Realware Page 5

  ''Oh, Da," Phil answered. "Don't. We're the same flesh. I remember crawling on you when I was little. You smelled like freckles."

  "Forgive me."

  And then Kevvie was waking Phil up again. She was bright and perky in a brittle kind of way. Chewing gum and drinking a cup of coffee, smiling, modulating her voice.

  "I'm sorry to wake you, but it's Willow on the uvvy again," she said. "There's something new about your father. It sounds like the flying saucers came back." Phil put the uvvy on his neck and let the image of Willow form inside his head.

  "The fucking tree fell over," said Willow. "The tree where you buried him."

  "What?"

  "Half an hour ago 1 rode my bike there for my morning exercise, and the tree was flat on its side. Its roots are all pulled out of the ground."

  "Did you find any gold in the roots?" asked Phil. Anything seemed possible now.

  "Fat chance," said Willow. "I took one look and got out of there. This scares the shit out of me, Phil."

  "Yeah," agreed Phil. "I wonder if it uncovered his ashes and the ring."

  "That's exactly why I'm calling. I'm worried some busybody might find the ring and I get hassled for burying that little bit of Kurt on public property. I want you to come down here and find the ring before someone else does." As well as showing a model of her face, Willow's uvvy signal showed a real-time view of what she was seeing, which was the kitchen of Phil's father's house. She'd moved back in after the funeral.

  "All right, Willow," said Phil. He was pleased and surprised at the readiness of his response. "I'd be glad to." Do the right thing.

  "It's the least you can do," said Willow, who'd been expecting a refusal. "After the way you treated Kurt. I called Jane and she thinks it's a good idea too."

  "I already said I'm coming, didn't I? I'll get the train this morning. But I have to be back up here by four for work."

  "Thank you very much," said Willow, and hung up.

  "You can borrow my car if you like," said Kevvie. "I could get the streetcar. I'm just working on Russian Hill today."

  "Can we talk about last night, Kevvie?"

  "Can't I have fun like normal people? Don't get all judgmental. Just because you're so worried about your precious health. It was Klara's idea anyway. And what were you doing bringing that Yoke girl back here?"

  "I wanted to show her where I live. We were over at Babs Mooney's. I thought she'd like to see Calla's DNA and Derek's sculptures. And my blimps."

  "I bet."

  "I can't put up with just anything, Kevvie. The way you acted last night was really unpleasant. I'm sorry for you, but this isn't a way I want to live. I think -- "

  "Shhhh." Kevvie held her finger up to her lips. "Don't say something we'll regret. I've got to go to work now, so if you don't want the car, I'm going to take it. Get away, Umberto! Would you like me to drop you at the train station?"

  "Okay."

  "And, Phil, when you're down there today, be sure to watch the sky. For the flying saucers. The aliens are little gray people, you know. With slit mouths." Kevvie hunched her shoulders, squinted her eyes and held her mouth funny--Phil had to laugh.

  It wasn't till he was on the train that Phil remembered he'd planned to try and stop by Babs's to see Yoke before leaving. It occurred to him that perhaps Kevvie had thought of this. Maybe that's why she'd been so quick to give him a ride.

  In Palo Alto, Phil got a moldie to rickshaw him to his father's house from the train station. Willow said she didn't want to go near the tree again, so Phil borrowed her bike and rode over there by himself.

  Some kids were climbing on the fallen tree branches. The tree was cracked and split; a full half of it was gone. There had been two trunks before, and now there was only one. But the roots were all there. There was a big hole where the roots had pulled out of the ground. Phil flopped Willow's bike down on the ground and, just to set his mind at ease, walked across the little crater to get at the fallen tree's roots. He pulled a dozen or so rocks out of the roots' embrace, scratching each of them to see if maybe, just maybe, it was gold. But none of them was.

  Now Phil searched for the spot where he'd left the ring and emptied out the ashes; this took a minute, as everything was so plowed up. His father's last resting place was at the edge of the hole, right opposite the split, fallen remains of the tree. It didn't take too much imagination to think that the disturbance had spread out from there. Phil crouched down and dug at the loosened dirt. And, yes, there was the knotted ring, glinting up at him as if to say, "Hi, I've been waiting for you." Phil pocketed it and headed back to Willow's.

