by Rudy Rucker
“I envy him,” the new Ptah said to Shimmer. “But I’m happy to help you reach the necessary seven to mate.” He looked down at his new body approvingly. “I wasn’t quite sure our replication procedure would work in this part of the cosmos.” Ptah turned to Yoke, noticing her worried expression. “My original self will begin screaming now, Yoke, but don’t worry, it’s just a way to blow off a little physical discomfort. It’ll look like he’s being killed, but really he’s just moving into a higher dimension.”
The bright, shifting sphere darted to the original Ptah, and he became part of the round spatial anomaly. His beautiful, symmetric body puffed out as if inflated. And as predicted, he began to scream in pain. “Om kreet!” he shrieked. The great round anomaly of the powerball’s space was inside of the original Ptah; his imipolex flesh was stretched out across its surface. A powerful glow emanated from his distorted face; his eyes were as lambent coals. “Om kreet, kreet, kreet!” A dreadful sound. His swollen form was starting to dwindle.
“Are you exactly the same as the old Ptah?” Yoke asked the new Ptah.
“Yes,” said the new Ptah. “It’s very easy for us to make realware copies of ourselves. We simply alla up an identical copy—each of us has an alla nestled within his or her body, you see. I’m used to seeing copies of myself go away. Remember that on Metamars we lead incalculably many parallel lives.”
“What’s going to happen to the old Ptah?” asked Yoke.
“Om wants to examine one of our Earth-style moldie bodies,” said Josef. “The old Ptah will go to a kind of chamber inside Om, probably with the others. And then I imagine he’ll move on. Into the Light.”
Watching the old Ptah’s apparent agony, Yoke wondered if this was what had happened to her mother. Was there any chance that Darla was anything other than dead? And what did Josef mean by the “Light”? Suddenly it looked as if the powerball might be drifting their way.
“No,” groaned Yoke. She and Cobb began running across the grass floor of the dome. Shimmer, Peg, Siss, and the new Ptah fanned out ahead of them, with Wubwub following behind as if to protect them.
Soon they’d reached the diamond-hard wall of the dome. Wubwub sniffed at the ground and pushed himself against Yoke’s legs, herding her a few yards along the curving edge of the wall.
“Stop it!” said Yoke. Across the meadow, the tiny shrunken powerball was darting about erratically, but it wasn’t heading their way.
“Just a little to the right,” said the black pig, insistently pushing Yoke with his snout. Finally he stopped. “This be the spot.”
“Listen to me,” said Josef. The lustrous beetle was still perched on Yoke’s boob. “We are going to take down the dome now. The water will rush in.”
“We’ll be crushed!”
“Not if you get inside Cobb and stay at this precise spot,” said Josef. “Wubwub will help push you in the right direction when the water comes. Remember that we can see a few minutes’ worth of all the possible futures. Hurry, Yoke. Get inside of Cobb this very instant!”
Cobb flopped himself flat on the ground next to Wubwub, and Yoke sat down on him. She was still holding the alla. The old Ptah had stopped screaming. The five other Metamartians were standing by the dome’s pure diamond wall as well, waiting.
“I will come with,” said Josef, his legs clinging to Yoke’s pullover. “And the others will organize a new node. Now that we’ve made contact with you, Yoke, we don’t want the King to know where we are anymore.”
The noble Wubwub stood firm at Yoke’s side. He was lightly poised on his trotters, with his vigilant snout tracking the distant powerball’s moves. “Rest of us movin’ somewhere fresh. This place got bad juice now, you know what I’m sayin’?”
Cobb sealed himself up, and Yoke switched to viewing through Cobb’s sensors. There was a pop and the last trace of Ptah and the powerball disappeared. Wubwub braced himself firmly against Cobb, pressing the bathyscaph against the dome’s wall. The other Metamartians were braced against the wall as well, all of them ready to spring out into the sea.
And then the dome disappeared and six miles worth of water came rushing past them, crushing the air within the bubble into incandescent white light, illuminating for an instant, like the first flashbulb since creation, the dark ooze of the primeval ocean floor.
CHAPTER THREE
PHIL
February 21, 2054
Friday night Phil dreamed about his father again. In the dream he and his dad were sitting in a greenhouse full of orange nasturtiums and jasmine vines. Old Kurt was wearing his teaching clothes. His arms were missing. The jasmine smelled like musk, like rotten incense.
