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  "Maybe Cobb should run for mayor of San Francisco," said Yoke. "He's friends with ex-Senator Mooney, you know. Babs's and Saint's dad."

  "I've got a new life and I want to help people," said Cobb. "A moldie run for an election?" exclaimed Phil. "You'd get all the moldie votes, but that's ten percent of the city at best. What human would vote for a moldie? Even if you did used to be a person. And you've only been in San Francisco for, what, two days? Talk about a carpetbagger!"

  "Well, it would be very popular to help people find housing," said Babs. "That's like the biggest problem. Cobb could win a lot of votes by fixing up abandoned warehouses."

  "Are you rich, Cobb?" asked Onar.

  "I don't actually own much of anything," said Cobb. "My estate was divvied up a long time ago. My grandson Willy is wealthy, though I doubt he'd be much interested in this issue. But even without money, I have a very high recognition factor. As a politician I could act as a 'facilitator.' " Cobb smirked a little at the bogus word. "How about this?" he added, and started up a series of impressions, changing his voice and features to resemble half-remembered images of dead Presidents. "The last four letters of 'American' are 'I can.' Mo' folks, mo' better. Ask not--"

  "Stow it, Cobb," said Yoke, cutting him off. "Presidents suck." They got off the streetcar a block from Babs's warehouse, and the five humans ran there, with Cobb bouncing along next to them, hitting every puddle on the way. The inner walls of Babs's warehouse space were decorated with great webs of shiny woven fiber, bright-colored and iridescent. There was a polyglass keg of beer that Saint had brewed, and he and Onar got into drinking it. Babs's fabricants lived in a little glass box like a terrarium, with strong lights and with a dish of wet paper for food. There were dozens of them, shiny little hourglass shapes with six legs. Babs showed Yoke how to use an uvvy to program them, and Yoke picked up on it right away. Within half an hour she'd gotten the fabricants to spin her a mantilla filled with spidery copies of her name.

  Cobb sat quietly on the couch, taking everything in. He'd tightened up his body so that he was dense and practically odorless.

  Onar found a great sheet of piezoplastic in Babs's supplies and flopped it out onto an open space on the floor. With a deft move of his long fingers, Onar pinched off a bit of his own uvvy to make a receiver-DIM which he affixed to the big sheet of plastic. Now the imipolex came alive with colors and shapes: some abstract, some like cartoon images and blurred photographs, all coming directly from Onar's brain. Saint put on his uvvy and got in on the act too, moving around playing air guitar and sending thought-sounds to the blanket of piezoplastic. The great sheet began to buzz and vibrate like a giant speaker, its rapid undulations sending out Saint's brain-made music. It sounded like spacey horns with cymbals and heavy-metal guitars. Everyone watched and listened in fascination, everyone except Phil, who kept worrying about how to get Yoke's attention.

  Finally, Phil distracted Yoke by getting Babs to show off her old worm-farm, which was a big layer of humus between two transparent plastic walls. If you shone lights against a wall, the lavender, red-banded worms would appear, writhing up against the plastic.

  "I have some smart imipolex worms mixed in," said Babs. "There goes one." A gold flicker went writhing past. "You can actually uvvy into them to get a worm's eye view if you like."

  Now Babs went to get a beer, and Phil took the opportunity to get Yoke to step outside alone with him. It had stopped raining and there was some dramatic moonlight in the clouds. "If you're interested, Yoke," said Phil, "we could take a little walk and I could show you where I live. It's not far from here. My housemate Calla has a big fabricant DNA sculpture, and Derek makes machines that do things with colored air. I have some toy blimps I made in my room. Would you like to come look at them?"

  "What will Kevvie say?" asked Yoke.

  "I don't think she's home," said Phil. "She was going to do something with Klara Bio tonight."

  "Her friend the sex worker!" said Yoke. "I remember."

  "Kevvie and I aren't totally linked or anything," said Phil, feeling himself blush. "We just happen to --

  "Live with each other," said Yoke. "Like an old married couple. Babs said you've been together for over a year. I was asking her about you."

  "I'd leave Kevvie for you in a minute, Yoke," blurted Phil. "I can't stop thinking about you." There was something about Yoke -- her smell, her voice, the way she moved, the things she said--she fit into Phil's heart like a key in a lock.

  Yoke widened her eyes and arched her eyebrows. She slipped her hand into Phil's.

  "So show me where you live."

