Spaceland (20 page)

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Authors: Rudy Rucker

BOOK: Spaceland
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“Hi, Joe,” said Jena to break the ice. “I hope you're not mad at me. I appreciate your having moved out without a fuss.” I felt a flush of pleasure at her kind words. Her face across the room looked as crisp and clear as ever. Her pink cheeks, her bowed lips, her farseeing eyes. I felt the same old need to make Jena happy, to win her approval. I was very far indeed from being okay.
Not trusting what I might say to Jena, I turned to Momo. “Why are you helping them?” I asked her. “I thought you were on my side. That's my Mophone you gave Spazz. Tulip invented it for me.” Across the room, Spazz gave a sharp cough, but he didn't look up from his circuitry.
“Calm yourself, Joe Cube,” said Momo. Her voice took on a cozy, soothing tone. “You'll be the better for some grolly.” A shiny, lavender bagel appeared at the tip of her outstretched hand. I walked over and took it. I needed grolly like a man in a desert needs water. I gnawed at the chunk, trying to keep too much of it from sliding off into the fourth dimension. Though I'd kind of meant to save some for later, I kept right on chewing the grolly until I'd eaten every bit of it. It didn't take me long.
I wasn't wobbly anymore, and my subtle vision was sharp. I could see the rest of Momo vout there in hyperspace, Momo and her saucer. I used my third eye to take a quick look at Spazz and Jena. I could still see inside them, which meant that Momo hadn't augmented them.
“Why are you helping Spazz and Jena?” I asked Momo again.
“I wanted to ensure the timely creation of a Mophone,” she said. “It seemed wise to have two separate teams working on it. After the fiasco last night, I wasn't feeling so confident in you, Joe Cube. You should understand that what happened to you served you right.
You've no business going down into Dronia alone. They're evil, evil beasts. It's dangerous—and inappropriate—for you to converse with Wackle.”
“No worry of that happening again,” I said. “You killed him.”
“That was just one instance of him,” said Momo. “There's no end to Wackle. He's like the fingers on a hand, or like the tentacles of an anemone. But let's not trouble ourselves with Wackle just now. I'll deal with him should he approach us. Let's make plans for Mophone, Inc. You four must work together.”
“Did you bring my money?” interrupted Jena.
“It's gone, dammit,” I told her. “Wackle took it yesterday morning right after I vacated for you. And yes, I took a little extra from the bank, but that's all mince. I tried to go back for even more, but then Wackle came for me and Momo splattered him. Steal your own money if you want some, Jena. (jet Momo to augment you.”
“I'll not augment anyone else,” said Momo. “The Empress's soldiers are watching my activities too closely· for that.”
“Good,” said Jena, then turned back to me. “I saw the mirror money in the paper, Joe. Weird. How many good bills did you actually get?”
“None of your business,” I said.
“Seventeen thousand dollars,” said Momo. “And he's right, Jena. That's his money now. If you want money you're going to have to earn it.”
“What about the mirror money?” asked Jena.
“I think I'll take it from the police station, turn it right way round, and put it back where it came from,” said Momo. “What was the box number, Joe?”
I told her.
“Good,” said Momo. “And once you get some funding, I'll put the rest of the money back as well.”
“You think we'll get funding?” said Jena.
“Of course,” said Momo.
“Aha!” exclaimed Spazz, still bent over the cell phones. “Now I get it. I'm gonna make a run to Fry's.”
“No man steps in Fry's but once,” said Jena cheerfully. It was one of her sayings. She'd noticed that whenever I got some hardware at Fry's I always had to go back and exchange something the next day. She gave me her prettiest smile. “We three will make a good team, Joe. I'll be the Director of Corporate Communications. You know darn well that I'm the only one who can pitch to the venture capitalists. It's me who's the cheerleader type. You can be the CEO, and Spazz can be the Chief Technology Officer. We don't really need that other girl, do we? What's her name again? Rose? Violet? Daisy? Alfalfa?”
