Realware Page 10

"Cappy Jane's employer is called Meta West Link, you know. 'Meta' means 'beyond.' Like metaphysics."

  "Yes, I am coming from very meta," said Josef, his voice loud and firm. For whatever reason, he chose to speak with a German accent. "And only just now have I arrived, as Shimmer has said." He lifted his wing covers and buzzed through the air to land lightly on Yoke's wrist. "This seems a very marginal place." His eyes twinkled and the little fans of his antennae waved. "From the little bit that I am able yet to see. It's so curious, this one-dimensional time. For your people I think death must be very frightening?"

  "Duh!" said Yoke. "Death's not frightening for you?"

  "In two-dimensional time death isn't so much of an issue," said Josef. "Yes, perhaps I die in one time-line, but I'm still alive in another."

  "Not here you aren't," said Yoke. "I could squash you and that would be that."

  "Now, now, Yoke," said Shimmer. "I'd just been telling my fellows how kind you are. There's no need to be afraid of us. We don't plan to stay on Earth for very long. We're nomads and this is only one stop on our endless journey of discovery. How do you like these temporary bodies we've made ourselves? We're imipolex with algae and mold nervous systems like your moldies. We programmed our personalities right into the limpware."

  "How many of you are going to come here?" asked Yoke. "Six is one thing, but six billion would be -- "

  "Too many?" asked Siss the serpent, then laughed. She sounded Chinese. "No worry, Yoke. Only one more of us going come. We form a family of seven, make a baby, help Om memorize all about your race, and then we move on and probably no Metamartian ever come here again. Your world not so very nice, I think. You know, Shimmer, I thinking perhaps we should be more small. Could we be ant, Josef? So tiny as germ?"

  "I ain't gonna be no ant," interjected Wubwub, who'd been rooting in the sod. He used a kind of black rapper accent. He

  looked up at them, a few tubers hanging from the side of his mouth. "I'm too important for that, you know what I'm sayin'?"

  "Too fat," put in Siss the serpent, striking at the pig's side.

  "Me and Josef are the ones gonna help Cobb and Yoke out through the wall, ain't we?" said Wubwub, twitching the snake free. "Gimmie respect."

  "Cease your soothsaying, O Swine," said Peg. "It's time for Lady Yoke to bleat her plaint." The unicorn spoke as if at a Renaissance Faire, with the speech mannerisms that Yoke and her friends called "swilly." With her flowing long blonde hair, the swilly unicorn reminded Yoke of a teenage girl enchanted by all things medieval. Her horn was shiny red like glossy lipstick.

  "Thank you so much," snapped Yoke, not really understanding what they were talking about, but having a vague sense she'd been insulted. "What I want to say is that I hope Siss is telling the truth. And even six or seven of you could be a problem, frankly. If you start changing things, it could ruin our ecology. Your technology might overwhelm our civilization."

  "Indeed it will," said Peg. "But is your way of life so fine? Dare to dream of more than grubbing in the mud. Yoke, we bring you the power to alter matter with a touch of mind. This is a power our god Om bestows upon us -- a power she now sees fit to grant to you. You're lucky. Thanks to Shimmer's having been decrypted here, Om has noticed you. Your race will live as sorcerers."

  "I suppose that sounds nice," said Yoke uncertainly.

  "Give Yoke her alla now, Shimmer," said Ptah. He kept glancing around expectantly, as if someone or something else were about to appear.

  "Yes," said Shimmer. "Om willing." She rubbed her thumb against her palm, and a little hollow gold tube appeared in her hand. It was almost cylindrical, with four smooth indentations like a hand-grip. "This is Om's gift through me to you," said Shimmer, and handed the object to Yoke.

  The alla fit Yoke's hand comfortably. It had a live, vibrant feel to it. Looked at more closely, the substance of the alla tube was not gold --nor was it any other substance Yoke had ever seen. It felt smooth, even slippery. Another odd thing about the tube was that, rather than being a fixed color of gold, it was repeatedly flickering through a cycle of perhaps thirty subtly different shades. As she held the alla in her hand, Yoke felt a link between it and her uvvy.

  "Greetings," said the alla. "I'm ready to learn your mind." Yoke uvvied her agreement to this--not that she was sure what she was agreeing to. The alla showed her an image for half a second and asked her to name it and give a memory association. The image was a circular pattern with colored patches.

  "A chrysanthemum," said Yoke, thinking of the first flower she'd ever grown.

  "Next," said the alla, and for a quarter of a second it showed an image of a crooked forked line.

  "A crack in a wall," said Yoke, recalling the wall by the side of her childhood bed.

  "Next." Each image was being displayed for half as long as the one before. This one was a uniform patch of rough texture.

  "Moon-dust," said Yoke, though not out loud, as this was starting to happen faster than speech. She was thinking of a particular patch of moon-dust and how she'd gotten obsessed staring at it after she'd read a book on mineralogy. More and more images came, each twice as fleeting as before--and at the end of a second Yoke felt as if she'd given the alla an all but infinite amount of information. She thought of the old Zeno paradox about fitting an arbitrarily large number of events into a unit of time: a half plus a quarter plus an eighth plus a sixteenth plus a thirty-second and so on --no matter how many terms you stick in, the sum is always a bit less than one. Each new step only uses up half of the remaining time. How many images had the alla just shown her?

  "Now I'll learn your body," said the alla, and Yoke felt an incredible series of tingles and twitches --in her guts, in her chest, up and down her arms and legs, inside her head, and in the muscles of her face and fingers.

  "You are now registered as my sole user for life," murmured the alla softly.

  "Feel free to select something from your catalog."

  "Think of something you want," said Shimmer. "You think to the alla through your uvvy. Josef and Ptah made a human-style catalog for it. Oh, that's right, we have to copy the catalog to you. I hope you have a lot of clear memory space in your uvvy?"