  It was a beautiful night. The moon floated out from behind the drifting clouds; it was nearly full. "Where exactly on the Moon are you from?" asked Phil.

  "I was talking to Terri about that yesterday," said Yoke. "She was showing me how you mudders think there's a face in the Moon. And for everyone it's different. To me it looks like a girl. And if you see it that way, then Einstein would be just at the bottom of her left eye. Which is the Sea of Tranquility."

  "I've always thought the Moon looked like a smiling pig," said Phil. "With a snaggle snout."

  They walked a block and turned a corner. It was dark and quiet, with calm puddles staring up at the night sky. "I feel like my father's up there," said Phil. "Hanging in the sky like an ornament. His face looking down."

  "I can feel Ma like that too," said Yoke. "Dear, loud Darla. I feel kind of weird about my pop's plan to bring her back. That's not really, truly going to be Darla. I mean, don't you think there's such a thing as a soul?" Yoke sighed and looked at the sky. "The dead are kind. They want us to live. You have to believe that."

  "I want to. The last time I saw my father, I fought with him. He always wanted me to be a scientist instead of a cook. He was needling me. I lost it. I told him I hated him for leaving my mother, and that his work was stupid. And then, bam, he started crying. I couldn't deal. I left. And that was the last time I ever saw him. I need to feel like he forgives me."

  "Then you have to forgive him. Forgive him so you can forgive yourself." Silently, Phil tried the notion on. He let forgiveness fill him; and it felt like unwrapping a rusty wire from around his heart. "This is good, Yoke, this helps." It was wonderful to be with this girl. Nobody had ever understood him so well before.

  Yoke stood quietly next to him, her face turned up toward the sky--or toward him. Phil decided to try and kiss her. But just then a high ecstatic yodeling caught Yoke's attention and made her draw away.

  "What is that?" she asked. "It's coming from those colored lights way down at the end of the block. Is that a ship?"

  "It's an abandoned ship that's stuck in the mud at a slip right across from my warehouse," said Phil. "The Snooks family lives there. A big nest of moldies. They're betty-lifters, cheeseball whores, camote dealers, way xoxxy. If old Cobb wonders why most people don't like moldies, he should get to know the Snookses."

  "What's the ship's name?"

  "Anubis. It's decorated all ancient Egyptian. It used to be a party boat, and before that it was a freighter."

  They walked the rest of the block hand in hand, the crazy urgent yelling of the Snooks moldies and their customers getting louder.

  "On the Moon we hardly mingle with moldies at all," said Yoke. "They stay in their underground Nest and we stay in the Einstein dome."

  'A shiny gold moldie came humping across the street like a big inchworm and reared up in front of them. He had a stylized chin-beard and a striped scarf on his head just like a pharaoh. "Come aboard the ship Anubis, spiritual seekers. We feature the stuzziest camote in town. Key a timewave to ancient Egypt."

  "It's just me, Thutmosis," said Phil.

  "Neighbor Phil?" said the moldie, peering closer. "The eternal return. Metempsychosis. Yet never the same river twice. Who's the woman?"

  "I'm Yoke Starr-Mydol," said Yoke. "I've just come here from the Moon."

  "How about those crazy loonie moldies?" asked Thutmosis. "Are they sti
ll kidnapping Earth moldies?"

  "Maybe they are," said Yoke, cocking her thumbs and pointing her forefingers at Thutmosis like guns. "Maybe I'm about to put a leech-DIM on you. Better run!" Thutmosis Snooks grunted and went undulating back toward his ship. Phil undid the heavy locks on his warehouse door and ushered Yoke inside. The lights were on; Derek was in his workshop in the far corner, doing something with one of his air-sculpture machines. Umberto the dog peered watchfully out from under Derek's workbench. Derek caught Phil's eye right away and pointed meaningfully toward the bathroom. Phil's heart sank as he went to look. Yoke followed along behind.

  There was a throw of skin in the bathtub, bumpily billowing like a sheet with lovers under it. Now the mass surged and Phil could see four eyes in two faces; it was Kevvie and Klara Bio, merged together into one ungainly bod; the skin was theirs.

  "Hi there, Phil and Yoke," said Kevvie, except it seemed like she said it out of Klara Bio's mouth, a somewhat hard-looking mouth in a rough-skinned face the color of a lemon. Ungainly lumps moved beneath the fused skin: the bones of beckoning arms. "You two wanna lift and join us in some bacteria-style sex, Phil?" came Klara's voice. "You and your new little cookie? You're missing everything with your stupid Straight Edge, Phil. Merge is the best. It's like the air is an orgasm."