“The wowo took them off,” said Kurt, his empty jacket sleeves flapping. “But they’re healing fast.” Blood was seeping through the shoulders of the jacket.
Made anxious by his father’s wounds, Phil looked down at his own body. He was dressed in his sleeping outfit, a long T-shirt. He could see the individual hairs on his legs. One of his hands was clenched into a fist; when he opened it, the knotted, mirror-reversed wedding ring was there.
“I can’t decide if I’m really dead,” Kurt was saying. “Did I get a stuzzy funeral? Big tears? Bunch of drunks?” All the while the dusty orange nasturtium blossoms were singing in tiny, high voices, with the jasmine blossoms harmonizing a background.
“It was heavy, Da,” said Phil, and the heavy gold ring tumbled from his hand.
“Gold from the roots,” said Kurt. “Marry her.”
The smeary music of the flowers was vibrating Phil’s sinuses in a way he couldn’t bear. He was crying. He tumbled off into jumbled dreams of mountain climbing.
When Phil woke, his father’s knotted wedding ring actually was in his hand. He’d fallen asleep holding it. Was he crazy? He had to get rid of it today. Fuck this suicide shit.
It was ten a.m. and Kevvie was still unconscious. She didn’t have to go in to work today because yesterday she’d gotten fired. Trying to get over the hangover from her Thursday night merge session with Klara Blo, Kevvie had stolen a bunch of Tendur painkillers from one of her lady clients, and the sharp-eyed old woman lodged an instant complaint. The geezer-sitter service had sent a dragonfly to sample Kevvie’s blood on her way out of the client’s building, and she’d failed the test big time. The service wouldn’t stand for geezer sitters taking off their clients’ drugs. So last night a resentful Kevvie had blown it all out on quaak and Tendur, and was completely twisted by the time Phil got home from work. He’d found her chasing after Umberto with a butcher knife yelling “Off with his head.” Normally Kevvie was harmless, but when she was lifted enough she could get into a scary evil queen trip. This morning she looked like a nodded-out junkie, her mouth wide open and drool all down her chin. One of her hands was still soft from an ill-considered three a.m. splash of merge.
“It’s over,” Phil said softly to himself, and then he said it again, a little louder. “It’s over, Kevvie. I’m not carrying you anymore.” She snored on. Could he get her to move out? That would be hard. There was no formal lease, and Kevvie had been splitting the rent with him for the last ten months. Though Phil had built the birdhouse a full year before Kevvie moved in with him, she was likely to argue that by now it was hers as much as his. Which left only one alternative.
“I’m leaving, Kevvie,” said Phil, trying out the sound of it. “I’m moving out.” No reaction. “I’m moving out right now.”
He dressed, put the ring in his pocket, picked up a duffel bag and started walking around the room putting things into it. Another ending. He was trembling with emotion. What did he have here that really mattered? Toiletries, some clothes, some S-cubes, his quilt, a couple of books, and fuck the thrift-shop furniture. What else? His blimps! If he left them in here, Kevvie would trash them for sure. She’d never liked his flying machines. Phil used his uvvy to call his blimps down from the ceiling. Led Zep, Graf Z, the Macon, the Penile Implant, and the Uffin’ Wowo. The blimps nuzzled against him like
lonely puppies, their silky skins rustling.
“Come on, guys,” Phil told them. “We’re outta here.” Phil opened his arched door, maybe for the last time, and herded the blimps out into the open space of the warehouse. It was another gray day out the windows along the tops of the walls, gray clouds spitting rain. Derek was on the floor adjusting his green doughnut sculpture, Umberto squeezed up tight against his feet.
“Yaaar, Phil. Walking the blimps?”
“I’m moving out, Derek. It’s Kevvie. I can’t deal.”
“You’d saddle Calla and me with that? Let’s not forget that Kevvie got fired. How would she make the rent? Not to mention that last night she almost killed my dog. She’s the one’s gotta move outta here, Phil, not you.”
“You can use my deposit to pay her rent till the end of March. Maybe she’ll leave by then. I don’t care anymore.”
“Burn us is what she’ll do,” snapped Derek, his face hard. “I want her outta here by a week from today. Before March. Help me do it, Phil!”
