Realware Page 7

  Outside they found Kennit standing in the street, talking with a couple of other Tongans. He walked over to Onar and Yoke.

  "Good evening. You are ready?"

  "There's been an accident, Kennit," said Onar. "Mr. Olou is dead. He suffered an attack while we were using the uvvy."

  "So it comes to that," said Kennit, his face clouding over. 'You left him inside?" He walked over to rattle the ministry door, which had locked itself behind Onar. Kennit called something in Tongan and the men he'd been talking to came over, opened the door and went inside.

  "Poor Olou," sighed Kennit. "You can make a police report tomorrow, Mr. Anders. But now we must go to see the King."

  "Why isn't Kennit more surprised?" hissed Yoke to Onar as they were settled into the back of the little car. "And what was that pale vine? What exactly is your job, anyway?"

  "At Meta West they call me the anteater," said Onar with a little smile. "Meta West Link sells transmission time between the Earth and outer space. Mainly the Moon, but Mars and the asteroids too. My job is to keep cryps, phreaks, and ants from siphoning off free bandwidth." He opened his mouth and waggled his long, pointed tongue. "The ant's nightmare; the virgin's friend."

  "Onar don't."

  Kennit turned onto the main street of Nuku'alofa, a dirt road lined by high wooden sidewalks like in an ancient viddy of the Wild West. There was a traffic-jam of cars, pedestrians, moldies, and bicycles; it seemed that everyone on the island was out on the five-block main drag. Though it was early in the evening, a few of the Tongan men seemed extremely drunk. Recognizing the car as the King's limo, one of them leaned over to peer inside. The car was so small and the man so big that he had to bend practically double. One of his friends shoved him and he lost his balance and fell down. Great whoops of laughter.

  "Tongans used only to go crazy on Saturday nights," said Kennit gloomily. "But now we do it on Friday as well. Evil times."

  "Kennit doesn't drink," said Onar. "He's a Mormon. Although he does play cards. I've seen him."

  "Very many Mormons in Tonga," said Kennit.

  "I don't think I've ever heard of them," said Yoke. "Is that a religion?"

  "Oh yes," said Onar. "And they own the world's largest asimov computer. A machine under a mountain in Salt Lake City."

  "I've heard of that big slave computer," said Yoke. "Cobb's simulation lived inside it for a while."

  "You're thinking of the Heritagists' asimov computer," said Onar. "Which is also under a mountain in Salt Lake City. I have a theory that the two are one and the same."

  "I went to college in Salt Lake City," said Kennit, inching the car forward.

  "The South Pacific program at Brigham Young University."

  "Do you dislike moldies, Kennit?" asked Onar.

  "Yis."

  "Will you stop changing the subject, Onar?" put in Yoke. "Finish telling me what you're doing here and what happened to Mr. Olou." Outside the window now was a Tongan food store, an open-air stand with shelves full of canned meat and muddy yams.

  "Very well, Yoke. Let's do Telecommunications 101. For short distances, an uvvy signal hopscotches from one uvvy to the next. Completely decentralized. For longer distances, the signal zooms up a thousand miles to a cheap little saucer-sat and gets bounced back down. Ever since the 2030s the saucer-sats have been imipolex jobbies that fly up to space by themselves. There's millions of them by now. The size of dinner-plates, as smart as cockroaches, and easy to order around. You saw some of them on our flight here."

  "Right," said Yoke. "Cobb ate one of them."

  "That was a very moldie thing for Cobb to do," said Onar. "Moldies are such scavengers."

  "So anyway," said Yoke. "Now you're going to tell me that since Meta West Link handles Earth-Moon signal transmissions, that means they have some really big saucer-sats, right?"

  "Right-o," said Onar. "We call them sky-rays. Like manta ray or stingray? Big soft flappy things. They weigh a ton instead of a kilogram. And, unlike the little saucer-sats, they need a fungus-algae nervous system. Once you get that much mold-infested imipolex together, it's bound to wake up. And since we already know how to talk to moldies, it makes sense for the sky-rays to be made up of moldies. A sky-ray is twenty or thirty moldies stuck together to make one of those group creatures we call a 'grex.' You don't really own a sky-ray, it's a team that you hire. The moldies get paid in imipolex and they take turns working. Which is why you see so many of them hanging around Tonga. They come down here to breed, for one thing."

