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

“So either we keep the allas secret forever,” said Babs. “Or we get murdered. Or we throw our allas away. Or we figure out how to give one to everyone in the world. Four possibilities. And the first one’s impossible. Secrets get out. Especially with the aliens hanging with random cheeseballs and lifters all day long.”

“They’re on the _Anubis?” _said Randy. “That’s where, isn’t it? Why didn’t anyone tell me?” He was sitting next to Babs; Willa Jean had nestled in between them.

“We assumed that if you knew, you’d instantly run over there to try and fuck Shimmer again,” said Cobb. “I, for one, wanted to see my great-grandson’s poor bod get a few days rest.”

“I—” Randy’s voice cracked. “I ain’t doin’ that no more. Not while I got a chance with Babs.”

“How touching,” said Yoke in a voice that struggled to stay level. She paused to clear her throat. “Let’s think. What Babs said boils down to this. If we don’t want to get killed, we either get rid of our allas or we figure out how to give an alla to everyone. I’m for everyone getting an alla. We just have to find out how to tell an alla to make an alla.”

“I’m not sure about that,” said Babs, absently petting Willa Jean. “People are too stupid. If everyone gets an alla, every square inch of the world will be full of—crap. It’s been fun making art with the alla, but I was an artist before I got my alla, and I’ll be an artist when it’s gone. Maybe I’d rather just throw it away than have idiots use it.”

“Well, that’s great for you, Miss High and Mighty,” said Yoke. “But I’m an artist too. Only there was never an art-form I felt really good at till the alla came along. Does that make me a clumsy peon? I’m not giving up my alla, Babs.”

“You’re great with your alla, Yoke,” said Babs soothingly. “And I didn’t mean to sound like I don’t think you’re an artist. But actually you _could _do art even without the alla, you know. I was just saying that most people aren’t artists at all.”

“Most people are dumb shits,” said Yoke, still feeling feisty. “But if everyone has an alla, then what a fool does is fixable. If one person does something stupid, someone else can undo it.”

“Are you sure?” said Babs. She projected a mesh over a potted African violet and turned it into an ugly plastic flower jabbed into a chunk of Styrofoam the shape of a cat. “This is what people will do. Can you fix it?”

“Yeah,” said Yoke slowly. “The alla can make plants. Here you go.” And a new African violet appeared. “I had the alla give it standard potting soil complete with bacteria, bugs, and worms, though I admit I don’t have any way of knowing exactly what was there before.”

Babs leaned over the plant examining it. “I’m impressed,” she admitted. “I like it. This gives me hope. And you know, come to think of it, I can’t bear the thought of losing my alla. I was just scared to admit it before. This could really work.” Babs laughed happily. “Yes. I have this image of some dook turning a beautiful woodsy hilltop into a gross puffball McMansion with three stories and forty thousand square feet. And then his greenie neighbor turns the house back into a woodsy hilltop. Back and forth all day long. Maybe the dook would only put up his house at night.”

“There’d still be zoning laws in any case,” mused Yoke. “That would put some limits on the houses. If the Gimmie could enforce them. And there’s a limit to how big a volume the alla can transform at one go. A cube something like forty feet on a side.”

“But even so, everyone would build out to the legal max,” said Babs. “They’d alla up their giant houses one section at a time. And homeless people would pitch houses for themselves just anywhere, even though they don’t own any land. But that’s actually good, isn’t it? No more homeless.”

“Squatters deluxe,” mused Randy. “They wouldn’t need no plumbing hookups. Use the alla to fill your bathtub, and use it again to make the dirty water go away. Wouldn’t be so bad. You could put up a house anywhere. Use the alla to make batteries for any electricity you needed.”

“But what kind of kinky kilp would psychos make?” said Babs. “A thousand ton turd in the middle of Union Square! A _statement _turd, you wave? And of course there’d be giant crucifixes everyplace. And just imagine solid, three-dimensional graffiti. You try to open your front door and there’s a fifteen-foot solid chrome freestyle ‘Yuki 37′ in the way.” Babs laughed again. “Actually I can’t wait to see it.”

“People could alla that kilp back into air,” said Yoke. “If everyone did it as a matter of course, then cleaning up wouldn’t have to be anyone’s full-time job. It wouldn’t be as hard as picking up litter, you wave. You’d only have to look at something and wish it away. You said turds, crosses, and graffiti? You forgot porno and political ads. Uh-oh, I’m seeing another problem. What if someone allas something that you like into air. Like your new car, Babs—someone could vaporize it because they don’t like the way it looks. Just like you’d get rid of a giant turd.”

“If she saved a software map of her buggy, she can alla it back whenever she needs it,” suggested Randy. “Parkin’ is hell in this city anyhow. Just turn your car back into air instead of parkin’ it. Long as you got the alla and the software map, you only need to bring back your realware when you actually wanna use it. In the end, the allas should be good for Nature. We won’t have to manufacture nothin’. You want paper or lumber, you alla it up, ‘stead of cuttin’ down a live tree. Alla up oil instead of drilling for it. No more factories!”