  Willow prepared a little lunch of vegetables and noodles. They talked about Kurt. Phil told Willow he was sorry he'd argued with Kurt that last time. Saying this made him feel better.

  Willow asked to see the ring once more after all, so Phil handed it to her. She examined it and then looked at Phil curiously.

  "Didn't you notice that it's changed again?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Look." Willow held up the ring with her long red fingernails. Phil studied it. And -- well -- maybe the ring was knotted in a subtly different way from before. Or maybe not. An overhand knot instead of an underhand? Would that make a difference?

  "Look closer," said Willow. "Look at the inscription."

  And then Phil saw that the writing was backward:

  .wolliW morf truK oT

  "Do you think Da's really dead?" asked Phil suddenly.

  "I saw the wowo eat them up, Phil. First Fried! and then Kurt."

  "Friedl! Your dog?" Phil recalled that Willow had owned a dachshund named Friedl. He hadn't consciously noticed the dog's absence, but, yes, come to think of it, the house was much quieter than usual. Friedl had been quite the yapper.

  "How come you didn't say anything about Friedl before?"

  "Oh fuck, I guess I felt guilty. It was Friedl who got into the wowo in the first place. Kurt and I had been about to --we were in bed naked together and Kurt turned on the wowo to make a romantic light. And then suddenly Friedl starts carrying on like she's fallen into a salami sheer. And when I looked over there, the wowo was down by the floor and it had gotten all big and warped looking and Friedl was -- I don't know, it was like she was stretched out over the wowo's surface. All blown up like a picture on a balloon?" Willow held her arms out, making a big round shape in the air.

  "But a wowo's small," said Phil.

  "Not when it ate Friedl and Kurt," said Willow. "Friedl was like inflated--except for her little head; it was sticking out barking like crazy. And I screamed for Kurt to do something and he grabbed at Friedl, and the stupid dog bit him -- Friedl was like that--and Kurt couldn't get loose, she'd sunk her teeth into him and Kurt was yelling and then all of a sudden the wowo went over from Friedl to Kurt--so fast. And Kurt swelled up big like Friedl had been and Friedl was her own right size, but she still wouldn't let go of Kurt, she'd completely panicked. There was light inside Kurt, he had glowing eyes like in a monster viddy and he was yelling like --I didn't tell this before --he almost sounded like he was happy? Whooping. And then he got smaller and smaller, except for his hand sticking out trying to shake Friedl loose, the hand and the dog flopping in and out of the ball, half in and half out, and then--pop -- Friedl and Kurt's hand exploded and blood spurted everywhere. After that I didn't see or hear Kurt anymore. There was blood all over me, and tiny little pieces of them on the floor. And the shit-ass wowo went back to pretending to be normal. I ran out of the room and uvvied the gimmie. The wowo wasn't doing anything more, so right before the gimmie came, I flushed the Friedl pieces down the toilet because I didn't want them to say it was my fault for having such a dumb dog." Willow stared at Phil, her eyes searching his face.

  "It's not your fault, Willow," said Phil. "I'm not going to blame you."

  "Thanks." Willow sniffed and blew her nose. "You should get rid of that ring fast, you know. Take it out onto the Golden Gate Bridge and drop it down into the outbound tide. I be
t the thing that blasted the oak tree is the same fucker that came through the wowo. And it could come a third time. Things always happen in threes. Get rid of that ring today, Phil. It would be too awful if something happened to you."

  "I hear you," said Phil, pocketing the ring.

  All the way up on the train Phil looked at the ring and thought about it. He remembered a math story that his father had told him about the legendary A Square, an inhabitant of an imaginary two-dimensional world called Flatland. A Square's eye was a dot at one corner, his mouth an inlet on one side. Whenever A Square was right side up, his eye was on his northeast corner and his mouth was on his east. But one day a Space-lander called A Sphere lifted A Square out of Flatland, flipped him over, and set him back down. And from that day on, whenever A Square was right side up, his eye was on his northwest corner, and his mouth was on his west. He was his own mirror image. .eraupS A Something had pulled Kurt into hyperspace, had knotted his ring, and had later flipped the ring over in the fourth dimension. Maybe Kurt had only lost his hand --and no more than that. Maybe the hand had been crushed by the slam of a hyperdoor to hyperspace, and maybe Kurt was alive and healing -- someplace? Looking at the ring, Phil felt more and more fascinated. It was such a power object. The only remaining link to his father. And so what if the hyperspace thing did come for him? Was dying really so bad? No more work, no more hassles, no more trying to find the right girl. Phil recognized the insanity of the thought patterns, but for now he was too drained to do anything more than just let them run. He put the ring back into his pocket and stared slackly out the train window, thinking about death.

