Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

“I’m bored. Sad. Worn out.”

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.

‘’Oh, Da,” Phil answered. “Don’t. We’re the same flesh. I remember crawling on you when I was little. You were a giant.”

“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 I 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 get 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 Friedl 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 slicer. 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.