Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

At the end of a marble hall they found a darkened office with a leathery Tongan man sitting in an armchair wearing an uvvy. All the blinds were drawn. The Tongan’s eyes were closed, but he opened them when Onar, Yoke and Eleani entered.

“Onar?” he said. “Very good, very timely. Put on your uvvy, if you would, and join me.”

“Would this be of interest for my friend Yoke as well?” said Onar.

“She is most welcome,” said Mr. Olou. “Malo e lelei, Yoke. Please take a seat, both of you.”

They settled into a matching pair of chrome and leather Barcelona chairs. Eleani glanced at her watch and excused herself.

Yoke put on her uvvy and followed along as Onar joined Olou in cyberspace. The three of them seemed to be standing in a cartoon jungle, with bright colored vines stretching from the ground upward to—well, upward to nothing. No trees in sight, just lots of colored vines rising up forever above the simmie body icons of Yoke, Onar, and Olou. Glancing down at herself, Yoke saw that she was wearing her usual simmie, the Alice from Alice in Wonderland. The ground beneath her feet was soft black dirt with little beetles and sow bugs in it.

“The vines display the Cappy Jane sky-ray signal flow,” said Olou. He looked like a grass-skirted, spear-waving Tongan warrior. “I’ve been improving the visualization, Onar. As you know, one hundred percent of our Cappy Jane signal flux is licensed to Meta West Link. The color spectrum codes from red through blue represent the various fee levels.” The vines were glowing like rainbow neon tubes.

“Can you show me one of the bandwidth pirates?” asked Onar, whose body icon was that of a natty man in tails and top hat.

“Wait,” said Olou, crouching with his spear at the ready. All at once he flung the spear at a purplish-white vine in the middle distance. “That’s one of them,” he said. “Bull’s-eye. Now I’ve captured that signal into nonvolatile storage.”

“I may be able to display it as a richer image,” said Onar. “I have some rather wonderful virtual tools. They’re in-house products of Meta West.” He began pushing his way through the thickets of colored tendrils, closely followed by Olou. Yoke tagged along, wondering at the tingly feel of the vines.

Working quickly, Onar and Olou hauled down dozens of meters of the purplish-white pirate vine from where it disappeared up above. This preliminary task accomplished, Onar caught Yoke’s eye and smiled confidently. He drew himself up and bowed as if beginning a performance. To begin with, Onar made some occult passes with his hands, and a beautifully inlaid, coffin-sized box appeared between him and Olou. It looked like a prop used in a “Disappearing Lady” stage-magic illusion. Then with an elegant snap of his fingers, Onar produced a scimitar from the air and proceeded to wield it like a homicidal maniac, slicing the vine into a mound of two-meter segments. He did this with great theatrical flourishes and much mad rolling of his eyes. Yoke began to giggle and Onar glowed with pleasure. He stuffed the inlaid box with what seemed like many more segments than should fit—and perched himself on the lid, quizzically cocking his head to listen.

“ Shroop !” sang the box. “ Shroop, shroop, shroop !” The high, metallic sound reminded Yoke of an artisan’s band saw cutting up slabs of moon-rock.

Onar hopped behind the box and started to open the lid, which faced roughly toward Olou.

“Careful there,” said Olou, seeing something. He backed off so rapidly that he got tangled in the vines. For just that critical moment he was pinioned in front of the box. “Onar, don’t!” he screamed.

It was too late. The lid slammed all the way open, and out rushed something quick and bright and overwhelming, something that leapt at Olou and crumpled him. This happened in an instant and then the thing was heading for Yoke, spreading itself out to an immense size. Yoke was already moving her arm to pull her uvvy off her neck, but the fast shiny thing got to her too quickly. It looked like a jellyfish, but with a smiling humanoid face that was somehow etched into its transparent flesh. It engulfed Yoke, and her overloaded uvvy sent out a stunning burst of pain. As if from very far away Yoke felt the slow-motion jolting of her body falling from the Barcelona chair.

When Yoke woke it was dark. Her head was throbbing. She was lying on the hard marble floor. The Foreign Ministry building around her was completely silent.

She peeled her uvvy off her neck; the skin underneath was raw and tender. She couldn’t see if Onar and Olou were still in the room. Unsure where the light switch was, she went over to the window and opened the shade. The faithful Moon was a few handbreadths above the horizon, bright and full and tropical behind palm frond silhouettes. People were calling to each other, dogs were barking, and somewhere nearby an animal was grunting. Nuku’alofa came alive at night.

Looking back into Mr. Olou’s office, Yoke could see Olou and Onar both lying on the floor. Dead? She paused, afraid. Her mind struggled to process the situation.

That jellyfish thing; the face on it had looked like—Onar? And it had said something just as it swallowed her, something important—but somehow impossible to bring to mind. She couldn’t stop obsessively trying to remember it. As she circled around the memory, she found herself thinking about the day three months ago when some alien personality waves had taken over the bodies of a bunch of moldies at Willy Taze’s house. One of the aliens had been a being called Shimmer, who came from a place where beings led zillions of simultaneous lives all at once in parallel time. Did the jellyfish have something to do with Shimmer? Yoke tried again to remember what the voice had said but she still couldn’t bring it to mind. She grimaced, trying to shake off the memory.

“Hey Onar!” she called. “Mr. Olou? Wake up, veks! Please don’t be dead . . . “

Onar stirred and sat up. Like Yoke, his first act was to take off his uvvy. But somehow he didn’t look as if his head hurt. “God help me,” he muttered, then looked up at Yoke against the moonlit window. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, but what about Mr. Olou?”

“Awful,” said Onar, crawling over to the fallen Tongan. He leaned over Olou, thumping his chest and briefly attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. “He’s gone,” said Onar presently. “It’s my fault. I was showing off for you and I blundered. I’m a fool. A capering popinjay.”

Mr. Olou’s body lay utterly motionless, with a deep stillness that Yoke could somehow sense as that of a corpse. A sleeping person is only conditionally immobile; if you poke them, they’ll arise. But Mr. Olou—Yoke could tell that no matter how much anyone bugged him, he’d never get up again. The stark moonlight made the dead man’s mouth a ragged hole.

“Let’s get out of here, Onar.”

“I agree.” He looked down at the body. “Forgive me, old friend.”

The elevator was turned off for the day, so they took the marble stairs down. There were no lights. Onar caught Yoke’s elbow and made her pause on the first landing.

“Before we go any further, Yoke, I have to ask you something.” His breath was warm and pleasant in the darkness.

“Okay,” said Yoke. She had a feeling they were going to kiss. It was hardly appropriate, but for some reason that’s what she wanted. She’d felt a redoubled attraction to Onar ever since the jellyfish blast. A way to spit in the face of Death?

“Can I trust you to keep a secret?” asked Onar softly.

“Trust ‘Sue Miller’? What is that about, anyway?” She put her hands on Onar’s waist, trying not to think of Mr. Olou.