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

“They can help us!” shouted Randy. “They can take away the allas!”

The frames and sashes of the windows quivered as if water were passing over them, and then the saucer had slid through the wall and into the ballroom. It rested there, cocked a bit toward one side, just fitting between floor and ceiling. A radial line appeared along the curve of the central dome, and then a pie-shaped sector of the curved metal slid open. Out came eight figures: the seven Metamartians from before, plus a new one, a gray little shape like a bald girl with big, almond-shaped eyes.

Yoke sniffed at the air—yes, there was the scent of old-fashioned moldies. The Metamartians hadn’t yet caught the stinkeater bug.

“We are here to salute the nuptials,” said Shimmer, holding up her hands and making soothing gestures. “Please remain calm, dear friends. We come in peace, seeking your aid. I am Shimmer from Metamars, and my companions are Ptah, Peg, Josef, Siss, Wubwub, Haresh. As many of you know, it is we and our god Om who have brought mankind and moldies the alla. And our gift has been mediated by these four whose marriages you celebrate today: Yoke, Phil, Randy, and Babs. We too have a blessed event to rejoice in: the birth of our sevenfold daughter Lova.” The gray little Lova bent her mouth up into a U-shaped smile and bowed, making flowing gestures with her long-fingered hands.

“Skip the bullshit and take away the fucking allas!” yelled Willow. “They’re ruining our world and you know it!”

“She’s right,” called Randy. “Tell Om to take the allas away!”

“Please, Om!” shouted Babs. “The allas are wrong for us. We aren’t ready.”

Lova bowed again.

“She’s butt-ugly,” said Yoke, all her tension rushing out into a sudden guffaw. “They’re making fun of us.”

“Careful,” said Darla, coming up behind Yoke. “They’re going to ask for something big. It’s like in a fairy tale. The witches at the princess’s wedding.”

“You right, Darla,” said Wubwub. “But what we after is no big thing: we need help gettin’ outta here is all. We don’t know which way to go toward two-dimensional time. And we got the notion one of you can help us. How ‘bout it, Phil?”

Yoke threw her arms around Phil. “You leave him alone!”

“Wait!” said Phil, digging in his pocket. “Maybe it’s this thing—” He pulled out his little black ball with the bright spots inside it. “Is this what you need, Wubwub? The fishbowl thing I got from Om? It’s a star map, isn’t it? Turn off the allas and use the star map to go.”

“It’s a map, but it ain’t gonna help us none,” said Wubwub, showing his crooked, yellow teeth in a long smile. “But let me see it anyhow.”

“Throw it to him, Phil!” said Yoke. “Don’t let him come near you!”

So Phil tossed his little ball, and Wubwub caught it. The Metamartians pressed forward to peer at it, and the beetle Josef actually crawled around upon it.

“Yes, Om already gave me one of these through my alla,” said Shimmer shortly. “It’s a star map, but it’s of no use. It only shows your part of the cosmos. Your map shows your zone, and we have another map that shows our zone, the good part of the cosmos with two-dimensional time. But there’s no master map that shows the interdimensional connection. We can’t find the passage, and we can’t understand Om’s explanations of where it is.”

There was an explosion somewhere outside, not too terribly distant. A few of the guests screamed.

“Turn off the allas right now!” cried Yoke. “Can’t you see they’re a disaster?”

“We can ask Om to do it,” said Ptah quietly. “In fact Om can even disactualize all of the bombs and weapons that people’s allas have made. Turn them back into air. All this can happen—provided that one of you will help us on our way. It’s your ability to dream that we need, you see. Human dreaming is a rudimentary reaching out toward two-dimensional time. If one of you comes with us as we travel out across your galaxy, then we can watch this person repeatedly sleep and dream—and we’ll be able to sniff our way out toward the fat part of time. We need a harbor pilot, in other words. A native guide. So how about it, Phil? You can bring Yoke if you like.”

A sudden mesh of alla-control lines appeared around the seven Metamartians. It was Whitey, standing at Yoke’s side, holding out his alla and trying to turn the aliens into air. But at the instant Whitey said “Actualize,” each of the aliens hopped off to one side. Whitey accomplished nothing more than turning some air into air.

“Senseless violence,” said Shimmer. “How typical. What’s the matter with you men anyway? We’ve been trying to calm things down, but it seems to be hopeless. All we’re asking today is that an Earthling accompany us as we move on. We want to take one of you who knows us a little bit. If we simply abduct some random human, they’ll be too frightened to help us. And not everyone can dream in the right way. Phil’s our first choice because his dreams are just right. Om’s been looking through people’s memories. Those mountains you always dream about, Phil—they point toward two-dimensional time.”

“I can dream as well as Phil can,” said Cobb, his voice loud and firm. “I dream about mountains all the time. Leave the young folks alone.”

“The great old man,” said Peg.

“He not human,” said Siss.

“Yes he is,” said Shimmer, cocking her head as if listening to an inner voice. “In fact, Om says he’ll be fine. She hadn’t thought to look before, but her records show that Cobb’s dreams are just as useful Phil’s.”