  As soon as Phil got back to San Francisco, he went over to Babs's. He needed to see Yoke. But Yoke was gone. Worse than that, she was out of the country.

  "That's right," Babs told Phil. "She and Cobb and Onar went to Tonga. Onar goes down there all the time for Meta West Link. And since Yoke is so eager to go diving in the South Pacific--why not? They got inside Cobb and he rocketed them there. So fine, good-bye all, but get this, Randy Karl Tucker still thinks he's welcome here." A smile played across Babs's lips. "I can't get rid of him. He has this ridiculous idea that I'm not completely revolted. He claims he has some ideas for my art."

  "Yoke left with Onar?" Phil could hardly take it in.

  "Onar's wooing the girl," said Babs. "Somehow he heard Yoke was here visiting me, and he got Saint to introduce them. Saint and Onar work together at Meta West, you know. Well, not exactly together. Onar's a tech and Saint's a maintenance manager. Just don't call him a janitor."

  "I thought Yoke liked me," said Phil, his voice breaking.

  "I'm sorry, Phil," said Babs. "Yoke thinks you're nice, and that you're cute, but she didn't want to break you up from Kevvie. She hates the idea of being the other woman. Maybe if you were single you'd have had a chance."

  CHAPTER TWO

  YOKE

  February 20

  "Rather snug in here," said Onar. "But I like it. Remarkable way to travel." Yoke and Onar were packed in back-to-back, with Cobb's moldie plastic flesh wrapped all around them. They were streaking through space near the top of a long parabolic trajectory that led from San Francisco to Tonga. Cobb had an ion-jet in his feet, and the algae in his moldie body provided a steady flow of oxygen.

  The moldie flesh near Yoke's face was transparent, like a faceplate. Looking down at the great fat curve of Mother Earth's body, Yoke could see the familiar black of space above the bright curving line of the atmosphere. Phil had called it Gaia's skin. Yoke felt bad about not saying a proper good-bye to him. But the scene with Kevvie last night had been too gnarly. How had a straight babe like Phil ended up with a bloblolly? "Bloblolly" was an insulting expression for

  "female merge user" that Yoke's twin sister Joke liked to use; Joke herself had gotten the expression from a loonie viddy show called Kid Skid. Occasionally Joke had dared to call their mother Darla a bloblolly to her face, and a fierce Darla tongue-lashing would ensue. Joke was brave. Yoke felt a sharp pang of loneliness as she thought of her sister and her mother; this was the longest by far that they'd ever been apart. Seeing the black of outer space was making her homesick for the Moon. Getting back to Phil, the fact that he lived with a bloblolly probably meant there was more wrong with him than met the eye. He seemed a little passive, almost paralyzed. No doubt bailing had been the best thing for her do. Still, there was something sweet about Phil. He'd been so eager for her to like his food.

  "Did I tell you that I'm friends with King of Tonga?" Onar asked just then. "The Tu'i Tonga himself. He's a delightful fellow." His voice sounded fruity and intimate in the little cavity of air that surrounded his and Yoke's heads. Spongy little palladium filters in their nostrils eliminated Cobb's characteristic moldie smell.

  "You did tell me that," answered Yoke. "Twice." She wasn't quite sure about Onar. "Why does Tonga have a King anyway?"

  "It's the only Polynesian nation never to have fallen under the rule of a foreign power," said Onar. "Right, Cobb?"

  "That's right," said Cobb, talking to them via uvvy. "Do you want to browse a guidebook, Yoke?"

  "No. I like real things better than virtual things. I'm done with school." Pretty soon they were arcing back into the atmosphere, heading down toward the multitudinous islands of Tonga,

  tiny dots in the vast Pacific Ocean, visible through the gaps in the clouds. The clouds were arranged with a surprising regularity, like cabbages in a farmer's field. Onar guided Cobb to the biggest of the Tongan islands, Tongatapu, on one side of which was Tonga's main town Nuku'alofa.

