by Rudy Rucker
"And you say good things about me to her too," said Phil.
"You are good," said Darla. "But, no, I won't praise you to Yoke or it might turn her against you. I've always had to handle that girl with kid gloves. You know how it is. Your dad felt a little the same way with you. He was wonderful. His sacrificing himself like that --I bet that's what turned Om around."
"Where is Kurt?" wondered Tempest. She was sitting on the oak trunk holding Planet and tremulously trying to light a cigarette.
"He jumped out of Om's hole to fly into the SUN yesterday," said Phil flatly.
"You helped him."
"Don't blame me. Hell with you." Tempest clammed up and looked away, squinting her eyes against her tobacco smoke.
Phil turned back to Darla. "I had so many dreams last night, Darla. I saw Da, and then Om was talking to me about him. She says she didn't urge him to jump at all, that you and Da just found that idea in your own heads. But, yes, in a way, Da jumping really did make Om decide to set us down. It impressed her, and made her feel sorry, and -- I don't know -- it was such an intense moment that now Om feels like she knows what makes us tick."
"Whiyun we supposed to land?" whined Tempest, hunching over something in her lap.
"I think tonight," said Darla. "It's just coming back to me. Om showed me this previz flash of how we'd come down. Something about a dark room. A stage? And don't you be getting spun again today, Tempest, I see that wine. Give it here, cruster. That's xoxxin' right, I'm pouring it out. Whirl, whirl, whirl, Om's magic rays are turning it into air. We're not gonna come knuckle-walking out of here tonight like Shasta ground sloths, you wave?"
While Darla kept an eye on Tempest, Phil went to peer out of Om's flaw again. Sticking his head out, he remembered something else Om had told him. The flaw was one of Om's "fingernails." A shelf sticking out of the smooth curve of the powerball fingertip that contained them.
Phil looked ana past the vast, curved pink forms of Om's body, visualizing the SUN's bright orb as a cloud of winged souls. Da in there too. Hi, Da. Looking kata, Phil once again studied the three pairs of tendrils running from Om's body kata to the Earth. Two gold-colored, two silvery, two coppery. He and Om had talked about those tendrils in his dreams last night. What Om had said about the tendrils had been esoteric, but Phil had been able to follow it. Having Da say Phil was smart had loosened up Phil's old mental block against mathematics. The tendrils were in pairs because they were loops. Each pair was a loop like the handle of a coffee cup -- with Om the cup, and the loop a handle that had been stretched like taffy, stretched all the way kata to touch the space of Earth. The tendrils were "hypercylindrical vortex threads" --like four-dimensional smoke-rings or tornadoes. The big new insight was that where these threads intersected the space of Earth, they looked, to the Earthlings, like cylindrical tubes: one gold, one silver, one copper. And these three tubes were allas: Yoke's gold alla and, according to Om, two additional allas that she'd recently allowed the Metamartians to make. A silver alla for Babs and a copper alla for Randy Karl Tucker. The vortex threads carried energy and information back and forth between Om and the allas.
Most important of all, now that Phil understood what the allas were, he knew how easy it was to split one in two. And with this new knowledge, he was quite sure he could use Yoke's alla to make one of his own -- Om willing. Phil squinted kata toward where the alla-threads met the cross section of Earth. Slowly, slowly, Om was moving them closer. Closer to Yoke. He prayed for their landing to come soon. As he was watching, a new pair of alla-threads appeared, purple ones. Someone else on Earth had just gotten an alla. He wondered who, but the only way to ask Om would be to fall asleep and dream. And he wasn't tired. Phil had lunch with Darla and Tempest, played with Planet, looked out the flaw some more, showed Darla and Tempest his alien "fishbowl," examined Starshine's old wowo, thought about flying machines, and carved a little on the oak tree with his fuzzy alien pocketknife. The way the knife worked was that its little metal tentacles would pick away at something to carve out the shape you wanted. It didn't have any kind of DIM hookup; you controlled the little feelers by turning the knife this way or that. Phil carved "Yoke" and then started on a bas-relief of her face, as best he could remember. The carving wasn't coming out all that well, but learning to use the knife was a pleasant enough way to pass the time.
And then, finally, there was a pop and a dark ball appeared in the midst of their hyperspherical space, off to one side of the oak. Phil pushed off from the oak, drifting toward the black ball. "Come on, Darla," he called. "This is the exit. You too, Tempest. Bring the dog."