  "And why Tonga?"

  "The sky-rays stay in geosynchronous orbit; they circle the equator at some twenty-two thousand miles up. That's the altitude where the natural orbital speed exactly matches the rotational speed of the Earth. Geosynchronous means they're always above the same spot. Now, thanks to some clever international politicking by HRH's grandfather back before the millennium, the Kingdom of Tonga owns the best geosynchronous satellite slot for the South Pacific." Onar scrunched down and pointed up through the car window. "She's always right about there. Cappy Jane. Straight up, and a little to the north. She looks like a giant patchwork stingray. A harlequin. All of the Earth-Moon transmissions for this part of the world come through Cappy Jane."

  "Mr. Olou mentioned her," remembered Yoke. "He said someone's been running pirate signals through her."

  "Exactly," said Onar. "Cappy Jane's been losing some twenty percent of her bandwidth. The pirate signals go back and forth between Cappy Jane and a spot right near Tonga itself. So Olou called for the anteater!" Onar opened his mouth as if to display his tongue again, but stopped himself, thinking better of it. Kennit was through the worst of the traffic now, driving rapidly past a series of small houses with showy tropical plants in their yards. "That's the Tongan cultural center on the left," said Onar, going off topic. "I must take you there, Yoke; they have a wonderful show. Everyone gets a chance to drink some kava before it starts. Gives a very nice buzz."

  "So that pale vine was a copy of one of the pirate signals?" asked Yoke doggedly. Keeping his hand down in his lap, Onar pointed at Kennit and didn't answer.

  Yoke's head was pounding, and Kennit was driving much too fast for comfort. Up in the cone of the headlights she saw a low black animal with floppy ears and a long snout, standing alertly by the road as if waiting for the car to pass.

  "What's that!"

  "A pig," said Onar.

  "They're not pink?"

  "You've never seen a real pig before, have you? You're delightful, Yoke." The car raced onward. It had adaptive DIM tires, and Kennit was going down the little roads at the electric car's flat-out maximum speed, perhaps sixty miles per hour. "Is it safe to go so fast?" asked Yoke plaintively. Nobody answered, so she tried another question. "How much further is it, Kennit?"

  "We're almost there. This is the King's plantation."

  The road was lined with tall coconut palms, and the headlights showed orderly fields of plants to either side. Up ahead were some colorful lights. "I understand that HRH moved out here because the people in town don't like to see him living with moldies," Onar said to Kennit. "Is it true that he's actually married one?"

  "That's not my affair," said Kennit shortly, and then they were pulling up in front of a remarkable building resembling a mound of giant soap bubbles. Yoke could make out some ten or twelve huge transparent domes fused together, with colorful beings moving about inside. There was a shiny green figure in the driveway, a moldie in the form of a voluptuous woman. She made a gesture of welcome.

  "Didn't you tell Cobb this evening would be humans only?" Yoke asked Onar.

  "I lied," said Onar, "so he wouldn't come. Now remember what you promised me." And then they were out in the fetid tropical night. Yoke recognized the trees around the gossamer palace to be banyans, though she'd never imagined they'd be so huge. The trunks grew up and down, splitting here and merging there, the giant trees' flesh like wax or honey. The green moldie stepped forward, splitting her thick green lips in a smile.

/>   'To! I'm Vaana. The queen moldie you been talking to on the uvvy, Onar. And this must be Yoke from the Moon. Welcome to Tonga, sweet thing." Yoke recognized Vaana's distinctive style of speech as a black accent. Each moldie fashioned his or her own particular human speaking style soon after birth, drawing on the speech of family, friends, and nearby humans, not to mention the endless databases of the Web.

  As the moldie turned to lead them inside the crystal palace, something dark and ragged came flapping down from one of the banyans. Yoke had a mental flashback of the attack of the cyberspace jellyfish; she shrieked and dove to the ground.

  "Lordy, lord," laughed Vaana. "Yoke's scared of flying foxes. Don't get your undies in a twist, girl. Those things won't bite unless you a piece of fruit."

  "A large bat," explained Onar, helping Yoke up. "One of the few endemic Tongan mammals. It's easy for them to travel from island to island. There's more of them here than on, say, Fiji, because the Tongans don't eat them. The flying fox is tapu."