  They landed in a sandy shell-strewn parking lot next to the city dock. Cobb split open to disgorge his two passengers and the two carry-on bags they'd brought. And then he formed himself back into his original old man shape, grown a bit beefy from the sheet of imipolex he'd gotten from Babs. Judging from the stature of the golden-skinned Tongans whom Yoke could see nearby, Cobb's new size would fit right in. For the moment the locals were just staring at them, too startled to approach.

  "Here we are," said Onar. "This is the Queen Salote Wharf."

  "It's quiet here," said Cobb. "I like it."

  Besides the Bay Area, this was the only place on Earth that Yoke had visited so far. She was surprised at how primitive things were. Like in a travel viddy. A rusty Tongan Navy ship floated in the harbor; in addition there were a ramshackle ferryboat, a few motorboats and one or two yachts. That was it for the capital city's port. The rutted and potholed road along the waterfront carried a light traffic of battered electric trucks and cars, old models from the 2030s. A low shack across the road offered drinks and food; next to it was a

  "Guest House" that looked barely big enough to house the owner's family. Farther down the waterfront was a weathered white building like a Victorian mansion, and inland from it was what looked to be the town center, a dingy cluster of patched-up buildings.

  "Welcome to da neighborhood," said a huge man with a horizontal wrinkle in his forehead. "Malo e lelei." He was wearing a torn white shirt and a brick-red polyester skirt. "My name is Tiko."

  "Greetings, Tiko," said Onar. "We've met before, no? I was down here six months ago visiting with HRH."

  Yoke knew by now that Onar used "HRH" to stand for "His Royal Highness," meaning the King. Ugh. For whatever reason, Yoke hated all things British -- with the single exception of Lewis Carroll.

  "That's right," said Tiko. "Onar Anders. My wife Waloo is working at the New Beach Guest House. You gonna stay wid us again?"

  "Yes indeed," said Onar. "We'll walk there from here. As you see, we traveled light." He nudged the two little bags at his feet.

  "All the way inside dis moldie," mused Tiko, gingerly patting Cobb's shoulder. He leaned close to Cobb, sniffed him, and burst out laughing. "Low tide at da lagoon."

  "I'm actually a human in a moldie body," said Cobb, drawing back. "Cobb Anderson. Perhaps you've heard of me?"

  "No sir," said Tiko. "What are you known for?"

  "I built
the first robots for the Moon, sixty years ago," said Cobb. "The boppers? And then the hoppers chewed up my brain and extracted my software. I've had a series of robot bodies since then. This one is the best. Look." Cobb flipped his wrist and his right arm split up into five thin arms, with a tiny hand at the end of each of them. He picked a different seashell up with each of the five minihands and waved them about.

  "Most kinky," said Tiko. "And you can fly. Yes, I saw you three come shootin' down like a diving bird. Did you come in one jump all da way from America?"

  "Never mind where we came from," said Onar.

  A big handsome woman had joined Tiko. She wore a ground-length skirt and a yellow T-shirt with a picture of some kind of sea creature that Yoke couldn't make out. "Did Onar pay you?" the woman asked Yoke. Odd question.

  "No," said Yoke. "We're friends. My name's Yoke. I'm from the Moon."

  "I'm Oofa," said the woman. "That's my boat over there." She pointed to an insectlike hydrofoil boat with a quantum-dot-powered water-jet motor. "When you're ready to go diving, I'm the one to take you."

  "I'm very interested in diving," said Yoke.

  "I've got the equipment and the helpers," said Oofa. "I work with Sea Cuke Divers, right over there behind the guest house." She pointed across the street.

  "I'm planning to use him for my dive-suit," said Yoke, nodding toward Cobb.

  "Moldies are the only way," said Oofa. "But I think you better use a local. We've got moldies working out of Sea Cuke. I dive in them all the time. I'll engage two moldies and show you some very special things."

  "Just get one for yourself, Oofa. I trust Cobb. Maybe we could go diving tomorrow. Is that okay with you, Cobb?"

  "What?" The old man moldie's attention tended to wander.

  "Okay if you and I go diving with Oofa tomorrow?"

  "We'd better check our schedule with HRH first," said Onar. "It's possible that he'll have plans for us tomorrow. Or perhaps Cobb will have something he'd rather do."