“Tulip's the CTO,” I said. “Spazz is the one we don't need.”
“Hell you don't,” said Spazz, finally listening to us. “This little kludge of Tulip's is fine if all you've got in your network is two phones. But once we scale, we're going to need packet-switched CDMA. Code Division Multiple Access, dude. Each and every spoken syllable has the target phone's number on it, that's the way CDMA works. No way Tulip can write the program for that. It'll run as a distributed parallel computation on all the Mophones. Like the Internet, but with no servers, just a zillion peer-to-peer clients. It's an idea that Tulip and I have been talking about, actually. Tasty. You know I'm the one to hack it. It'll be fun. And as for titles, hey, you can call Tulip the Chief Technical Officer if that's what it takes to make her mother happy.” He paused to cough, and then continued. “I don't give a squat what you call me. High Llama, Beauty School Dropout, Just In Time Compiler, Alligator Wrassler, whatever. Just so I get the same money as everyone else.” He gave me one of his cocky, sarcastic smiles.
“A bastard is what I'd call you,” I said, the anger welling up in me. “A jerk. You stole my wife. You son of a bitch.” I took a step towards him.
“Time warp,” said Spazz, getting to his feet. “Neanderthal zone.” He circled around to the other side of the kitchen table. He was holding one of his screwdrivers. He was tall, but I outweighed him.
“Don't, Joe,” said Jena, her voice breaking. “It's not Spazz's fault. It's my fault.” I had this funny moment of subtle vision just then. Instead of seeing Jena as some calculating evil tormentor, I saw her for what she really was, a wistful, not-particularly-bright person who didn't know what the hell she was doing. A person like me. I was nuts to get so uptight about this. Couples split up all the time. I was acting mentally ill. I flopped down on the other end of the couch from Jena, with Momo sitting between us. Spazz regarded me for a minute.
“Hunky-dory?” he said, setting down his screwdriver.
“We'll see,” I said. Deep down I still had some mentally ill thoughts about what I might do to Spazz. But not here and now. I could at least pretend to be okay. Momo was right. If we were going to make a go of Mophone, we four would have to work together.
“Hark!” said Momo, who'd just been peeking vinn at the Dronner side of Spaceland. “A Wackle approaches!” She stuck one of her arms vout into Klupdom and got the hyperbazooka from her saucer. Jena and Spazz exclaimed when she pulled the weapon down into the room with us. It was awesome, a three-foot hypercylinder covered with a filigree of tubes and wires. Since it was four-dimensional, it looked particularly bizarre, getting thicker and thinner and with bits and pieces of it appearing and disappearing as Momo moved it around. “I'll pot him from here,” said Momo, and now most of her disappeared on the vinner side of Spaceland with the hyperbazooka. Her butt and legs were still on the couch, but rounded off at the waist.
“It's like she's ice-fishing,” said Spazz. “With a rocket launcher. Who's this Wackle you keep talking about?”
“I saw him last night,” I said. “When I was trying to rob the bank. He looks like a devil and he talks funny. He scared me so much that I came down mirror reversed. And then Momo shot him. He was like the tip of a tendril from an undersea anemone thing on the cliffs of Dronia. I guess there's a new tendril coming for us right now.”
“Yikes,” said Jena. “We're not safe anywhere, are we?”
“Momo and the Empress's troops are watching over us,” I said.
“So creepy,” said Jena.
“Can you see what Momo's doing down there?” Spazz asked.
“No,” I said. Because my third eye was sticking vout into the Klupper half of the All again, I couldn't see into Dronia.
Momo's legs tensed and braced themselves, then jerked as if in recoil. A bloody scrap of Wackle tissue came streaking across the living room and disappeared through the bedroom wall.
“This is so
X-Files,
” said Spazz. “I love it.”
“One less Wackle,” said Momo, reappearing on the couch with her weapon cradled in her arms. “If it weren't for Spaceland we could be shooting Dronners all day long.”