The women hauled themselves up the trunk and pushed toward the black sphere as well. Nobody doubted that this was their salvation.
As they entered the dark ball there was a hyperdimensional switcheroo. The space inside the dark ball became their space, and the Om space they'd come from became the inside of a small bright ball behind them.
As they switched spaces, there was a stretching and pulling in Phil's guts again, but he didn't mind. Anything to get back home. Darla and Tempest thumped into him; Tempest was carrying Planet. Phil was worried the women's impact might knock him out of the dark space, but he stayed well within it. It wasn't completely black in the new space, there was a dim yellow glow, with spots. The bright ball of the space they'd come from was shrinking. Still visible within it were the warped tiny images of the oak tree and Starshine's wowo. Now that they were inside the dark space, it seemed ever brighter, and no longer so round. It was longer than it was wide, and dim yellow with spots on it --
"We're inside my blimp!" exclaimed Phil, and then-- pow-- the spotted blimp burst. Phil clearly heard the ting of his father's wedding ring falling to the platform of the stage they landed on, and then Planet started barking. There was a spotlight shining down on them and a few people staring up, very surprised, but where was --
"Phil!" screamed Yoke, running toward the stage. "Ma!"
"Yoke!" Da's wedding ring was right down there by Phil's foot, the ring finally unknotted by this last disturbance of space, and Phil scooped it up before Yoke jumped onto the stage. He hugged her and kissed her, and before Yoke could say much more of anything else, he put the ring on her finger and said, "I want to marry you, Yoke, I never want to lose you again," and Yoke kissed him some more and said, "Yes, yes, me too."
And then Yoke began to hug Darla. There wasn't really anyone for Tempest to hug, but Randy Karl Tucker hugged her anyway. Babs Mooney was right at Randy's side, clinging to his arm; it looked to Phil like they'd grown closer while he'd been gone, which was kind of surprising, though it made sense in a way. Phil felt into his pocket where he had the fuzzy knife, the black "fishbowl," and the necklace with the big gem. He put the necklace on Yoke for good measure. Yoke was all smiles, squeezed in between Phil and Darla. The gem looked amazing, continually changing between looking like a ruby, an emerald, a diamond, and a sapphire. And Da's gold ring was shining on Yoke's finger. Phil felt like his heart would burst. They were on the stage of the nearly empty show room in the Anubis, with most of the few remaining people wandering off to the bar rather than pressing forward with questions; they seemed to think this miraculous appearance had just been some kind of hokey, overblown magic trick. Cobb came across the dark room from the little door on the far side, his pink skin looking a little rough and blotchy.
"Phil's back!" Babs called to Cobb. "Along with this dog and two women! Yoke's mother."
"I know," said Cobb. "Hi, Darla. Hi, Tempest."
"Kin you flaaah me and Planet down to Tre and Terri's, Cobb?" Tempest wanted to know. "I bet they been worried sick."
"Worried sick that she'll come back," Yoke giggled to Phil.
"I'm gonna stay here, Tempest," said Cobb. "There's, urn, too much going on. And frankly I'm a bit lit. I was trying to talk to Siss, but before I knew it I'd rubbed on some betty and started conjugating with her. What a session. I've got to learn to lay off this stuff. Whew. It's too much fun. Hire a Snooks moldie to... um
... take you to Santa Cruz, Tempest. Ask one of those dancers in the bar."
"Ah don't have that kind o' money."
"Here," said Yoke, pulling a big bill out of her purse. "Now scram, Tempest. You can't be the focus. We've got Phil and my mom here, we've got seven Metamartians disguised as moldies, we've -- "
"Seven aliens?" cried Tempest. "Kill them!"
"Shut your pie-hole, Tempest," said Cobb. "They're leaving anyway. Go the hell home."
"And don't blab," cautioned Yoke. "No need for the Snookses to get worked up."
"You were so dumb to tell her, Yoke," put in Babs. "She's such a redneck."
"Xoxx all of you," said Tempest, and stomped off, dragging Planet after her.
"You're lifted, Cobb?" said Babs. "How lame. Did you find out how to make an alla? Did you get the message about the plutonium to Om?"
