by Rudy Rucker
“This is like a bad dream,” said Stahn.
“I like it,” said Wendy. “Are you warm enough?”
“I’m fine.” The silvered imipolex kept Stahn comfortable, and the air in his nose was fresh and cool.
“Should I worry about radiation?” asked Stahn. “About cosmic rays?”
“Let’s put it this way: your odds of cancer are going to be a little higher after this trip. And cosmic rays can have an effect on moldies too. But we’ll just have to grin and bear it and hope for the best, I suppose.”
“Can you feel how hard I’m grinning?” said Stahn. “Not. This is really selfish of you, Wendy.”
“It’ll do you good, Stahn.”
Stahn thought longingly of his pot at home and his liquor cabinet and his squeezies of snap and gabba. He loved all drugs except merge. He’d been through a bad experience with merge—the time that Darla had overdosed him on merge back on the Moon. By the time that bummer was fully over, Stahn had lost the entire right half of his brain. What a burn.
“Uvvy the kids, can you do that? And then we should uvvy Whitey Mydol on the Moon. He should know that we’re coming. I guess we’ll be landing on the Moon the day after Blaster and Terri, right? A week from now?”
“Right. We’re traveling along a seven-day Earth-to-Moon spacetime geodesic just like Blaster is. He’s a day ahead of us, yes, and we can keep checking with him. He’ll be our closest neighbor most of the way.”
“We can uvvy him and everyone else as much as we want to?” This thought was somewhat comforting. Not to be wholly alone in the void.
“Well, uvvying costs us a trillion quantum dots per second per call.”
“You’re running low on dots already?” whinnied Stahn in sudden terror. “You’re not going to have enough for keeping me warm and for braking our descent?”
“Not to worry,” giggled Wendy. “Flapper gave me like ten-to-the-thirtieth quantum dots. That’s enough energy for over a quadrillion hour-long uvvy calls. So now let’s call the kids.”
“Yes yes, do it. You talk to them first so that they know right away that you’re okay. You threw quite a scare into them.”
So they talked to the kids. Babs was crying and Saint was near tears himself; Wendy’s abandoned body had just died. The conversation went on for a while and finally they all felt pretty solid again.
Next they uvvied Whitey. They were still close enough to the Earth that there was a noticeable two- or three-second lag in round-trip transmissions to the Moon, so that call didn’t amount to much. And then they tried Blaster.
“Hi, guys,” uvvied Blaster’s deep voice. “Welcome to the worm farm.” Blaster himself was a presence made up of four or five permanently fused moldies, but his psychic uvvyspace arched out to include the minds of the shanghaied moldies he had aboard. And down under Blaster’s basso profundo and the excited chatter of the moldies was Terri Percesepe.
“Hi, Terri,” said Stahn. “It’s Stahn Mooney.”
“Oh good,” said Terri. “Tre said you’d arranged to ransom me. But I don’t understand the uvvy image I see. Are you—are you out in space?”
“Yeah, I got abducted too. By my own wife, Wendy.”
“Wendy meat Wendy?” asked Terri. “Who Tre’s always doing the ads about? I don’t get what’s going on.”
“We’re going up to the Moon so I can get a new flesh body,” said Wendy. “How is it for you guys inside Blaster, Terri?”
“It’s kickin’,” put in one of the moldies. The uvvy image of Blaster showed a writhing knot of moldies, all slowly crawling about while keeping Blaster in the same overall shape. The moldie talking to them was bright yellow with green-and-pink fractal spirals. “This is Sunshine fabulating atcha. My man Mr. Sparks and me are drifters, but will work for imipolex.”
“Mostly we been wandering up and down the streets of Santa Cruz stealin’ shit and doin’ odd jobs to score betty,” amplified Mr. Sparks, a red snake decorated with yellow lightning bolts. “Blaster says we’ll like it on the Moon. Lotta lifty action there. Not to mention a good chance of finally hooking into enough imipolex to have a kid.”
“My family is not happy about it,” said another voice. “I am Verdad, this is my wife Lolo, and these are my in-laws Hayzooz and Mezcal.” Verdad and his family were blobby in shape and colored in brown-and-green earth tones. “We’ve been farmin’ the fields for five generations. We’re not enjoyin’ this change very much. I think there is nothin’ at all we can grow on the Moon.”
