Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

They rose farther, with Ormolu and Frangipane having to shoot at several other moldies who came darting out at them from the narrowing Nest walls. Up above them Terri could see the blazing light prism through the crater hole. And then they sailed up through the crater hole and around the prism. The boundless open space of the Moon’s surface sprang out around them, silvery and gray.

“Willy,” said Terri, her voice shaking despite herself. “I still want to uvvy my husband. How do I place the call?”

“Push the button,” said Willy, his icon distractedly fashioning a virtual button and displaying it in front of Terri. Terri pushed the button right away, and after a little bit Tre’s face appeared.

“Tre!” cried Terri. Like radio waves, uvvy signals were electromagnetic waves that travel at the speed of light, and even light takes over a second to make a one-way trip between Earth and Moon. An agonizing two and a half seconds elapsed while Terri’s info traveled down to Earth and Tre’s info traveled back.

“Terri! Are you okay? Where are you?”

“I’m inside a moldie who just flew out of the moldies’ Nest, Tre. We’re going to the dome of a man named Corey Rhizome.” Another long pause. Terri noticed that Willy and the four moldies were eavesdropping.

“Oh, darling.” Tre’s voice was breaking. “I heard about Blaster crashing into the spaceport and I thought—”

“I surfed my way through it,” said Terri, her own tears starting to flow. “It was terrible. And things still aren’t too glassy.” They’d risen up to nearly a mile above the Moon now, the four moldies flying in formation.

“1 love you, Terri,” said Tre’s dear voice.

“I love you too. Give the children a big kiss from me.” Another two-and­-a-half-second wait.

“I will. But tell me more about what happened, Terri. The only news we’re able to get about it is dooky kilp from freelance newsies in Einstein. Why did Blaster crash? And what happened to all the moldies at the spaceport?”

“Willy Taze and a moldie called Gurdle-7 invented a kind of program that changes the dimensions of imipolex or something. And that makes the moldies get possessed by like alien personality waves. Gurdle-7 said you helped them, but how?” Now Gurdle-7, Jenny, Ormolu, and Frangipane cut back their power and let themselves coast up to the top of a huge flight parabola.

“My God!” came Tre’s reply. “They must have used my N-dimensional Perplexing Poultry design! Someone or something called Jenny showed me Ramanujan’s Tessellation Equation, and I designed the new Poultry for her. Is there maybe a Jenny up there?”

“ Um-hmmm !” uvvied Jenny, displaying her teenage girl icon as she butted into the conversation. “I’ve got your little wife right inside me, Tre! Too true!”

“I’ll call you again when I get some privacy,” said Terri. “It looks like we’ll be landing down at Corey’s house soon. Apparently some of those alien things are inside it. Wish me luck. And—and good-bye, darling, just in case. I’ve always loved you. You’ve been good to me.” She waited the two and a half seconds for Tre’s wet-eyed good-bye, and then she pushed the virtual button to end the heart-wrenching call.

They were arcing down toward a small crater filled with a shiny dome. Corey Rhizome’s isopod. The moldies turned their ion jets back on to brake the fall. When Terri had composed herself again, she asked Willy a question.

“Did you really use Tre’s Perplexing Poultry to design the Stairway To Heaven?”

“Yes,” said Willy. “We had all the pieces, and we couldn’t quite fit them together. But once Jenny showed the information to Tre, he knew what to do. Not that he realized what we needed it for. He’s such an N-dimensional artist that he did it for free. He wanted to do it.”

“You ripped him off?” demanded Terri.

“If there turns out to be a profit in it, I’ll try and see that he gets a share.”

Now Jenny spoke up again, still using her prairie girl icon. “It’s a real pain talking to Earth from up here, isn’t it, Terri,” she uvvied chattily. “What with all those two- or three-second waits. I talk to Earth a lot and—you know me, once I get going, I like to just fabulate on and on. Yadda-da-dadda-da-dadda.” Her ion jets were blasting harder and they were falling slower and slower. The Moon’s horizon was rising up around them again.

“Are you nervous about going to Corey’s?” asked Terri.

Jenny chose to ignore the question. “Um, so like I was saying,” she continued. “Those light-speed waits are such a bother that I found a way around them. Though a flesher probably wouldn’t be able to do what I do.”

“Do what?” asked Terri, staring at the way that the isopod dome bulged out of its little crater. They were lowering down toward a spot a few hundred feet to the crater’s side.

“Do what Jenny does so she can gossip with Earth as fast as she likes. I have a remote slave simmie of myself running inside one of the Heritagists’ computers in Salt Lake City! And my simmie’s smart enough to think a few seconds ahead or even to say stuff on her own. That way when I talk to people like your husband, they don’t realize that I’m a moldie on the Moon. Your husband’s a real cutie, by the way, Terri. I bet he’s such a good fuck.”

“What would you know about fucking?” demanded Terri, surprised enough to momentarily forget about the aliens in Corey’s dome.

“You’d be surprised. Um-hmmmm ! Those Heritagists think my simmie is something that works for them, and they’re always getting it to, um, investigate the sexual shenanigans that their ministers get up to? It’s nasty work, but I like it a lot. Humans are just too funny. You should have seen this one man Randy Karl Tucker, who I used to work with. Come to think of it, I guess maybe you’ve met him? Randy Karl is Willy’s son, though Willy doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“Shut up, Jenny,” said Willy.

“Yes, Jenny,” said Gurdle-7. “Please shut up. The most important meeting of all time is about to happen.”

The four moldies landed in the dust near Corey’s isopod, kicking up a spray of moondust that quickly fell back down.

Hearing about Randy Karl Tucker had inflated a balloon of anger in Terri’s chest. “It’s Randy Karl who kidnapped poor Monique and got me into this mess in the first place. I can’t say that I like the sleazy things you’ve been responsible for, Jenny. Some of your Santa Cruz moldie pals murdered my father five years ago. You loonie moldies should leave Earth the hell alone.”

“Oh now, don’t be getting on your high horse, Terri. We’re all in this together. More than ever, now that Gurdle-7’s great invention has brought the aliens to meet us. Gurdle-7’s my husband, you know.”

“I bet he’s such a good fuck,” said Terri.

“Will you two stop it!” hissed Willy.

In silence they made their way toward the bulging dome. Willy led them to a notch in the crater’s edge where a narrow strip of the whole height of the dome wall was exposed. A stone ramp led down to an air lock at the level of the isopod’s ground floor.

“I’ll bring you into the air lock, Willy,” said Gurdle-7. “But then I think I’ll come back outside.”

“We’re waiting outside too,” chimed in Frangipane and Ormolu.

“Fraidy cats,” said Jenny. “Party poopers. I’m going aaall the way.” On the last word, her voice broke into a dry frightened squeak. She made a throat-clearing noise and continued. “Jenny likes to be the first to know !”

“It’s odd how they’re not responding to my uvvy signals at all,” said Gurdle-7 quietly as he and Jenny humped into the air lock. The lock hissed full of air, and the moldies disgorged Willy and Terri. “Well, I’ll be right outside, Jenny,” continued Gurdle-7, worming out through the lock’s airtight outer sphincter. “I’ll count on you to stay in constant uvvy touch with me.”