"I'm not really lifted," said Cobb. "Just buzzed. And, yes, I told Siss to tell Om to please not let us make plutonium or uranium. Siss was surprised that we thought instant atomic bombs would be such a big problem. Weird. It's the two-dimensional time thing again. On Metamars it doesn't matter all that much if a city gets blown up; it'll still be around in all the other time lines. But, yeah, she passed the word to Om. Check in your catalog and see if you can still make plutonium. And, um, as far as copying allas goes, Siss told me that Phil already knows how to do it. Is that true, Phil?"
"Yeah," smiled Phil. "Om told me. We can make allas for everyone. Everything's going to change."
"Yes!" exclaimed Yoke.
"And Om really got the message!" exclaimed Babs, who'd been focused inward on her alla. "I just checked, and plutonium is like grayed out in the catalog. Uranium too."
"So maybe I'm not so lame," said Cobb proudly. "More news. The Metamartians are leaving here tonight because, um, the seven of them are planning to make a new baby. It takes them about three months. Sweet Siss is gonna be a mommy."
"They're leaving Earth?" asked Yoke. "We're off the hook?"
"Not quite," said Cobb. "They're not ready to leave Earth entirely. Like I say, they have to finish mating and, um, gestating and all that. And they want to kind of keep an eye on things too. To make sure we aren't ruining everything with the allas. Did I say that they're planning to travel around in a flying saucer?"
"A saucer?" said Phil. "Have they been talking to Kevvie?"
"You hit the nail on the head," said Cobb.
"You're kidding!" said Phil.
"He's not," said Yoke. "Kevvie's been working here on the Anubis with the aliens since you left. She and Haresh are -- "
"We have been coworkers," said Haresh, suddenly reappearing from the far side of the hold with Kevvie at his side. "Kevvie has been giving me insights into your race's mental archetypes and into the rawer forms of human emotion. Om suggested that we give her an alla to test in practice what such a person might do. I must apologize in advance for what is about to occur. This is a necessary test." Kevvie was striding along with her head held very high and her lips moving. She was talking to herself and making little gestures with her hands. Phil had seen this mental state before; when Kevvie got really lifted, she turned grandiose as a spoiled child playing Queen--and mean as a killer robot.
"Kevvie's a crazy, skanky slut," snapped Yoke. "Can't you see that, Haresh, you xoxxin' birdbrain?" Yoke said this quite loud. Kevvie heard her.
"The man-hungry little moon-maid has a nasty mouth," said Kevvie regally. Her eyes were unforgiving. "I don't tolerate it. Begone!" She raised her hand as if she held a scepter. And now Phil glimpsed the purple tube of an alla in her hand.
It was over as soon as it started. Phil was turning to get in front of Yoke, Randy was leaning toward Kevvie, Yoke's mouth was opening to say something--but Kevvie's wish was fast as thought. In the same instant when Phil saw Kevvie's alla, a bright-line control mesh had already sprung into tight relief around Yoke's body and --poof--Yoke was gone, transmuted into a puff of air. Yoke's gold alla clattered to the stage and rolled to one side; it was the only sign of her that remained. Numbly, Phil picked it up. He couldn't wrap his mind around what had just happened. It was impossible. He'd just given Yoke Da's ring. They were going to be married. Everything was -- Phil pawed softly at the air that had been Yoke. Could she really be gone?
"See, Phil!" shouted Kevvie. "See!" Randy was trying to wrestle her to the ground.
"Kill her!" screamed Darla, and she, Tempest, and old Cobb moved forward to exact blood-vengeance. But Haresh didn't want any further violence. The alien sent Randy tumbling across the stage. And then Haresh picked up Kevvie and ran across the great hall, disappearing again through the far door.
"What's the use?" muttered Phil, as Darla tried to muster their forces for further pursuit. "Yoke's gone."
"Siss warned me something bad would happen," said Cobb, his body sagging. "But she said, um, Randy would know how to fix it."
"Where's Yoke's alla!" Randy was yelling, frantically crawling around on the stage. "Did anyone get it?"
"I got it," said Phil listlessly. "It's in my pocket."
"Well don't despair, old son." Randy's voice cracked with an odd jubilance. He looked around and lowered his voice. "Her alla remembers her. Body and mind both. Let's go back to Babs's where it's safe. We'll see if we can't whomp up a new realware Yoke."
"I --I want my Yoke," said Phil wretchedly. "I gave her Da's ring."
"Gonna be the same Yoke, Phil," said Randy, putting his arm around Phil's shoulder. "That's all we are: information. Come on."