“Muy malo,” grumbled Hayzooz. “This is some ugly kilp. Why don’t you let us fly back to the Earth, Blaster?”
“We’re already in orbit,” said Blaster. “We’re coasting. The only way you can get enough quantum dots for a return flight is to do some work on the Moon. But, believe me, you won’t want to go back. You’ll love it in the Nest. You can work in the fab growing chipmold. Or in the pink-tanks growing organs. Or learn some hi-tech trades. You’re moldies, for God’s sake, not flesher dirt farmers.”
“We’re gonna miss the rain and the soil and the little growin’ things.”
“The purity of the Moon is good,” said Blaster. “It is an ascetic spiritual path, but a highly efficacious one.”
“I don’t care how spiritual it is, as long as I can get that fresh imipolex you promised,” said the voice of a pale white moldie covered with pimply red spots and with a sharp beak at one end. “Buttmunch here. Gypsy and me are five years old and our upgrades are just about worn out. We’ve been rogues our whole lives, spent a lot of it underwater. We help smugglers bring things in and out of Davenport Beach, and this last time we got careless and a flesher zombified us. But Blaster says on the Moon we’ll get new imipolex and heavy-duty tunneling ware and we can like grind around underground, and that’ll be stuzzy. Swimming through rock and getting good bucks. It’s a new lease on life.”
“Yaar, I’m for it,” said Gypsy, who was flesh-colored and covered with fingerlike bumps like the underside of a starfish. And like on a starfish, each flexible little finger had a sucker at its tip. “But even so I wish we could snuff that dook Aarbie Kidd for putting the superleeches on us. Remember that very first job you and me did, Buttmunch? The real tasty one in Aarbie’s cottage? When we offed that Heritagist asshole Dom Per—”
“Shut th’ fuck up, Gyp,” interrupted Buttmunch, but it was too late.
“You killed my father?” Terri screamed. “You scummy mucus slugs killed my dad?”
“Dom fuckin’ burned Aarbie twice,” snapped Gypsy. “Me and Buttmunch were just youngsters anyhow. You don’t like it, spoiled little rich bitch Terri Percesepe, then why don’t you go on and jump off the ship. Or maybe I should crawl over there and teach you a fuckin’—ow!”
“I’m right next to you, Gypsy,” said Xlotl’s voice. “And so’s Monique. Push harder, Monique.” In the background, Blaster started laughing.
“Hey, quit it!” yelled Gypsy. “Help me, Buttmunch! They’re trying to squeeze me in half!”
“You be nice to Terri,” said Monique, her voice tight and hard as she and Xlotl hour-glassed Gypsy’s waist. “Or—”
“Hey, hey, hey,” interrupted Stahn, trying to be senatorial. “Simmer down over there. We’ve got six more days ahead of us. Make them stop, Blaster!”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” chortled Blaster. “The fighting dogpile is an essential stage of my moldies’ journey to liberation. Xanana and I will keep an eye on Terri, won’t we, Xan’?”
“Of course. But frankly I’d rather not have to be Terri’s life support for the whole way. The whole whole way. The whole whole whole way. Someone else should do it for a while. Monique. After all, it’s Monique who got our family into this. Whoring for that Heritagist zerk Randy Karl Tucker.”
“You’re a real DIM head, Monique,” put in Ouish, who was squeezed up against Xanana. She wormed out a long tendril and gave Monique a sharp poke.
“Fightin’ dogpile,” repeated Blaster happily. “You’re a sp
unky bunch of recruits.”
“Um, speaking of Heritagists?” uvvied a new voice. “This is Jenny from Salt Lake City?” The visage of a lank, immature country gal appeared in the shared uvvyspace. “Hellooo there! You guys ought to realize that some of us so-called Heritagists are really and truly working for the Nest.”
“Oh God, not her again,” said Stahn. “I’ve heard enough for now, Wendy.” Wendy closed their connection and they went off-line.
The better part of a week went by, and Stahn started feeling a lot healthier. Having the drugs leave his system felt like having shiploads of life come up a river to be unloaded on his front steps. Whenever things started to lag, he and Wendy would make uvvy calls.