  "I should," said Yoke. "It's a yottabyte model."

  "Here it comes," said Josef.

  And then the alla catalog was stored in Yoke's uvvy. When she accessed it, the display showed an amorphous, featureless object, waiting for Yoke to tell it what to become.

  "Ask for a sweatshirt?" suggested Cobb, who stood absently twining his fingers in the blonde mane of Peg the unicorn. "You look a little chilly." Yoke thought of a fleecy white pullover she wished she'd brought along from the Moon, and now her uvvy formed a mental image of a somewhat similar sweatshirt, a precise, detailed image seemingly called up from its internal catalog. The image wasn't quite what she'd had in mind, but by mentally pushing at it, Yoke was able to slide about through similar catalog entries till she found something that was a very good match for what she wanted. And once she'd picked her sweatshirt design, the alla adjusted it to be a custom fit for Yoke's body.

  "Now say, 'Actualize!' " said Shimmer. "You can say it out loud or just think it. That tells the alla to make a physical copy of the design." Yoke said, "Actualize." A sudden mesh of bright lines appeared in the air in front of the alla, hanging there like a three-dimensional wire-frame engineering spec. A web of dark membranes appeared within the virtual sweatshirt, dividing and subdividing. There was a little puff of breeze, and then the bright lines disappeared and a fluffy white sweatshirt dropped to the ground. "This must be what Onar meant by realware," breathed Cobb. "Direct matter control!" Yoke turned the little alla so she could see through the length of its hollow tube, careful not to put it too near her face. Seen through the hole, the room seemed to be endlessly spinning around the alla's central axis. Whoah. Yoke looked away.

  "Yes," said Josef. "What the alla makes is realware. You could call the alla a tool for realware engineering. Figuring out the designs for the
realware takes some work. But the alla itself is a magical gift from Om."

  "You got the alla from Om?" asked Yoke. "And Om's your god? Your god actually does things that are real?"

  "Is your very world not real?" asked Peg.

  "Well, yes," said Yoke. "But-

  "Om a medium-size god," said Siss. "Not like the big White Light that make everything. Om kind of curious. She like to learn all about different races of beings by giving allas to them. Long time ago, some other aliens bring Om and allas to the Metamartian race, and now we bring Om and allas to you. Pass it on. More is merrier."

  "But what is an alla, exactly?" asked Yoke, looking down at it.

  "The alla is part of Om," said Shimmer. "A vortex thread that loops out of her body to cross our space. When Om gives you an alla, she learns all about you --and you get to have a magic wand. It's a fair trade. Everyone benefits."

  "One question," said Cobb. "Josef just said the alla transmutes matter. But when it made Yoke's sweatshirt out of air, there wasn't enough air inside that bright-line mesh. Not enough mass to match the sweatshirt."

  "No problem," said Josef: "If there aren't enough atoms within the target region, then extra ones are drawn in. That's why one often feels a little puff of wind."

  "Before we let the alla spread to all humanity, Om wants us to test it just with one person," said Shimmer. "And I picked you, Yoke. The alla has registered itself exclusively for your use."

  "Shimmer chose you as a maiden pure of heart," said Peg. "Worthy of a magic wand. Nobler than that Tongan King."

  Yoke put on her shirt. It was an exact replica of the preview image the uvvy had shown her. To get her arms through the sleeves, she passed the alla from hand to hand rather than setting it down.

  "That right," said Siss, attentively watching. "Hang onto alla very careful. It no use to other people, but even so, they might try to steal. You should make pouch for it and wear at your waist."

  "It's mine to keep?" said Yoke, staring down at the alla. She thought of orange juice, and her uvvy displayed a catalog image of a squeeze-bottle of juice. Without saying the word out loud, Yoke thought, Actualize. A pouch-shaped web of lines formed near the end of the tube; the pouch webbed over and cleared to produce the bag of juice. Yoke caught it as it dropped from the air; she held it to her mouth and sucked at it. Delicious. She gave a happy guffaw. "Hey, you've got my xoxxin' vote!"

  The beetle Josef had flown off while Yoke was pulling on her sweatshirt. Now he flew back and perched on Yoke's breast like a brooch. He glittered many colors in the light.

  "The allas will make your Earth a paradise," the man-shaped alien named Ptah was saying. He was jouncing back and forth excitedly. His eyes were wide and glowing, as if he were expecting some great event.

  "But we do have a problem, Ptah," said Cobb. "What about those people who've been getting killed? Like Darla and Tempest Plenty and Kurt Gottner? Is there some connection between those things and your coming here?"

  "Oho," said Siss. "Connection is Om. And don't worry, those people not really killed. You going see example right now. Om sometimes reach into space with her fingertips to take someone. Om fingertips have round shape we call 'powerball.'

  "

  Just then Ptah let out a whoop. "It's time!" he sang. "Om's about to take me. Thank you, Josef! Farewell, Shimmer."

  The Metamartians backed away from him. Wubwub pushed against Cobb and Yoke's legs, herding them along.

  "I'm ready, Om!" shouted Ptah. He sounded ecstatic.

  "Make a copy of yourself, Ptah," cried Shimmer. "We need one of you or we'll be back down to five!"

  Just then something popped into the air next to Ptah, a spherical zone of warped space --something like a giant, airy lens.

  "Look out!" cried Yoke, but rather than running, Ptah seemed to split himself in two. Or, rather, the air next to him shimmered and a fresh copy of Ptah was formed: another perfectly formed, bronze-colored, imipolex man. The new Ptah ran over to stand with Cobb, Yoke, and the other Metamartians, while the old Ptah stretched his arms up toward the mysterious ball of curved space.

  "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 power-ball 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

  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 Bio, 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.