“I can’t be the one to put her out, Derek. And I can’t live with her anymore either. I’m sorry, I—” Phil’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s too much, man. I just want to be quiet and not try, and it’s not working. Burying my dad and dealing with Willow, and losing that Yoke girl so fast, and Kevvie’s lifted all the time and I’m scared I could start using, and the wowo thing could come after me any minute and—”
Derek softened. “Aw, Phil. If you gotta, you gotta. It’ll be dense, but I can deal. On February twenty-eight Kevvie’s outta here if I have to fuckin’ change the locks. And I’m gonna keep Umberto safe over at a friend’s till she’s gone. Hear that, Umberto? You’re gonna stay with Kundry.” Umberto thumped his tail.
Phil wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “Thanks, Derek. You want to keep my blimps?”
“Feed them their helium and shit? No, man. The least you can do is take your blimps. Get outta here before Kevvie wakes up.”
The wind was gusty outside, and Phil had to tether the blimps to his left arm lest they be blown away. The helium-filled imipolex DIM bags beat against him like balloons. It would be impossible to walk far this way, especially while carrying the duffel. Maybe he should let the blimps fly off into the wind? They were only toys. But still. He’d made them.
Just then one of the Snooks moldies accosted him. “Want a blow job, Phil?” It was Isis Snooks, a moldie curved into a fairly impressive female form. She had pouty lips and long, dark, slanted eyes.
“Would you like these blimps?” asked Phil in return.
“You want to trade blimps for a blow job? How much imipolex is in them?”
“I don’t want a blow job, Isis. You know I’m not a cheese-ball. I just need to get rid of the blimps. I’m moving out. Now, I don’t want you to eat the blimps, I want you to take care of them. They’d be a nice decoration inside the Anubis. You have to feed them some quantum dots and helium every few weeks.”
Isis cocked her head, studying the wind-whipped gas-bags.
“Are the skins programmable?”
“I’ll uvvy you the access codes right now if you promise to give them a good home.”
“Fun,” said Isis after another moment’s thought. “I’ll do it.” So Phil uvvied her the control codes and handed her the blimp tethers. Something else occurred to him.
“Wait a second,” he said. “This big one uses ballast.” He took the knotted ring out of his pocket and pushed it in through the intake valve of his biggest blimp, the polka-dotted one named Uffin’ Wowo. Perfect. “Enjoy them, Isis.”
“Come by and visit anytime.” Isis was smiling at the blimps, already uvvying new patterns onto them. Hieroglyphs. “Wavy, huh? Where you moving to, Phil?”
“I’m following a woman I met.”
“Yoke Starr-Mydol,” said the moldie.
“How would you know that?”
“Thutmosis saw you with her Thursday night. True looove.”
“I’m goin’ for it, Isis,” said Phil. The moldie looked so smart and friendly that Phil regretted giving her the dangerous ring—but he couldn’t bring himself to take it back and throw it into the ocean. “Make that one big blimp stay up near the ceiling,” he obliquely warned. “It could hurt someone if it pops.”
Phil headed for the closest haven he could think of: Babs Mooney’s warehouse. The door was locked and he knocked hard and long. Finally it cracked open, revealing a man’s pale face. Randy Karl Tucker.
“Haaah gaaah. Don’t go runnin’ out there, Willa Jean!” Randy Karl Tucker’s plastic chicken appeared at the bottom of the door, staring up at Phil with its fixed little eye.
“Hi, Randy. Is Babs home?”
“She done took off for the art gallery. I spent all yesterday helpin’ her make miniature worm-farms. Tryin’ to earn my keep. I got my Master Plumber’s certificate back in Louisville, you know. Yesterday I rented me a plumber’s pipe-gun, a thing that pushes out whatever kind o’ pipe or tube you want. I grew ole Babs some xoxxin’ gnarly little mazes for her worms. What you call smart art.”
“Babs is actually letting you stay here?” Normally Babs lived there all by herself. Her father, ex-Senator Stahn Mooney, had bought the place for her outright. Babs didn’t need money and she didn’t like roommates.
“Don’t need to sound so surprised, Phil! I’m not as dumb as I sound. And being a cheeseball don’t make me a pervo right across the board. I think Babs is takin’ a shine to me. Come on in if you like. Scoot, Willa Jean!”
“Thanks,” said Phil. “I’m homeless.”
“Hell, there’s enough room in here for ten of us,” said Randy, gesturing at Babs’s immense warehouse with its bright, fabric-hung walls. “Pick yourself a corner and settle on in.”