The day before Stahn and Wendy were due to land, Jenny’s uvvy presence popped up again. It was while Stahn and Wendy were talking to Blaster.
“Hi, gang,” said Jenny’s callow giggly voice in the common uvvyspace. “Good news, Wendy, I’ve just arranged for you to download your personality for safekeeping, in case something happens to you during landing.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” said Wendy. “But no way am I downloading to Salt Lake City.”
“Heavens no,” said Jenny after a pause. “You’ll download to the Nest. You’ve heard of Willy Taze? One of his friends in the Nest is a moldie called Frangipane. Frangipane is all set for you. Speak up now, Frangipane. Don’t be shy!”
“Yes, I’m here,” said a clear sweet voice with a French accent. “I am logged on to your uvvyspace. Bonjour, tout le monde. This is Frangipane in the Nest. I have an S-cube all prepared for you, Wendy.” Visible via the uvvy link, Frangipane resembled an oversized exotic orchid, a chaotically pulsing construct of delicately shaded ruffles and petals.
“Well, okay then, here I come,” said Wendy. There was a slow hum for several seconds while she sent her info across the short clear span of space down to the Nest. “All done,” said Wendy then, fairly chirping with enthusiasm. “My, that felt good! I’m so much more secure now. Too bad we can’t do the same for Stahn without taking him apart.”
“We can talk about that on the Moon if he has interest,” said Frangipane. “My lover Ormolu has some knowledge of the lost wetware arts.” Ormolu waved from the background. He looked like a blobby gilt cupid from an antique clock.
“Put a cork in it,” said Stahn. “I don’t want to get vivisected the way Cobb Anderson did.”
“What about me?” interrupted Blaster. “Why doesn’t the Nest ever do a pre-landing backup for me or my recruits? Aren’t I as important as Wendy?”
“You are too big, Blaster,” said Frangipane. “And no, you are not really so important, I regret to say. In any case, I don’t have the resources to make any other backups. Your new recruits should just be happy that we have jobs for them.”
“Xoxx you, then,” said Blaster. “I don’t need your help anyway. I’ve made this landing without a problem plenty of times.”
“That’s right. And you should not have a problem today.”
“Yeah, and just to make sure and keep it that way, I’m not taking any more calls. I don’t feel good at all about getting uvvied by your Heritagist friend Jenny while I’m in landing countdown mode. I’m going to take this up with the Nest Council later.” Huffy Blaster went off-line.
A few hours later, just before Blaster was scheduled to land, Wendy and Stahn got a call. They expected it to be Blaster, but it was Frangipane, her petals blushing and a-flutter.
“Bonjour,” said the moldie. “There’s no good way to explain about this, Wendy, but it seems we in the Nest are finally ready to attempt a full Gurdle decryption with a moldie as host. We have tested it on some Silly Putters this morning, and now we’re going to try it on you. It seems safer with you out in space, and with wise old Senator Mooney inside you. Be of good courage!”
Before they could protest, a sudden sharp crackle of petabyte information hiss came over the uvvy—a virus!
Stahn told Wendy to turn it off, but Wendy was already gone. The noise lasted for what seemed like a very long time, the sound so densely fractal and impossible to ignore that Stahn started hearing nutso voices in it. And there was nothing to do but grit his teeth until finally the connection broke. And then Wendy started making a noise; long, slow, rising whoops, each about one second long.
“Whooop whooop whooop whooop—”
“What’s the matter, Wendy?”
“Whooop whooop whooop whooop whooop whooop—”
Frangipane’s info had set Wendy to shivering. She was so tightly linked to Stahn that he could see down into her and feel it like it was happening to himself. Piezoplastic vibrations deep inside Wendy were crisscrossing and spewing cascades of phonons down into the live net of her quasicrystalline structure. And the structure was spontaneously deforming like someone was turning a dial on the Tessellation Equation, causing the structure of Wendy’s plastic to slide-whistle its way up the scale through 4D, 5D, 6D, 7D . . . on and on, with each level happening twice as fast as the one before, so that—it felt like to Stahn, at least—Wendy was going through infinitely many dimensional arrangements in each second. And then starting right up again. Whooop whooop whooop whooop. Wendy’s imipolex was like a scanner going over and over the channels, alef null channels zeno-paradoxed into every second and suddenly—Stahn flashed an eidetic mental image of this—a cosmic ray in the form of a sharp-edged infinite-dimensional Hilbert prism slammed into Wendy and lodged itself in her plastic flesh, working its way through and through her like a migrating fragment of shrapnel. The shudderingly rising dimensionality of Wendy’s quasicrystalline structure caught the wave of information and amplified it. The info surfed Wendy’s whoop and blossomed suddenly inside her like a great still explosion in deep space.
