Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

“Why don’t we send off a decoy? I can alla you some imipolex and you can copy yourself just like the Cappy Janes did.”

“Two of me?” said Cobb hesitantly. “I’m not sure I’m in a mood to reproduce.”

“Can you just make a dumb minimal clone that sends out your Squanto signal and flies—I don’t know—out into space or something?”

“I could do that. In fact we can send Squanto on a trip to the Moon. That’ll make sense to them, even if the ‘Sue and Squanto’ cover breaks down. The Moon is exactly where you might expect Cobb and Yoke to go. Tell you what, Yoke, use your alla to customize a piece of imipolex shaped exactly like me. And I can put a partial nervous system into it. The air’s very thin up here. Anything you make will just coast along next to us. Can you stick your alla out through my skin?”

“I don’t need to stick it out. I can move the control mesh to wherever I like. There it is.” A bright-line copy of Cobb’s form appeared next to them, and then— whoosh— it was virgin imipolex.

Cobb stretched out a mold-filled tendril and began programming his dummy. “Something else, Yoke,” he said after a minute. “I think you should make a big piece of human flesh that we can seal inside him so he looks like he’s still carrying you. In case the Cappy Janes really focus in on him.”

“There’s no human flesh in the alla catalog. The Metamartians didn’t want it to be easy for us or the moldies to try and use the alla for repro­duction. But, hmm, they do have a human skeleton. Remember, it’s like every possible catalog in the world got folded into the master alla catalog. And this skeleton I’m looking at is like what you buy to use for anatomy classes. I guess it’s kosher for the alla, since dead bone doesn’t have living cells. And, oh wow, of course it’s tweakable. I can make it just the same proportions as me!”

“Do it.”

“I’m getting it ready in my head. The way you do realware, Cobb, is you completely get your image all together before you make the mesh and actualize it with the alla. Instead of just making a naked skeleton, I’m going to wrap the skeleton up in something of about the right density. I could use bologna but—” Yoke suddenly giggled. “How about tofu! Sue Miller as the ultimate vegan!” Another whoosh, and there was a tofu-and-­bone fake Yoke flying along next to them.

The fake Cobb opened up and sealed itself over the fake Yoke. Cobb turned off his own locator ID signals and brought up the dummy’s signals at the same time. And then the fake Yoke and Cobb—or the fake Squanto and Sue Miller—blasted on up away from them, presumably tracked by the Cappy Jane’s surveillance signals.

The flight back to San Francisco was uneventful; Yoke slept most of the way. She woke as they plummeted down toward the thumb of the San Francisco peninsula. The sun was setting and the buildings of San Francisco looked lovely and gold.

“Back to Babs’s?” asked Cobb.

“Yeah,” said Yoke. “I like her. And she seems to have a lot of room. I hope she doesn’t mind putting us up.”

“She talks tough, but she’s a soft touch,” said Cobb. “Hell, she’s even letting my great-grandson Randy stay there. I like Babs too. Wait till she sees your alla!”

“We should keep that quiet for now, Cobb. I don’t want to end up in the middle of another feeding frenzy.”

Nobody paid much notice when they landed on the dead-end street with Babs’s warehouse. There was a homeless woman fishing in the bay, some kids working on an ancient old truck, a woman bent over her garden, a long-haired boy sitting on some steps strumming his guitar, a man walking down the street with a bag of groceries. And now here were Cobb and Yoke again, back in the thick of it.

They walked in through the open garage door to Babs’s warehouse. The little plastic chicken Willa Jean cackled a warning. Randy Karl Tucker looked up from a nanomanipulator, surprised to see them. “Shit howdy! I thought you’d be gone till next weekend, Cobb.”

“Well, we—um—”

“We pretty much did everything in Tonga already,” said Yoke.

“Did Phil come back too?” asked Randy.

“Not yet,” said Cobb after a quick glance at Yoke.

“I hope you ain’t gonna try and rush me off to that dang Moon,” said Randy. “I’m lovin’ it here. Hey, Babs! They’re baaack! Quiet down, Willa Jean.”

The little chicken walked over and pecked at Cobb’s foot. And Yoke and Cobb’s gaze fell upon the twisted purple superleech embedded in Willa Jean’s back. With a grunt of anger, Cobb lashed down with an arm suddenly grown long. He caught hold of the wildly squawking Willa Jean, formed his other fingers into scissors, and excised the offending strip of limpware. And then he dropped the chicken and cut the superleech into teensy tiny bits.

“God damn you to hell, Cobb!” Randy picked up the wounded plastic chicken and cradled her to his chest. “Willa Jean’s been my special pet since India!”

“She’ll live,” said Cobb. “You got any more of those xoxxin’ leech-DIMs around here?”

Randy sullenly refused to answer, and Yoke got right into his face. “Phil told me you were bragging about superleeches, Randy. If you have any, cough them up. I wasn’t going to talk about it, but down in Tonga we saw some shit that—”

“What’s all the psychodrama?” asked Babs Mooney, ambling out from the warehouse’s colorful, fabric-hung depths. “You sound like a bunch of snap-heads!”

“Did Randy give you any superleeches yet?” asked Yoke.

“Tomorrow Aarbie Kidd is supposed to—”

“Call it off, Randy,” said Cobb. “Or I’ll tell Willy to disinherit you without a cent. Frankly, he’d love the excuse.”

“Oh, fuck my ass and call me Barbie,” said Randy. He sighed and made a voice connection with his uvvy. “ ‘Sup, brah? No, that’s why I’m calling. No can do. Problem at this end. Yeah yeah, a shitty diaper. Reet. Later.” He glared over at Yoke and Cobb. “Satisfied?”

“What excitement,” said Babs, sitting down on a sofa. “Tell me what came down in Tonga. The way you two look, it must have been savage.”

Yoke so much wanted to pour out her heart. She’d been meaning to uvvy her twin sister Joke on the Moon, but Babs was right here, and she was cozy and easy to talk to. And even Randy, in his oddball way, was comforting too. “Can you really really promise to keep a secret, Babs? Randy? Not tell a single soul outside this room?”

“I’ll close the front door if you like,” said Babs.

“You should,” said Cobb. “If we’re going to spill everything. And then you’ll understand why I got so upset, Randy. I’m sorry about Willa Jean. I bet we can rig up a safe workaround. You don’t need a full superleech to remote-run a chicken, for God’s sake. I’ll help you design something simpler.”

“Okey-doke,” said Randy. “Hell, it’s just as well not to be startin’ up again with Aarbie Kidd.”

So for the next two hours Yoke and Cobb told Babs and Randy the whole story of what had happened in Tonga. As they talked they made a supper of what Babs had around her kitchen: half a loaf of bread, a green pepper, jack cheese, old salsa, hibiscus tea, a liter of beer, and a gnawed Hershey bar. Cobb, of course, didn’t eat anything, and he decorously held his pores closed so as not to exude an unappetizing smell.

“Show me how you make something with the alla,” asked Babs when Yoke finished talking. It was dark outside and the kitchen was lit with candles.

“I don’t want to,” said Yoke. “Not today. I did it way too much this morning. The cubic meter of gold. Did I mention that I put Andy Warhol’s signature on it?” She smiled and yawned, then got out the two sculptures wrapped in Phil’s shirt. “These are more the kind of realware I’d like to get into.” They looked good to her: the chunk of glass glinting in the candle­light, the ants shiny on the band of metal.