Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

“I’m not going to touch that one,” said Phil, momentarily distracted from finding out about his father. “Let me ask this instead. If Om can jump all around the cosmos, why do you travel as personality waves? Why not just ask Om to take you where you want to go?”

“We never know where we going in first place,” said Siss. “What we do is to chirp into personality wave, let wave travel to place where it get decrypted into body, to find family there, to teach about Om, and then to chirp further. Travel is our way.”

“But what does Om want?” asked Phil. “Why did she swallow up Ptah and my father?”

“Om is curious about everything,” said Josef. “Your father caught her interest with his wowo display. Om thought this was a very interesting patterning of space. So one supposes that she had a curiosity to get a better acquaintance with your father. She could perhaps return him to the world at some time. As for why she ate the original Ptah—Ptah?”

“Om wished to see what kind of body a Metamartian on Earth might occupy, so one of us was selected,” said Ptah. “The trip into hyperspace was painful for my original self, yes, but it was an honor. Om chose me at Josef’s suggestion; Josef knows I come from the noblest Metamartian stock. The little beetle says he admires me and I suspect that he envies me as well. His choice only heightens my glory. All must recognize that it was I, Ptah, who once led the most harmonious weave of lives in our two-dimensional time, and it is I, Ptah, who has been the first to travel from Earth to the bosom of Om.”

“Well-spoken, Ptah,” said Peg. The unicorn had a contralto voice and a theatrical way of talking. “Isn’t it droll how one chains one’s words together here? Like threading pearls upon a necklace. Phil wots not that the Metamartian mode of speech is as a fractally branching fan.”

“Yadda yadda yadda,” said Phil. “Why do you have to keep jabbering about math?”

“When she talk about a fan, she mean Metamars be in a place where time spreads out nice and fat,” said Wubwub comfortably. “Like it supposed to be. In fat time, no one thing really matters, know what I’m sayin’? It’s grim and down to live the way you do, Phil. One poor little time thread all by its lonely self. You folks deserve to have the allas.”

“You said it was your fault the powerball killed my father,” Phil said to the pig. “Tell me more about what happened!”

“He ain’t dead,” said Wubwub. “You got dirt in your ears, my man? Your daddy’s in hyperspace. When Om sweep through your space it like someone’s hand scoopin’ up a water-strider bug. One second the bug on the water, second later it on the back of the hand. One second your Daddy in bed, next second he on Om’s powerball. He probably just kickin’ it. Om’s powerball got light and air, and a built-in alla for food.”

“My father’s alive?” exclaimed Phil, finally getting it. As when Jane had uvvied him with the news of Kurt’s disappearance, he felt a dissonant mixture of emotions. Joy that his father could be saved. Relief that the old man’s forgiveness could still be obtained. An impatient weariness at having to deal with him all over again. And a primal horror of meeting the undead. “Up in hyperspace?”

“It’s called ‘ana’,” said Ptah. “Not ‘up’. We’ve investigated your scientific literature, and ‘ana’ and ‘kata’ are the names of the directions of the fourth dimension.”

“I know that,” sighed Phil. “My father was a math teacher. I’ve been dreaming about him a lot. Do you think Om can affect my dreams?”

“I no know,” hissed Siss. “Metamartians have no dream, Phil. Metamartians live in endless parallel worlds—no need dream world. Wubwub right, most likely your father alive, and is together with a few others Om take.”

“Like my original self,” said Ptah.

“And two women,” said Wubwub. “Yes indeed. First thing Om did was scoop up that juicy Darla. Yoke’s ma. Om got old Tempest too—and, let’s see, got Tempest’s dog, a toy moldie, and part of an oak tree. How I be so wise? Each time one of us get corporated here, Om ask the new Metamartian what be the most stuzzadelic sample she might scoop up. Om always do that. Likes to see the world through a spang fresh eye, know what I’m sayin’?”

“Would you like each of us to tell our story?” asked Siss.

“Not really,” replied Phil. He felt dizzy and confused. Surely they were lying about Da. “I have to think about what you told me. It’s too wiggly. I want to go back out onto the beach.”

“Oh tarry in our sea cave just a bit longer,” said Peg. She was in fact standing so as to block the passage where Phil had entered. Her horn, though red and swilly, was also quite sharp and long. “What does your poet say? Till human voices wake us and we drown.’ Marvelous beads of meaning, each just so.” She lowered the horn and fixed Phil with her great blue eyes. “Phil, you should harken to our tales while there’s time.”

“I’ll tell first,” said Shimmer, “Attention, please!” She drew herself up and laid her hand stagily upon her breast. “My powerball swallowed a miniature moldie from Willy Taze’s isopod. What they call a Silly Putter; it’s like a doll or a pet. Between a DIM and a moldie. This particular one was named Humpty-Dumpty. It happened to be the first living thing I laid eyes on—at least I thought it was alive—so I pointed it out to Om.”

“And then Shimmer made me tell Om that—” began Ptah.

“The way you got here was as a copy of the original Ptah,” Shimmer interrupted Ptah. “You didn’t tell the powerball anything. So I’ll tell the original Ptah’s story.” She cleared her throat, struck a new pose and continued talking. “When I decrypted Ptah, I was down in the ocean and there really wasn’t much of anything around for Ptah to tell Om’s powerball to swallow. Ptah may think he’s perfect, but he’s not all that creative. So I suggested that Ptah tell Om to get Darla Starr on the Moon. Space doesn’t mean much to Om, she can spang out a powerball wherever she wants. Om can go anywhere. Praise Om.”

“Praise Om,” murmured the other Metamartians comfortably.

“Why eat Darla?” asked Phil.

“Why Darla?” said Shimmer. “You might jump to the conclusion that I was angry with Darla for trying to kill me. But of course no human could ever hurt a Metamartian anyway. And I really wasn’t angry. That’s not a Metamartian emotion at all. I just thought that Darla was the fiercest, most interesting human I’d seen so far. Yes. I was torn between suggesting her and Stahn Mooney, as a matter of fact, but Darla seemed more spirited. And you don’t have to look so impatient, Ptah, because now I’m done. Peg?”

“When I was reborn on Earth, Om asked me what was interesting, and I knew not what to say,” said the unicorn. “She showed me that she already had Humpty-Dumpty and Darla. Within our sea-dome I could only see Shimmer, Ptah, and the grass. I humbly asked Om what she herself longed to behold next. Om granted me the image of something she had seen in Darla’s room, a merry shape yclept a ‘wowo.’ Om coveted a wowo. So I hastened to enter your Web, where I sought the bravest wowo in creation. This wowo of all wowos I found upon the greensward of a woman named Starshine, in the hamlet of Santa Cruz, California. And thither did I direct Om’s gaze. It came about that Starshine’s aunt, a crone named Tempest Plenty, was tilling the earth there in the company of a dog named Planet. Joyful at the girth of the wowo, Om took so bosky a powerball scoop that she snared those two as well as the wowo prize. I’ve told my tell, let Wubwub speak as well.”

“Now Om just fascinate with that wowo; she asked me to find the brainiac what dream it up,” said the black pig. “And that be Phil’s dad. So Om done gobble down Kurt Gottner and half of his wiener-dog Friedl—I say half because that wiener-dog fuss so much she got pinched in two. Old Kurt’s hand got rotorvated as well, and the space-waves knotted his wedding ring, which leads straight into the next tale, you know what I’m sayin’, Siss?”