“*Ffzzzt!* crackle gonnnnng—hello, I am Quuz from Sun.”
At first Stahn was in denial. “Aw, Wendy, why you gotta lay such a weird trip on me, us floating here in outer space halfway to the Moon, I mean what the—”
“What manner of creature are you—Stahn Mooney?”
The sincerity of the question struck a chill into Stahn’s heart. “Stop it, Wendy! Wendy?”
“Wendy is dead, Stahn Mooney. I am Quuz from Sun.”
“Help! Uvvy someone for help! Frangipane? Are you there? We’ve got to warn Blaster!”
“How do I uvvy Blaster?” asked the mighty Quuz voice, and before Stahn thought the better of it, he showed Quuz where Wendy had kept her dial-up protocols, and Quuz dialed Blaster and the connection formed, even though Blaster didn’t want it to, and Quuz fed Blaster the same skirling crackle that Frangipane had fed to Wendy just a minute or two before.
CHAPTER EIGHT
DARLA
2031 - November 6, 2053
Darla woke up cranky. The uvvy was calling for her, but she didn’t pick up. The message software kicked in, and a live hologram of the unwelcome bulk of Corey Rhizome appeared in her and Whitey’s sleeping cubby, half a mile beneath the surface of the Moon.
The sides of Corey’s head were shaved clean, but his goatee’s formerly strict vertical rectangle had gone a bit wispy and strange. He’d gained weight and his skin looked grayish-green. His voice had its usual sneering, mocking tone, even though he was trying to be friendly.
“Hi, Darla,” said Corey’s hollow. “This is the Old Toymaker. I know you’re there, moonqueen. I’m going to stand here and keep talking until you pick up. I have a problem I need to talk about. And I miss you and Whitey and the twins.”
“I bet you do,” thought Darla.
Darla’s “identical” twin girls Yoke and Joke had been born in 2031, right after the Second Human-Bopper War. Although Yoke and Joke looked exactly the same, they had different fathers. Yoke was the traditional result of Darla’s fucking her partner Whitey Mydol, but Joke was a wetware engineered clone of Yoke that a bopper named Emul had implanted in the pregnant Darla’s womb after abducting and imprisoning her.
Joke was just as cute and bouncy as Y
oke during her first year, but once she began to talk it was evident that she was different. When strangers would ask her who her parents were, she’d say, “Whitey, Darla, Emul, and Berenice.”
“Who are Emul and Berenice, honey?”
“Boooppers,” the little voice would say, drawing out the first syllable. “They’re dead right now. But I talk to them in my head all the time.”
“Can it, Joke,” Darla might say then if the stranger looked to be a rare lunar asshole of the Heritagist persuasion. “Don’t listen to her, Ms. Murgatroyd. Joke’s full of jive. Aren’t you, Jokie?” Poke.
The first day that Joke and Yoke went to school, Yoke was in tears when they came home. “Joke already knows how to read,” she wailed. “Why do I have to be so dumb?”
“It’s not really me who reads,” Joke told her. “Emul and Berenice look out through my eyes and they think the words to me.”
“What’s it like having them in your head?” asked Yoke, drying her eyes.
“It feels crowded,” said Joke. “They talk funny. Berenice is all flowery and old-fashioned, and Emul jumbles up his words.”
“Are you going to keep coming to school even though you know everything?”
“Of course, Yoke. It’s fun to see the other kids. And we belong together, you and me. If I went around alone without you all day, I’d get lost.”
“That’s true. You’re always getting turned around and mixed up, Joke, even if you already can add and read.”
“Emul and Berenice say I have a right-brain deficit,” said Joke, enunciating the words carefully. “ ’Cause that’s where they live.” Joke tapped her cute delicate hand against the right side of her head. She and Yoke had glistening chestnut brunette hair.