  "This is turning into a majorly long day, Onar," said Yoke shakily. She was wondering what the hell she was doing here, about to get mixed up in some kilpy plot. "I think I want to go back to the guest house and get in bed." She looked around for Kennit and the car, but they were nowhere to be seen.

  "It won't take long, Yoke," urged Onar. "I know that HRH is eager to meet you. You'll feel better after a good meal. And then we can take a little boat across the lagoon to get back to the guest house. Just the two of us." He slipped his arm around her waist and squeezed her.

  "Come on, Yoke," said Vaana. "Don't be a barbie."

  Here in the jungle night the rank green moldie seemed like a figure of myth or legend, a Green Woman, an archaic personification of the Plant. Though Vaana continued to smile, Yoke knew full well how meaningless were the facial expressions of moldies. She wished she'd brought along the loyal Cobb. At least her uvvy still worked. Perhaps she'd uvvy Cobb to fly over here and rescue her soon, whether or not Onar liked it. But, yes, come to think of it, she was kind of curious about Onar's big secret. And deep in her girlish heart, Yoke felt a sharp hunger for that romantic boat-ride across the lagoon -- just like in a viddy or a book, with air and water everywhere, and a handsome man at her side. It sounded so exciting. So, okay, she followed along as Vaana ushered them into the King's country palace.

  The first of the palace's domed rooms was a great hall, filled with cool, oxygen-enriched air. A moldie waited within, this one red and crablike, a squat creature with pincer arms. A guardian.

  "Lock the palace on up, Gregor," said Vaana. "Our guests be here." The crab raised his claws and scuttled past them toward the door, not bothering to answer out loud.

  The next room was a conservatory, with blooming orchids fastened all over the curving walls. The room's air was pervaded by an intense, musty tang. A moldie like a giant yellow banana slug was sliming from plant to plant, carefully tending them. It was he, not the orchids, whose odor filled the room. Like the crab, he kept his silence.

  The third room was a dimly lit sitting room, and in there they found the King, resting on a silk couch with a cup of hot tea. The air in this room was warm and rapidly circulating; the hidden fans swirled away any scent of the moldies. The King was a big man with beautiful skin. His hair was long and floppy. He was wearing a flowered silk shirt and white linen pants.

  "Hello, Onar," said the King. "I got the news about Mr. Olou. Fill me in on how that went down."

  Yoke was surprised to hear him sounding like a regular person. Somehow she'd expected a King to sound different, all "ye" and "thee" and "tally ho."

  "Greetings, Your Majesty," said Onar. "Allow me to present Ms. Yoke Starr-Mydol from the Moon. Known in the records and all outgoing video as 'Sue Miller,' thanks to Eleani's work."

  "Welcome to Tonga, Yoke," said the King. "And listen, Onar, I've told you before, just call me Bou-Bou. You too, Yoke. Bou-Bou!" The King humorously stuck out his lips as he pronounced his nickname. He leaned back on his couch and waited, favoring Yoke with a charming smile.

  "Um, okay Bou-Bou," said Yoke, taking a seat on the other end of the couch. Onar sat in the middle. Yoke lolled back and looked up through the room's transparent ceiling at the banyans and the night sky. She thought she could see a flying fox hanging from a branch in the nearest tree.

  "It's exciting to be here," said Yoke presently. "These domes remind me of the Moon. My family has a friend who built a big house out in a crater. An isopod, is what we called it."

  The King nodded. "I know of the place. The Willy Taze dwelling. I studied lunar architecture at Stanford, among other things. How did Onar persuade you to come here, Yoke? Did he put you on the Meta West payroll?"

  "You're the third person who's asked me that," said Yoke. "Am I missing out on something? I'm interested in diving the South Pacific, and since Onar had this anteater gig, he talked me into coming down here with him. I have a moldie friend named Cobb who rocketed us here from California, so it's not costing much of anything."

  "Ah yes, Cobb the born-yet-again loonie moldie," said the King. "Thanks for not bringing him along tonight, Onar."

  "But why?" protested Yoke. "Cobb's interesting. He built the first hoppers, after all. And he's the first human to have his software installed into moldie flesh."

  The King gave Onar a frank look. "You've talked to her?"

  "Yes," said Onar. "She's promised to keep mum."

  "Cobb's a wild-card, Yoke," said the King. "He has so many contacts. We're afraid about whom he might tell our secrets. Frankly, we'd prefer to keep him out of the picture."