"But we're not just information," murmured Phil brokenly, as Randy led him toward the door to the bar. "There's souls. I saw them in hyperspace. I had so much to tell everyone. Ow!" Ramses Snooks had just slammed into him.
"Where are those new moldies!" Ramses was shouting. He
O
had a phalanx of twenty Snooks moldies behind him. "That old woman said they're aliens! We have to exterminate them!" He and Isis were carrying serious-looking flamethrowers, and most of the other Snookses were packing O. J. ugly-stick rail-guns, each of them capable of shooting a thousand flechettes per minute. They surged into the ballroom, with Tempest following along, looking bloodthirsty and vindictive.
"They've gone up the back stairs to the deck!" called Kevvie, suddenly appearing from the far door again. "Someone stop them! They mustn't leave without me! I'm --I'm their Queen!"
"Keep goin', gaaahs," Randy murmured to Babs, Cobb, Phil, and Darla. They were already out in the bar. "Don't go after Kevvie. Might just get another of us killed. Only thing we gotta do now is get back to Babs's and fix Yoke before something happens to her alla. Up the stairs and out!"
So Phil stumbled up the stairs with the others. They got up top before the Snookses did, and sure enough, the seven Metamartians were on the deck, standing in a circle holding hands -- or legs in the case of tiny Josef, who hung suspended between devilish Peg and sinister Siss.
Jostled by a knot of bewildered lifters, Phil was seized with a sudden terror that he'd lost Yoke's alla. He dug out the contents of his pocket. His fuzz-knife, his "fishbowl," and, yes, Yoke's alla. Wubwub happened to look over at Phil just then, and did kind of a double take, as if he was surprised at the stuff in Phil's hands.
But then the Snookses had arrived. At the very last moment before they opened fire on the aliens, the air around the Metamartians flickered, and a silvery disk-shape formed to enclose them. The supersonic flechettes from the rail-guns bounced off the silver disk like hail off a tin roof; the hot tongues from the flamethrowers licked against the disk as harmlessly as water on a stone. The flying saucer lifted slowly into the sky, gave a twitch and shot off toward the heartland at an incalculable speed. Kevvie stood in the center of the deck, stretching up her arms and screaming that she wanted to come along. Tempest and her dog got into a Snooks moldie and headed for Santa Cruz. And Phil and his friends hurried down the gangplank toward Babs's warehouse, not looking back.
CHAPTER SIX
YOKE, BARS,
RANDY, YOKE
Yoke, February 26
"Pig!" is what Yoke had been about to shout --defiant to the last. But the sound never made it to her lips. As soon as Kevvie said "Begone," Yoke felt the alla-mesh tingling on her skin, and the next instant she was air. There was an uncanny moment of transition when Yoke was still materially alive --her old flesh patterns fleetingly preserved as worming, ionized air. But the currents and charges quickly dissipated, and then every physical remnant of the pattern that had been Yoke Starr-Mydol's body was gone.
I'm dead, thought Yoke. I'm a ghost!
She could sense the people who'd been all around her just now, not that she could see them anymore, but she could feel their presence: her mother, and Babs and Randy, and Phil -- had she really said she'd marry him? Kevvie's vibe was out there too. Triumphant.
Yoke convulsed in a spasm of stark hatred. It was disorienting, and when she tried to find Ma and the others again, she couldn't. It was like being blindfolded and feeling around in a china shop with baseball-bat arms, even-thing getting smashed and falling apart, oh no this was the end -- but, wait, what about her alla? Randy had said her alla could remember her, which meant--what? Yoke couldn't seem to think logically, there was dark slush all around her and something was coming for her, something making a sound that wasn't a sound.
Krunk krunk krunk.
It was prying at her--ow--scraping at her like she was a stain on a piece of cloth -- krunk krink krunky -- oh this felt bad. And then she was drifting out into some other level, she was out of normal space entirely and -- yes! -- she could see something bright.
It was a light, a White Light. Yoke was flying gladly toward it. God. There were others flying with her. Yoke flashed a vision of someone driving a car in a snowstorm with the snow-flakes flying into the headlights, not that Yoke had ever seen snow in real life, but now she did see it, she was the driver, tasting coffee in her mouth, and then she was one of the snowflakes, rushing through the cold black toward the car, yet never reaching it, as if the path to the Light were being stretched.
