. I want to be accepted as a full-sized moldie.”

Cobb came ambling back from the shower, looking pink and fresh again. “That did me a world of good.”

“What kind of look do a moldie generally have?” asked Wubwub.

“Here in the city they look like people,” said Babs. “Approximately. Like caricatures. It’s considered dooky for a moldie to look too exactly human, though Shimmer and Ptah are so over-the-top that they’ll be okay. No humans are that beautiful. And the way they look like marble and bronze makes it clear that they’re not trying to pass for people. Now you, Wubwub, you can be a pig-man. A person with a face like a pig. Keep your snout and ears, but change your body and legs. That’s good. Legs a little longer. You need more than two fingers on your hands, try three, no, four counting the thumb. All right. And, yes, keep the tail, in fact make it bigger and curlier. Like a corkscrew. Wavy. Now your mouth—it’s too scary. Here, let me—” Babs stepped forward and began molding Wubwub’s face. Wubwub generated dancing bright alla-lines to effect the changes as fast as Babs suggested them. “We’ll curve the lips up at the end, put in a smile wrinkle, make the snout a little shorter, shorten those snaggle teeth, arch the eyebrows, fold that one ear over, and, oh, how about a big white spot around this eye? That’s perfect. You look darling. Look at yourself through my uvvy. You don’t like the white spot? Oh, all right, get rid of it, then. Fine. You look handsome but tough.”

“Come to my aid, Babs,” said Peg, elongating and taking on a womanly form. “What think you of my horn?”

“A unicorn horn is more of a guy thing,” said Babs. “It’s a dick symbol. You’d do better to have, um, two little horns.”

“Like a cow?” asked Peg. There was a flicker of bright mesh-lines and her face grew broader.

“Oh yes, Peg,” put in Yoke unkindly. “Be a cow.”

“Don’t listen to her,” said Babs. “You want to be a devil-girl. Sexy and with curvy red horns and reddish skin. Yeah, yeah, okay, but make your T and A bigger. That’s good—if only it were so easy for everyone. And, um, fine, keep the blonde hair. Usually devil-girls are brunette, but you can be a Val devil-girl. Better make your skin more pink like sunburn instead of that coppery Native American hue. Oh, and don’t forget to make your tail all leathery and with a little arrow at the tip. That’s a dick symbol too, but on a devil-girl it’s hot. Like a strap-on dildo. Oh, you’ve got it now, Peg, you’re moanin’. Next?”

A few minutes later six of the Metamartians were the shape and size of well-proportioned humans resembling, respectively, a marble Venus, a bronze Apollo, a pig-man, a devil-girl, a snake-woman, and a bird-man. For his part, Josef stayed resolutely the same.

“I’ll observe,” said Josef. “A deep participation is not my style. I’ll be the fly on the wall. The beetle.”

“Haresh looks like that Egyptian god,” said Yoke. “Thoth.” The Metamartian had left his head exactly in the shape of a bird’s. “What a birdbrain.”

“Zoom!” exclaimed Babs. “Egyptian! You Metamartians can go join the Snooks family on the _Anubis. _After last night, Cobb here must know those moldies pretty well. Right, Cobb? You can tell Thutmosis and Isis Snooks that these six are friends of yours just down from the Moon and that they’re looking for work.”

“Work doin’ what?” asked Wubwub suspiciously.

“Oh, the Snookses are into all kinds of things,” said Cobb. “You can tell them you’re a—a burglar, Wubwub. Just secretly actualize things like liquor for the _Anubis _bar and say that you stole it. And that can be your contribution to the family. You don’t necessarily have to fuck the cheese-balls, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

_”I’m _not worried about that,” said Shimmer, staring down at the sleeping Randy Karl Tucker. “It might be fun.”

“I’m going to call Theodore right now,” sighed Babs, walking off toward the front of the warehouse.

“Babs likes Randy,” Yoke explained to Shimmer. “It makes her unhappy to think of him having sex with you. So don’t do it, please.”

“Oh!” said Shimmer. “I hadn’t realized.”

“It’s not our affair if the vile youth lacks wholesome passion for Babs,” said Peg snippily.

“What kind of sex system do you Metamartians have?” asked Yoke. “Do you have any kind of clue?”

As usual, Josef wanted to be the one to answer the question, but Siss made as if to swat him.

“I the one who sexy, Josef. You let me speak.”

Siss had a face of pale humanlike skin with large, almond-shaped eyes. Her nose was little more than two flattened holes and her mouth was immensely long and thin-lipped. Instead of hair, she had a skull-fitting hood of shiny green snakeskin that flowed down to join the snakeskin which covered the rest of her body, save her hands, which had humanlike skin and long green fingernails. The hood had a dramatic widow’s peak in the middle of her forehead. Siss looked decadent, Asian, androgynous.

“We have something like boy/girl too,” she explained. “One got stick, one got hole. Each of us