  "Oh come on," said Yoke. "Cobb's like my bodyguard. And he's a family friend. I don't care what I promised Onar just now. I wasn't thinking straight. If you tell something to me, I can't keep it from Cobb. He needs to know what's going on so that he can protect me."

  The King looked questioningly at Onar and Onar said, "We don't really have a choice, do we?"

  "I suppose not," said the King. "But please, Yoke, don't you or Cobb tell this to any of your loonie friends. The secret is that we've contacted an alien intelligence. A being named Shimmer. She's living deep below the ocean here, in what's known as the Tonga Trench. She knows you. She had an encounter with you and your parents just a little over three months ago, at the Willy Taze isopod you mentioned. November sixth, 2053. Your parents tried to kill her." Shimmer! Yoke's stomach flip-flopped. She'd had a feeling this was coming. "She wants to get even?"

  "Why would Shimmer be into that kind of kilp, honey?" said Vaana soothingly. She was standing behind the King's couch. "Shimmer's way too big for that. I bet she just wants to see you, Yoke. She probably digs your mind. When Shimmer was here talking to Bou-Bou she acted nice as pie."

  Yoke felt frightened and angry. So Onar had been lying to her all along. She gave him a rough shove. "You deliberately lured me here! You don't like me for myself one bit. You fetched me like some bauble for your precious King. And I'm so stupid, I came for free."

  "That's not the whole truth, Yoke," protested Onar. "I'm very attracted to you."

  "And you killed Mr. Olou on purpose, didn't you!" Yoke's words popped out fast, and she saw something on their faces. She was getting in deeper every second.

  "I think everyone could use some dinner," put in Vaana. "The table's set." The King smiled and got nimbly to his feet, making a polite gesture for Yoke to follow him into the dining room, which was the next dome farther along. Following behind the big man, Yoke could make out his underwear through the thin fabric of his trousers. Purplish bikini briefs worn very low down on the crack.

  "It's nice to finally meet you in person," said Onar to Vaana, as if trying to steer the conversation back to a normal mode. "How do you come to know HRH?"

  "Well, my family nest was down in the flats of Oakland," said the womanly green moldie. "I got it together and landed a phat job in the wetware engineering labs at Stanford U. I met Bou-Bou when he was taking Wet E 202. I helped him invent a new kind of coconut
for his class project. Less grease and mo' protein. Ought to been a miracle for the Tongan diet."

  "Except the Tongans won't eat my new coconuts or even feed them to their pigs," said the King over his shoulder. "The flesh is a ghastly greenish hue. Wet E was never my thing. Here we are then, the royal dining room. Our main course will be Tongan lobster in a coconut cream sauce over steamed taro root. Nontweaked coconut, of course. I think we have some local melon as well. A glass of champagne, Yoke?"

  "All right. Why not."

  The three humans sat down at the dining table and Vaana discreetly withdrew. A kind-faced Tongan woman named Kika served them their food. Yoke and Onar were very hungry, and the King ate with a ready appetite as well. The first course of the meal was a green melon with tiny orange balls on it which were, the King informed them, the fruiting body of a special kind of Tongan seaweed. The second course was a curried pork broth.

  "What was it like, Yoke?" Onar asked presently. "When all the moldies at Taze's isopod turned into aliens that day?"

  "It was wavy," said Yoke. With the food and the champagne she was feeling a little more relaxed. "They were so interesting, so wise. Shimmer especially. Shimmer comes from a place where they have two-dimensional time. The extra time dimension is like possibility, of worlds that could be. That's why my parents couldn't shoot Shimmer. Even though the time in our part of the cosmos is only one-dimensional, Shimmer can see the ghosts of all the future maybes and she can actualize the right one. She's always where the bullet isn't." Kika removed the soup plates and began bringing in the lobster. Yoke was, on the whole, glad to be eating this meal. "But now you two answer some questions. Shimmer's the one who's siphoning off Cappy Jane's bandwidth, right?"

  "Very clever, Yoke," said Onar. "Yes, the King gave Shimmer permission to gather and process data through Cappy Jane, so there's been a lot of traffic between those two. Cappy Jane's been winnowing out certain kinds of space signals that Shimmer's interested in. Not that Cappy Jane realizes who she's working for. Shimmer and the King have her convinced that Shimmer's a human scientist doing a study of high-energy cosmic rays."