“Spaceland is our world, right?” said Jena.
“It divides the All in half,” said Momo. “Klupdom above and Dronia below. The problem is, we can't see through Spaceland.”
“But you can come down and stick your head through it,” said Spazz.
“Indeed,” said Momo. “But normally it's forbidden by the Empress. She doesn't like for us to interfere with Spaceland. It's only safe for me to be talking to you now because I bribed the soldiers to leave me alone. They're very poorly paid, you know.”
“Does your Empress know what you did to Joe?” asked Spazz. “Giving him that third eye he used for the blackjack game?”
“The Empress views Joe as a powerful sorcerer,” said Momo. “She thinks he became augmented all on his own. She views him as—
how to say this—a sacred monster. I've been authorized to do what's necessary to contain—and protect—Joe Cube.”
“The Empress doesn't know about the Mophones,” I put in. “Momo says their radiation will help keep the Dronners away. They'll stop sneaking up through Spaceland to raid Momo's family's grolly fields.”
“Speaking of my family, it's time for me to go spend some time with them,” said Momo. “I'll rejoin you in a few days. But no need for worry. I think I've taught the Wackles a bit of a lesson. And here's a little more grolly to tide you over. Good luck with your new business, you three.” Momo handed me another shiny lavender doughnut of grolly, a rather small one this time. Her body began melting away into hyperspace.
“Just a minute,” I said, feeling uneasy. “How long are you going to be gone?”
“The sooner you set up some meetings with investors, the sooner you'll see me again,” said Momo. “That's the next time you're likely to need me. I can't be meddling every minute.”
“What about bringing me more grolly before that?” I said. I hated to think I'd be running out of the stuff so soon again.
“Find your investors, then you'll get your grolly,” said Momo. “May your craving serve as an extra impetus towards rapid initiatives.” What was left of her was drifting down towards the floor like a leaking helium balloon. At the last minute she paused and pointed a little mouth-trumpet up at me. “Remember, Joe, whatever you do, stay out of Dronia.” And then she was gone. I took a little nibble of my grolly.
“What is that stuff?” asked Spazz. “Can I try some?”
“It's food for my higher body,” I said. “I don't have nearly enough of it. I can't spare any at all.”
“Now I'm really curious,” said Spazz. “You sound like a coker talking about his stash. Let me taste just a crumb.”
I pincered off a literal crumb and handed it to him. He hit into it and winced.
“Ow!” he exclaimed. “It's hard. Like a piece of sand. Or a rock.” He spit the purple speck out into the palm of his hand.
“Not for me,” I said proudly. “I'm different.” I crunched down one last bite, enjoying the sweet, rich, fruity taste, and then I forced myself to put the rest of the grolly into the hypersack at my belt. I was feeling really good. That last taste of grolly had put a spinning flywheel of energy into my head. Working with Spazz and Jena had begun to seem like the perfect idea. I discussed business plans with them. They were all smiles. After a bit, I decided to call Tulip on her cell phone and let her in on the plans. Turned our she was back at my new house, busy putting her bed into the extra room.
“Guess where I found your Mophone?” I said to Tulip. “It's with Spazz.”
“What? That rat! He was following me? He stole it from my purse?”
“No, no—Momo took it. Just like I thought. She reached in from the fourth dimension.”
There was a silence. “Have you actually seen Spazz?” said Tulip finally.
“I'm with him and Jena right now. I think the four of us should talk things over.”
“Really?” There was an upward surge in Tulip's voice. A hopeful lilt. Maybe she thought Spazz wanted her back again.
“Just to talk about business,” I said flatly. “About the Mophone. You head the tech, Spazz writes the software, Jena does the VC pitch and the marketing.”
“I don't know if I'd be comfortable with that,” said Tulip, her voice chilling over.
“Why don't we four sit down and talk about it. We'll be right over.”

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