  "Naranjo told me you went off with Yoke," said Kevvie, talking out of her own mouth now. "So I brought Klara over here to help me wait for you." Slowly, she sat up in the tub. Her neck and shoulders pulled free of Klara. Her still-fused breasts stretched and jiggled.

  "Phil, I'm going back to Babs's," said Yoke, and in an instant she was across the floor and out the door into the shadows.

  "You're trying to sneak around," said Kevvie. She looked wildly unpretty. "You like that little moon-maid more than me. Her and her bullshit about aliens with no flying saucers."

  With a sudden great wallowing motion, Klara tore completely loose and got up out of the tub. "You're a zerk, Phil," she said, pulling on her clothes and pushing past him. "You have no idea how much Kevvie loves you."

  Kevvie went on a crying jag then, and Phil held her. She felt unsettlingly fluid--as if she might pop. After a while Phil helped her to go up to their room and get into bed. As soon as she lay down, she nodded out. He went back downstairs.

  "This isn't good, Phil," said Derek. "Calla wants to evict you two."

  "Is she in her room?"

  "No, man, she walked in on them in the bathroom with her date, and he's this very clean wetware engineer, so you can imagine. They went back to his place in Cole Valley."

  "And you?"

  "You know me, Phil, I'm an anarchist. I think it's wavy to have two skanks merged in our tub. Local color. But I'm worried about Umberto here." Derek leaned down to pet his dog, who'd perked up at the sound of his name. "I'm afraid Kevvie might really hurt him one of these times. She doesn't like him, fine, I can accept that. But when Kevvie's lifted she gets so harsh and rigid, you wave? Like a killer robot. And I don't like cleaning up after her either." Derek's attention turned back to the machine he was working on. "Hey, I've got this new effect, man. Channel this." Derek turned on his machine and a big tongue of flame went whipping up into the air. "Looks like a dragon-fart, hey? And it's not really fire. It's a plasma. Cool to the touch." Derek ran his arm through the forking pillar of flame.

  "I have to go back out, Derek."

  "Oh no you don't."

  "Kevvie's asleep for the night, Derek. When she gets like this it means she took quaak or gabba behind the merge."

  "I don't want to be sitting here with her crying and melting on my shoulder when she gets up to puke, man."

  "I promise I'll be right back, Derek. I just want to run over to Babs's."

  "To try and square it with that other girl. What's up with her?" Derek did something to make his fire tongue reach way across the room toward Phil.

  "Confess to the fire-god, my son."

  "I think I love her," said Phil as the cool flames licked all about him.

  "Go in peace."

  Phil's simple declaration to Derek crystallized his feelings. He had to find Yoke and tell her. He hurried back outside.

  Across the street some wasted sporeheads were capering along the ship's railing, doing the flat-footed newt dance that sporeheads always did, their diagonally opposite legs and arms rising and falling together. A purple Snooks moldie named Ramses was playing them some trance music from a long horn he'd grown out of his nose. Gold Thutmosis came bustling over once again.

  "Was that moon-girl really packing a leech-DIM?" Thutmosis wanted to know. Moldies were terrified of leech-DIMs, which were control patches that could turn them into slaves. For the sake of human-moldie relations, the leech-DIMs were illegal, just as were the thinking-cap devices that moldies could use to enslave humans. But there was a lively commerce in both products just the same.

  "Where did she go?" Phil countered.

  "Back the way she came."

  Phil took off running down the block and around the corner to Babs's. But when he got inside, Saint and Babs were alone with a pale gangly guy who was lounging back in a beanbag chair, fondling a handful of Babs's imipolex worms. Cobb, Yoke, and Onar were gone.

  "Where's Yoke?" demanded Phil.

  "Out flying," said Babs. "Onar bought Cobb that sheet of piezoplastic from me. And then Cobb grew wings and took Yoke and Onar out to see the Golden Gate Bridge. Yoke knew you'd come back, Phil. She said she didn't want to see you again tonight. Maybe you should try again in the morning."

  "Let me introduce you, Phil," said Saint, kindly changing the subject. "Randy Karl Tucker. He's Cobb's great-grandson."

