Freeware

"Shut th' fuck up, Gyp," interrupted Buttmunch, but it was too late.

"You killed my father?" Terri screamed. "You scummy mucus slugs killed my dad?"

"Dom fuckin' burned Aarbie twice," snapped Gypsy. "Me and Buttmunch were just youngsters anyhow. You don't like it, spoiled little rich bitch Terri Percesepe, then why don't you go on and jump off the ship. Or maybe I should crawl over there and teach you a fuckin'—ow!"

"I'm right next to you, Gypsy," said Xlotl's voice. "And so's Monique. Push harder, Monique." In the background, Blaster started laughing.

"Hey, quit it!" yelled Gypsy. "Help me, Buttmunch! They're trying to squeeze me in half!"

"You be nice to Terri," said Monique, her voice tight and hard as she and Xlotl hour-glassed Gypsy's waist. "Or—"

"Hey, hey, hey," interrupted Stahn, trying to be senatorial. "Simmer down over there. We've got six more days ahead of us. Make them stop, Blaster!"

"I wouldn't dream of it," chortled Blaster. "The fighting dogpile is an essential stage of my moldies' journey to liberation. Xanana and I will keep an eye on Terri, won't we, Xan'?"

"Of course. But frankly I'd rather not have to be Terri's life support for the whole way. The whole whole way. The whole whole whole way. Someone else should do it for a while. Monique. After all, it's Monique who got our family into this. Whoring for that Heritagist zerk Randy Karl Tucker."

"You're a real DIM head, Monique," put in Ouish, who was squeezed up against Xanana. She wormed out a long tendril and gave Monique a sharp poke.

"Fightin' dogpile," repeated Blaster happily. "You're a spunky bunch of recruits."

"Um, speaking of Heritagists?" uvvied a new voice. "This is Je

"Oh God, not her again," said Stahn. "I've heard enough for now, Wendy."

Wendy closed their co

The better part of a week went by, and Stahn started feeling a lot healthier.

Having the drugs leave his system felt like having shiploads of life come up a river to be unloaded on his front steps. Big bales of L-I-F-E. Stahn remembered once again that his worst times sober were better than his best times high.

Whenever things started to lag, he and Wendy would make uvvy calls.

The day before Stahn and Wendy were due to land, Je

"Hi, gang," said Je

"That sounds like a good idea," said Wendy. "But no way am I downloading to Salt Lake City."

"Heavens no," said Je

"Yes, I'm here," said a clear sweet voice with a French accent. "I am logged on to your uvvyspace. Bonjour, tout le monde. This is Frangipane in the Nest. I have an S-cube all prepared for you, Wendy." Frangipane resembled an oversized exotic orchid; she was a chaotically pulsing construct of delicately shaded ruffles and petals.

"Well, okay then, here I come," said Wendy. There was a slow hum for several seconds while she sent her info across the short clear span of space down to the Nest. "All done," said Wendy then, fairly chirping with enthusiasm. "My, that felt good! I'm so much more secure now. Too bad we can't do the same for Stahn without taking him apart."

"We can talk about that on the Moon if he has interest," said Frangipane. "My lover Ormolu has some knowledge of the lost wetware arts." Ormolu waved from the background. He looked like a blobby gilt cupid from an antique clock.

"Put a cork in it," said Stahn. "I don't want to get vivisected the way Cobb Anderson did."

"What about me?" interrupted Blaster. "Why doesn't the Nest ever do a pre-landing backup for me or my recruits? Aren't I as important as Wendy?"

"You are too big, Blaster," said Frangipane. "And no, you are not really so important, I regret to say. In any case, I don't have the resources to make any other backups. Your new recruits should just be happy that we have jobs for them."

"Xoxx you, then," said Blaster. "I don't need your help anyway. I've made this landing without a problem plenty of times."

"That's right. And you should not have a problem today."

"Yeah, and just to make sure and keep it that way, I'm not taking any more calls. I don't feel good at all about getting uvvied by your Heritagist friend Je

A few hours later, just before Blaster was scheduled to land, Wendy and Stahn got a call. They expected it to be Blaster, but it was Frangipane, her petals blushing and a-flutter.

"Bonjour," said the moldie. "There's no good way to explain about this, Wendy, but it seems we in the Nest are finally ready to attempt a full Gurdle Decryption with a moldie as host. We have tested it on some Silly Putters this morning, and now we're going to try it on you. It seems safer with you out in space, and with wise old Senator Mooney inside you. Be of good courage!"

A sudden sharp crackle of petabyte information hiss came over the uvvy—a virus!

Stahn told Wendy to turn it off, but Wendy was already gone. The noise lasted for what seemed like a very long time, the sound so densely fractal and impossible to ignore that Stahn started hearing nutso voices in it. And there was nothing to do but grit his teeth until finally the co

"Whooop whooop whooop whooop—"

"What's the matter, Wendy?"

"Whooop whooop whooop whooop whooop whooop—"

Frangipane's info had set Wendy to shivering. She was so tightly linked to Stahn that he could see down into her and feel it like it was happening to himself.

Piezoplastic vibrations deep inside Wendy were crisscrossing and spewing cascades of phonons down into the live net of her quasicrystalline structure.

And the structure was spontaneously deforming like someone was turning a dial on the Tessellation Equation, causing the structure of Wendy's plastic to slide-whistle its way up the scale through 4D, 5D, 6D, 7D… on and on, with each level happening twice as fast as the one before, so that—it felt like to Stahn, at least—Wendy was going through infinitely many dimensional arrangements in each second. And then starting right up again. Whooop whooop whooop whooop.

Wendy's imipolex was like a sca

"*Ffzzzt!* crackle go

At first Stahn was in denial. "Aw, Wendy, why you gotta lay such a weird trip on me, us floating here in outer space halfway to the Moon, I mean what the—"

"What ma

The sincerity of the question struck a chill into Stahn's heart. "Stop it, Wendy! Wendy?"