“Moldies dream?” Darla whispered to Yoke. “I didn’t know that.”

“Of course we do,” said Isis Snooks, overhearing. “What did you think we were? Machines? I’m glad Cobb is doing this. It’ll get us some xoxxin’ respect.”

“Come aboard, Cobb,” Ptah was saying. “We’ll fly to the outer atmosphere and power up to just below the speed of light. Once we get enough readings, we’ll chirp into personality waves and really be on our way. We’ll show you how.”

“If I come, will Om turn off the allas?” asked Cobb.

“Om is ready to do that,” said Shimmer. “By now she has collected a complete enough set of human memories. She’ll remember your race forever. She only hopes you don’t feel you’ve been cheated once the allas are gone. But the constant killing and the explosions—”

“I suppose we’re too primitive,” said Babs sadly.

“It’s not just that,” said Josef. “It’s that one-dimensional time isn’t a good place for realware. Some of your bombings weren’t even deliberate. Apparently people have started setting off bombs by accident in their dreams. The more that people worry about bombs, the more bombs there will be. Your human dreaming is a risky business. Although Metamartians don’t dream, we’ve occasionally had runaway alla misuse, our own epidemics of mass hysteria. But for us a global disaster doesn’t much matter—because we have so many strands of time. No, I’m afraid that at this stage of your culture, and with your uncontrolled dreaming, your single line of time is simply too fragile for the allas. You do well to want Om to take them away.”

“Then it’s a deal,” said Cobb. “I’ll come with you and dream the way toward two-dimensional time. And you’ll ask Om to take away the allas.”

The Metamartians were silent for a moment, communing with Om.

“Everyone sure they don’t want no more alla?” called Wub-wub. There was another explosion outside, this time closer than before. “Om wants to know.”

“No more alla!” screamed the crowd.

“Hurry up,” cried Yoke. “Do it now! And have Om take away the alla-made weapons like Shimmer said she could.”

“So be it,” said Ptah.

Yoke felt a wriggling in the pouch at her waist. Her alla, and everyone else’s, was gone. The air filled with a palpable sense of safety and ease. The people and moldies laughed and hugged each other.

“Lez go, boss,” said Wubwub to Cobb. “Know what I’m sayin’?”

“Oh, Cobb,” said Yoke, kissing the old man moldie.

“It’s fine,” said Cobb. “I’ve hung around Earth long enough.”

“It would be easy for me to use your software to make a new one of you to live here,” Willy told Cobb. “We have your software stored on an S-cube.”

“Please don’t do that,” said Cobb. “I don’t want anyone bringing me back to Earth again. I’m done here. I’ll travel on with the Metamartians, but when this trip plays out, I want to finally make it into the SUN.”

“He’s right,” said Yoke. “Cobb deserves his chance to go to Heaven.”

“Good-bye everyone,” said Cobb. “And bless you, my children.”

He strode up into the saucer with the Metamartians. The hotel wall wavered again, and the flashing disk of the saucer vanished into the heavens.

It was a perfect day. The newlyweds’ eyes were soft, their kisses wet, their hearts free, the big world real.

AFTERWORD

by Rudy Rucker

I just finished rereading the four Ware novels for this omnibus edition. The books had been scanned from the old paperbacks, and I had to correct a number of typos that had crept in. Being a writer, I can’t reread something of mine without seeing things to fix, so I made a few small tweaks as well—making the novels consistent from one to the next, and smoothing the flow. But don’t worry, the old outrageous scenes are all here in their full rough vigor.

It took me about twenty years to write these novels, and it’s an odd experience to fast-forward through them in a few days. Naturally, I ask myself what the books were in fact about. I see three main threads: consciousness, drugs, and eyeball kicks.

The consciousness thread explores what it takes for something to support a mind. Soft ware (1982) suggests that your mind as a soft ware pattern that could run on a robot body. _Wetware _(1988) points out that DNA is a tweakable program, so you can in fact grow a new meat body for your software to live in. _Freeware _(1997) proposes that aliens could travel as radio signals coding up the software for both their minds and their bodies. And in _Realware _(2000), the characters obtain a device which can create living beings from their descriptions.

The drug thread asks how the humans and other beings of the future will get high. What kinds of visions will they have, and what kinds of problems? As the inevitable consequence of getting older, my attitude towards drugs shifted a little over the course of writing the four Ware books. In the second two volumes, the characters are having more problems with their drug use and by the end—incredibly—Sta-Hi himself gets sober. Even so, right up to the end of Realware, I remain devoted to breaking free of consensus reality, and to the dadaist humor and skewed dialog that emerges from the stoner mind-set.

The eyeball kicks thread is about depicting the gnarly, trippy scenes that might occur in a future where we’re mashing together different notions of consciousness with a countercultural attitude. I put a lot of energy into certain set-piece scenes and iconic images—I think of the two moldies juggling each others’ bodies as sets of balls, the birth of Manchile after a nine-day pregnancy, Randy Karl Tucker tripping on camote with his moldie girlfriend wrapped around his head, and, of course, the Little