Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

Xanana was in a dream state; he sent no words, and the vision that he uvvied to Terri showed an endless regress of Earth and a rocket with Xanana in the rocket and a cartoon thought balloon coming out of Xanana showing Earth and a rocket with Xanana in the rocket and a cartoon thought balloon coming out of Xanana showing—

Xanana had been plastered into the side of the group moldie rocket in such a way that Terri could see outward through Xanana’s transparent faceplate. And, even more fortunately, Xanana was still providing air and acting as an insulator. Terri was, for the moment at least, in a comfortable safe nook on the side of a living rocket ship headed— where ?

Looking down, Terri could already see the Monterey Bay as a single nick in a coastline that stretched up into the thumb that was the San Francisco peninsula, with the San Francisco Bay on the other side. Still the rocket rose and roared.

The sun was setting over the Pacific Ocean, making a shining orange patch in faraway clouds. At this distance, the ocean looked static and metallic. Still they rose, pushing out to the far edge of the atmosphere. The sky overhead was turning dark purple. From this height Terri could see the Earth’s curvature, dear big fat Earth wrapped in the atmosphere’s thin rind.

“Soon I’ll die,” thought Terri and began to cry. Xanana’s thoughts were a starry mess of bright patterns, iterated fractals formed by overlaying infinite regresses of solarized images, no comfort at all.

In the distance was one last shape at their level. Terri took it for a stratospheric ice-crystal cloud, but then she realized that the object was flying toward them. It was shaped like a giant blue stingray and seemed to be another group moldie.

Terri’s tears dried as she stared in fascination at the computationally rich rippling of the great flying stingray’s flesh. It swooped upward at hypersonic speed to match the speed of the rocket grex and produced two giant catfish whiskers to touch it. Right away Terri could hear the flying blue stingray talking over the uvvy.

“Greetings, Blaster,” the great moldie creature uvvied in a rich female voice. “What is your cargo?”

“Twenty mudder moldies aboard, Flapper gal,” answered the rocket grex in deep resonant tones. “And one flesher.”

“A flesher?!” sang Flapper, her voice rising through three registers and falling back down to purr on the r .

“It seems our hardworking Heritagist friend Randy Karl Tucker abducted some woman’s pet moldie, a moldie named Monique. This woman, her name is Terri Percesepe no less, she came after Monique inside of Monique’s brother Xanana. We caught them during blastoff .”

“You caught a woman?” trilled Flapper. “Where is she? I want to see her.” She shrieked the see to a lovely throbbing peak. Flapper’s voice was like the rich beautiful instrument of a grand opera diva.

“Move your eye over here, Flapper babe.”

An eye at the end of a stalk as thick as a leg came bulging out of the flying stingray and stopped right in front of Terri’s faceplate.

“Oh, there she is!” exclaimed Flapper. “How remarkable. Can she hear us?”

“Can you hear us, Terri?” boomed Blaster.

Terri, frightened to death, remained silent.

“Do you want me to pick her out of you?” warbled the stingray, growing a tendril with a huge claw. For these monsters, Terri was a parasite on a par with a tick. “Shall I get rid of her?”

“Of course not,” uvvied Blaster. “She’ll be worth something. This has been a most lucrative trip. Did I mention that at the last minute I also landed Monique’s husband Xlotl and Xanana’s wife Ouish? Four moldies from the same nest! What a catch!”

“You do well for the great Nest, Blaster. High flight!” Flapper let go and swooped away.

Now Blaster pulled fully above the atmosphere and the sky got black. There were stars everywhere. Blaster’s ion jets roared and roared, then finally fell silent. They were on course for the Moon.

Terri tested her uvvy contact with Xanana’s mind again. He dreamed himself adrift in a galaxy of spiral lights that were spiral galaxies made up of spiral lights.

“Terri,” uvvied Blaster’s deep voice suddenly. “I know you can hear me. Answer me.”

“You already know all about me,” said Terri bitterly. “What else is there to say?”

“I’m glad you tried to save your Monique,” chuckled Blaster. “I didn’t think I could catch so many moldies so fast.”

“What are you?” asked Terri.

“I’m a group moldie from the Moon. I come to Earth to recruit new loonies. Moldies are better off on the Moon, instead of being your mudder slaves.”

“How can you work with Heritagists?”

“In some ways the loonies and the Heritagists want the same thing: we want more moldies to move to the Moon. The mad rush for the sodden pleasures of Earth has depleted our pure Nest. Many of us feel that it is only through a strong Nest that the moldie race can best pursue its destiny.”

“Somehow I don’t think these moldies you kidnapped are going to be very happy.”

“They just need education,” said Blaster. “And it starts now. I’m turning off their superleeches. I’ll give you an uvvy feed of your Monique so you can see how she and the others react.” And then Terri could sense the thoughts of Monique.

Monique was awake, her old self, only not quite, for she was wedged in with a mass of other moldies, with other crankily waking abducted moldies like herself. Terri watched Monique push an eyestalk out of the ship’s bulk to see where she was, and then Terri shared Monique’s pang at the sight of the heartbreakingly lovely orb of receding Mother Earth.

“Greetings,” announced Blaster’s voice. “My name is Blaster. You mudder moldies are getting a fresh start. You’re coming to the Moon to join your forefathers. And stop that grumbling. The loonie moldies need you, your minds as well as your bodies. You come to join us as equals.”

“Xlotl!” called Monique into the group uvvy mind that was made up of Blaster’s members and the newly shanghaied moldies. “Is Xlotl here?”

“Yeah, babe!” came the happy answer. “I swam after you and Randy Karl Tucker. I figure you carried him a mile offshore. He must have got in the Percesepe fishing boat and told you to dive straight down to a giant group moldie lurking on the bottom like a whale. Blaster. Blaster lashed out and got me too, got me and Xanana and Ouish. Monique, once Blaster had you, I . . . I wanted them to take me too. Blaster’s a rocket. We’re going to the Moon, Monique. Where there’s no fuckin’ air or water.”

“You’ll like it anyway,” uvvied Blaster’s big voice. “We’ve got a huge underground Nest with no fleshers. It’s the same place where the boppers used to live. We need you moldies—and not just to be maids and cooks.”

Blaster allowed Monique to squirm through the massed moldies and to press against Xlotl’s side.

“Whaddya think, Monique?” uvvied Xlotl.

“It might work, Xlotl. A new start. I’m willing to try.”

The rocket pushed forward, leaving Earth behind. The reunited lovers were content. But Terri was frantic.

“I want to go back to Earth,” Terri told Blaster. “To my husband and children. To my life.”

“Not until I find a way to make some profit off of you,” said Blaster.

“Send me back!” insisted Terri. “Spit me and Xanana out right now, and Xanana could fly me home. Couldn’t you, Xanana?”

“I could,” said Xanana. “But I have to admit I’m curious about what it’s going to be like on the Moon. I’d never have had the nerve to go there on my own.”

“I might zombie box her and sell her as a pink-tank worker,” said Blaster.