“This is making me dizzy,” sighed Babs, putting her hands to her head. “It’s like a beautiful dream. If only people can—oh, wait, what about nuclear explosions?”

“That could be the biggest problem of all,” said Cobb. “It would be easy to alla up a twenty-five-pound ball of plutonium. A supercritical mass. Instant atomic bomb.”

“Shit,” said Babs. “There’s got to be a way out. Will the alla actually make plutonium? Let’s check.”

Randy, Babs, and Yoke uvvied inward, examining their alla catalogs, and sure enough, plutonium was listed.

“Don’t try making any of it,” cautioned Cobb. “It’s highly poisonous, even in small amounts.”

“We have to get the aliens to talk to Om,” said Yoke. “To tell Om not to let the allas make nuclear fuel. Uranium, plutonium—no evil heavy metal. Om ought to be able to control what the allas can do. They’re all connected to her, you know.”

“Yes,” said Babs. “And then everyone gets an alla.”

“Here we are gettin’ all worked up,” said Randy. “And we don’t know how to copy no alla in the first place.

“The Metamartians do,” said Cobb. “Remember, Yoke? Josef said they know how to use the alla to make an alla. We should ask them how to copy the allas and at the same time get them to tell Om to not let allas make uranium or plutonium. Let’s go to the _Anubis _now!”

“Have you ever been on the _Anubis _before, Babs?” said Yoke.

“My brother and I went there right before I moved in here,” said Babs. “Just to look it over. It seemed kind of sad. Lots of xoxxy people. If we go over there, I think we should have a plan. We’re supposed to beg the aliens to tell us how to make an alla with the alla? And to block plutonium?”

“Begging is about all we _can _do,” said Yoke. “We can’t really threaten them or anything. I mean, they have built-in alla power, and they can see a little way into the future. No way we can hurt them.”

“Maybe I can get Siss hot for me,” said Cobb. “When Randy and I got onto Kleopatra and Isis the other night, Kleopatra said I was good. I think Siss is kind of interesting.”

“Who knows, Babs, if we beg, maybe the Metamartians _will _help us,” put in Randy, eager to move the conversation forward. “From what Yoke and Cobb say, Om does plan for everyone to get the alla. And it’s not like she’s out to destroy the planet. All Om wants is to memorize us each and every one. It’s like the allas are the ultimate reward for filling in your questionnaire.”

“Do you think you can handle being on the _Anubis, _Randy?” asked Babs. “Without going on another sporehead cheeseball rampage?”

“If you with me, girl,” said Randy sticking out his hand. “You all I see. We’ll leave Willa Jean here to watch over things.”

Phil, February 23-25

Phil spent four days in the powerball—from the Monday when Yoke flew back to San Francisco through the Thursday when things came to a head on the _Anubis. _The first three days went as follows:

Monday

While his dad guzzled wine with Darla and Tempest, Phil pulled himself to the other end of the oak tree. Right near the last branch was the flaw in their hyperspherical space. Things looked funny near the flaw. Goaded on by the inane chatter of the drunk pheezers, Phil got a firm grip on the branch, took a deep breath, and pushed his head out through the hole.

His viewpoint swung about with uncontrollable rapidity, like the view from a video camera left running while it dangles from a wrist-strap. Phil saw an endless landscape of curved pink surfaces—it was a bit like an ant’s-eye view of a million-mile tall woman’s body, not that the surfaces had the order and symmetry of a human form. Awed and dizzy, he let his eyes follow along six metallic tendrils that led out of the cosmic pink form. The tendrils eventually ran into a great circular expanse of rock and mud that wavered and became a disk of water. When Phil turned his head a bit farther, he saw blinding bright light. Around then, Phil’s face began to feel frostbitten and he realized he was desperately out of breath. For one panicked instant he couldn’t figure out how to pull back his head—so formless and disorienting was hyperspace. It took a special effort to remember to bend the arm belonging to the hand holding the branch. This quickly brought his gasping head back in through the hole. Anxiously, Phil patted his face, but the skin wasn’t frozen, just very cold.

He needed something like a limpware bubbletopper space-suit if he were going to explore out there. But it seemed futile to try and find a human spacesuit in Om’s Metamartian alien alla catalog. The “yam-snoot” Tempest had fed him—had that even been food? His mouth felt greasy and nasty.

Phil’s eye fell on the Humpty-Dumpty doll, big as a watermelon. It was made of good moldie imipolex and could, in principle, serve as a spacesuit. But would he be able to get it to stretch itself over him? It didn’t look very intelligent. Silly Putters weren’t exported to Earth from the Moon, so Phil had never actually handled one before. They were said to be poised halfway between DIMs and moldies in intelligence. Supposedly, the famous inventor Willy Taze had developed an algorithm to keep them from unexpectedly tunneling into ungovernable moldie consciousness.

“Come here,” he said, beckoning ingratiatingly to the Humpty-Dumpty.