Realware

"You're the third person who's asked me that," said Yoke. "Am I missing out on something? I'm interested in diving the South Pacific, and since Onar had this anteater gig, he talked me into coming down here with him. I have a moldie friend named Cobb who rocketed us here from California, so it's not costing much of anything."

"Ah yes, Cobb the born-yet-again loonie moldie," said the King. "Thanks for not bringing him along tonight, Onar."

"But why?" protested Yoke. "Cobb's interesting. He built the first hoppers, after all. And he's the first human to have his software installed into moldie flesh."

The King gave Onar a frank look. "You've talked to her?"

"Yes," said Onar. "She's promised to keep mum."

"Cobb's a wild-card, Yoke," said the King. "He has so many contacts. We're afraid about whom he might tell our secrets. Frankly, we'd prefer to keep him out of the picture."

"Oh come on," said Yoke. "Cobb's like my bodyguard. And he's a family friend. I don't care what I promised Onar just now. I wasn't thinking straight. If you tell something to me, I can't keep it from Cobb. He needs to know what's going on so that he can protect me."

The King looked questioningly at Onar and Onar said, "We don't really have a choice, do we?"

"I suppose not," said the King. "But please, Yoke, don't you or Cobb tell this to any of your loonie friends. The secret is that we've contacted an alien intelligence. A being named Shimmer. She's living deep below the ocean here, in what's known as the Tonga Trench. She knows you. She had an encounter with you and your parents just a little over three months ago, at the Willy Taze isopod you mentioned. November sixth, 2053. Your parents tried to kill her." Shimmer! Yoke's stomach flip-flopped. She'd had a feeling this was coming. "She wants to get even?"

"Why would Shimmer be into that kind of kilp, honey?" said Vaana soothingly. She was standing behind the King's couch. "Shimmer's way too big for that. I bet she just wants to see you, Yoke. She probably digs your mind. When Shimmer was here talking to Bou-Bou she acted nice as pie."

Yoke felt frightened and angry. So Onar had been lying to her all along. She gave him a rough shove. "You deliberately lured me here! You don't like me for myself one bit. You fetched me like some bauble for your precious King. And I'm so stupid, I came for free."

"That's not the whole truth, Yoke," protested Onar. "I'm very attracted to you."

"And you killed Mr. Olou on purpose, didn't you!" Yoke's words popped out fast, and she saw something on their faces. She was getting in deeper every second.

"I think everyone could use some di

"It's nice to finally meet you in person," said Onar to Vaana, as if trying to steer the conversation back to a normal mode. "How do you come to know HRH?"

"Well, my family nest was down in the flats of Oakland," said the womanly green moldie. "I got it together and landed a phat job in the wetware engineering labs at Stanford U. I met Bou-Bou when he was taking Wet E 202. I helped him invent a new kind of coconut for his class project. Less grease and mo' protein. Ought to been a miracle for the Tongan diet."

"Except the Tongans won't eat my new coconuts or even feed them to their pigs," said the King over his shoulder. "The flesh is a ghastly greenish hue. Wet E was never my thing. Here we are then, the royal dining room. Our main course will be Tongan lobster in a coconut cream sauce over steamed taro root. Nontweaked coconut, of course. I think we have some local melon as well. A glass of champagne, Yoke?"

"All right. Why not."

The three humans sat down at the dining table and Vaana discreetly withdrew. A kind-faced Tongan woman named Kika served them their food. Yoke and Onar were very hungry, and the King ate with a ready appetite as well. The first course of the meal was a green melon with tiny orange balls on it which were, the King informed them, the fruiting body of a special kind of Tongan seaweed. The second course was a curried pork broth.

"What was it like, Yoke?" Onar asked presently. "When all the moldies at Taze's isopod turned into aliens that day?"

"It was wavy," said Yoke. With the food and the champagne she was feeling a little more relaxed. "They were so interesting, so wise. Shimmer especially. Shimmer comes from a place where they have two-dimensional time. The extra time dimension is like possibility, of worlds that could be. That's why my parents couldn't shoot Shimmer. Even though the time in our part of the cosmos is only one-dimensional, Shimmer can see the ghosts of all the future maybes and she can actualize the right one. She's always where the bullet isn't." Kika removed the soup plates and began bringing in the lobster. Yoke was, on the whole, glad to be eating this meal. "But now you two answer some questions. Shimmer's the one who's siphoning off Cappy Jane's bandwidth, right?"

"Very clever, Yoke," said Onar. "Yes, the King gave Shimmer permission to gather and process data through Cappy Jane, so there's been a lot of traffic between those two. Cappy Jane's been wi

"The Tongan Extragalactic Signal Survey," said the King, smiling.

"Moldies are even more leery of aliens than the humans," said Onar. "With good reason. Their computational architecture is very susceptible to invasion. If Cappy Jane knew this stuff was for Shimmer, she probably wouldn't help us no matter how much we pay her."

"Vaana knows about Shimmer," said Yoke. "And she's not objecting."

"Yes," said the King. "But Vaana expects to share in the benefits of helping Shimmer. Now that you know, Yoke, that makes five humans and four moldies who are in on the secret. You, Onar, me, Oofa, Ke

"Mr. Olou didn't know," said Yoke. "And instead of telling him the truth, Onar killed him."

"Mr. Olou was unreliable," said the King. "A loose ca

"So what was in that pale vine signal?" asked Yoke.

"That was a red herring," laughed Onar. "I didn't really unpack the vine signal at all. Wouldn't know how to. What I did in cyberspace with you and Olou was just theater. The jellyfish thing, that was something I brought along stored in that inlaid coffin like a jack-in-the-box. I copied it off some phreaks who were using it to protect their clubhouse. I'd never tested it before, you understand, and I had no idea it would be lethal. The idea was just to frighten Olou and to impress you, Yoke. I was reckless and negligent, yes. But please don't think I'm a mind-assassin."