  "Hi guy," said the lanky yokel, only it sounded more like "Haaah gaaah." He had pale hair and a narrow head. He was dressed in very generic clothes: white shirt and black pants. "This is a stuzzy art scene y'all got goin' here," he opined.

  "If I could get my dad to give me the money, I wouldn't mind buyin' me one o' these warehouses. Reckon a fella can do pretty much whatever he wants here." He smiled at Babs.

  "Put the worms back now, Randy," said Babs. "You're going to hurt them. Randy just got back here from Real Compared To What, Phil. That moldie sex-club in North Beach?"

  "Oh yeah," said Phil noncommittally.

  "I laaahked what I saw," said Randy. "But I didn't have the dough for a real date with a San Francisco moldie. I'm still all fired up."

  "Gnarly!" whooped Saint. "A true cheeseball."

  "It's a lift," said Randy mildly. "Don't knock it if you ain't tried it."

  "You'd probably like the Anubis," said Phil. "It's just down the block from here. Though if you go aboard you better know how to take care of yourself."

  "Oh, I've been around all kinds of moldies," said Randy. "Thanks for the tip. Hey, Babs, I'm gonna feed one of your worms to Willa Jean. This oughta be a hoot. Chick-chick-cheer

  At Randy's call, a little imipolex chicken appeared from the depths of the warehouse. It walked with a jerky strut, abruptly turning its little head this way and that. It was yellow, with a dark patch on its back.

  "My pet chicken," said Randy Karl. "See that purple spot on her back? That's a special leech-DIM that's controlled by my uvvy. Willa Jean's practically like an extra hand for me. Want a worm, chick-chick?" The grinning Randy dangled a twisting green imipolex worm a few feet above the floor.

  Willa Jean beat her stubby wings and hopped, trying to get at the worm. The worm was writhing and Willa Jean was cheeping frantically. Finally Randy dropped the worm and the little chicken caught it in midair. Now the chicken squatted on the floor, stretching out her neck so as to swallow her prey the faster.

  "Gobble gobble," said Randy. "Want 'nother one, Willa Jean?"

  "One more, but that's the last one, Randy," said Babs. She didn't seem as annoyed with Randy as Phil might have expected. It was almost as if Babs thought Randy were cute and interesting. No accounting for tastes.

  Phil looked out Babs's warehouse door, scanning the dar
k sky for a sign of Yoke, Onar, and Cobb.

  "Poor Phil," said Babs. "You'd be much better for her than Onar."

  "Yaaar," agreed Saint. "Onar's a windbag. A sneak. I know him from work. Normally I don't hang with him, but somehow he heard we were going out with Yoke tonight and he begged me to come along."

  "Oh well," sighed Phil. " 'Night, guys."

  February 20

  By the time Phil got back to his place, Kevvie had started throwing up. Derek was nowhere to be seen, but of course Umberto was right there sniffing at the vomit, and Kevvie was cursing at the dog and trying to kick him, which made her lose her footing and fall down really hard. Seeing the toll drugs took on Kevvie made Phil grateful that he didn't have to be doing the same thing. But as always, there was a part of him that wished he could. Being a druggie would be so easy.

  "Are you mad at me?" Kevvie asked him.

  Over the years, Phil had picked up some tools for coping with addicts. "I can't afford to be mad. It's not your fault, and I can't fix it." He tried hard to believe the words, to put his own serenity first.

  It was three a.m. when they were finally settled in, Kevvie all cleaned up and the two of them in bed together. Phil couldn't immediately fall asleep. He kept thinking about his father, wishing for the zillionth time he hadn't called the emotional old man stupid, hadn't reduced him to tears.

  The image of the buried wedding ring formed in Phil's mind, and he worked at trying to visualize how the ring could have knotted, trying to think about ana and kata, doing this mental homework as a kind of offering to his dad. Maybe he should dig the ring back up.

  He drifted into sleep with the ring still in his mind, and in his dream he began climbing up a mountain, the ring floating in front of him, except now it was a glowing ball, a wowo that' was his father's face, a face with a seam on it like a baseball, the seam continually shifting along itself, warping his father's features in a way that was painful to behold. The baseball split in half and started talking to him, Phil climbing the steep hill all the while.

  "Can you forgive me for leaving your mother?" his father's voice was saying. "I can't forgive myself, Phil. Forgive me." The voice seemed to touch Phil all over his face, touch him with sticky little baby hands.