“Well, that’s kind of you to offer, Randy, but I do know that Babs likes her privacy. How long did she say you could stay for?”
“I’m expecting to be here till Cobb gets back from Tonga,” said Randy. He threw himself down on a couch and Willa Jean hopped onto his lap. “Maybe a week? I’m pretty well burnt on Santa Cruz. San Francisco looks like a king-hell place. Never mind the Moon.”
“I don’t mean to sound harsh, Randy, but Babs is bound to give you the boot. Maybe you don’t know what she’s usually like.”
“I helped Babs a lot with them worm-farms, Phil. I’m more than just a plumber, I’ve worked as a process engineer. I’m a demon with the nanomanipulator. I helped Babs put sparkles in her worms. And to top it off, I’m gonna get her some superleeches.” Randy tapped the ragged purple patch that was merged into Willa Jean’s back. “Illegal imipolex. Just for Babs to use in her art, you wave. We’re thinkin’ about a gallery show that’s a whole henhouse of superleech chickens. The viewers put on the control uvvies and it’s squawk-awk buk-puk. Might could get some superleeches from my ole bud Aarbie Kidd.”
“Don’t you get Babs in trouble, Randy,” snapped Phil. “Take some time and figure out our scene before you start acting like a complete criminal. If you do anything to hurt Babs, Senator Stahn will take you down for true. Depend on it.”
“Tat tvam asi,” said Randy equably. “Means ‘And that too’ in Sanskrit. Did you know I lived in India for two years? I respect your concern for your friend, big gaaah. You think you’ll be movin’ in?”
“Well, no, my plan is to go to Tonga.”
“You too? What all’s in Tonga?”
“It’s Yoke,” said Phil. “I have to see her. For once I know exactly what I want to do.”
February 22
So Phil ditched most of his stuff at Babs Mooney’s warehouse and set off for Tonga with a few travel supplies in a knapsack. He took a conventional rocket-plane, with a change in Hawaii.
He arrived at Nuku’alofa early Sunday morning, Tonga time. The airport was old-fashioned and casual. He hadn’t uvvied Yoke yet because he’d been scared she might tell him not to come. But now it was time.
The uvvy signal quickly found her, and Yoke picked up. She looke
d even better than Phil had remembered. Her calm eyes, her fine jaw, her wise mouth, her ivory-olive skin. She was wearing a purple bikini. She seemed to be sitting on a tropical patio eating breakfast. Alone?
“Hi, Yoke, it’s Phil. I missed you so much that I flew to Tonga! I broke up with Kevvie.”
Yoke took the news with aplomb. “Josef told me you were about to call,” she said, tapping an imipolex beetle that was perched on her shoulder-strap like a tiny parrot. “He can see about five minutes into the future.”
“Oh right,” said Phil. “Did Babs blab? Where’s Onar?”
“He and I are through. I think he’s staying with the King. I’ll tell you everything when you get here. I already asked Cobb to pick you up. You should wait somewhere obvious, like out in front of the airport? Cobb says he can get there in like fifteen minutes. It’ll be wavy to see you, Phil. I’m glad you came.”
A short while later Cobb plummeted down out of the sky and opened himself up like a mummy case. He looked considerably bulkier than before. Phil took the palladium nose-filters Cobb offered him and got inside the moldie-man, along with his pack. Huge acceleration and then they were arcing north across the Tongan archipelago.
“How’s Yoke?” Phil asked Cobb.
“She’s doing well.”
“And what’s with the beetle?” asked Phil.
“You mean Josef,” said Cobb. “He’s an alien from Metamars. A place where they have two-dimensional time. Apparently the Metamartians live a whole lot of parallel lives at once. They think our part of the cosmos is very odd!”
“Aliens! Are these the same aliens who were on the Moon back in November? There was one that got away?”
“Exactly. Shimmer’s still here, and she’s been decrypting other alien personality waves into imipolex bodies. Not just any aliens though, she only unpacks Metamartians. There’s six of them now. This is like a bus-tour for them—or maybe an anthropological expedition. Shimmer, Ptah, Peg, Wubwub, Siss, Josef. Josef’s taken a shine to our Yoke. He’s a very useful individual to have around. Even though we only have one-dimensional time here, there’s always a cloud of ghost futures around the next moment. And Josef’s able to see the virtual futures and to actualize the best one. That’s been making it easy to avoid hassles with Onar and the King.”
