Realware

"Feeling better, Cobb?" said Onar.

"Vaana dosed me," said Cobb. "Do you know where Yoke can buy me some quantum dots?"

Onar shook his head and began, "And I'm afraid that's -- "

But Mrs. Yoshida interrupted him. "I can sell you some dots, Yoke. My husband, bless his soul, bought too big a supply of them for his boat and they're just sitting on a shelf in a magnetic bottle. You pay cash?"

"I'll do a transfer," said Yoke, picking up her uvvy. "How much?"

"Hold on," said Mrs. Yoshida, and disappeared into the kitchen, quickly returning with a shiny gray bottle. She shook the little bottle and held it up to the light. "The meter says there's half a terawatt left. You want it all?"

"Yeah," said Cobb. "If it's too expensive for Yoke, my grandson Willy can pay you back."

"Like he's really going to want to pay all your bills," said Yoke. "But sure, let's do it. Pop loaded up my $Web account for this trip. He'd definitely want you healthy, Cobb." She glanced at Onar, who looked to be bursting with objections. "You haven't met my pop, Onar. And you better hope you never do."

"Whitey's a bad-ass," agreed Cobb. "For true. By the way, Onar, why do you think Vaana tried to poison me?"

"I'm sure she didn't mean to," said Onar. "She's just wild that way. Ever since she's moved in with the King."

"I think it is a crying shame," put in Waloo, setting out some fresh toast and coffee. "HRH should be making a prince. We don't like our Tu'i Tonga to be a cheeseball." She favored Yoke with a frank, inquisitive gaze. "Are you that way with your moldie?"

"God no," said Yoke. "Only men are skanky enough to fuck plastic." The women laughed.

Yoke do

"Spinach!" said Cobb, flexing like a bodybuilder. His biceps swelled to the size of hams; his legs grew sinewy as tree trunks. "Boing and a boing and a ya-yahoo! Should I torture loverboy till he tells us all his secrets?" He took a step toward the seated Onar.

"Can everyone calm down?" snapped Onar. "I still think it would be better for Yoke to dive inside of one of our local moldies today. In case something goes wrong. Get away from me, Cobb. You reek."

Yoke waited until Mrs. Yoshida and Waloo were out of earshot and answered Onar in an angry whisper. "You want to have Tashtego or Daggoo offer me up to Shimmer like a human sacrifice! Trussed on a platter with an apple in my mouth."

"We just don't want there to be any trouble," hissed Onar. "And Cobb's always spelled trouble. In all of his lives. We only want for today's meeting to go smoothly and for Shimmer to give you the real ware."

"What's that?" asked Cobb, too loud.

"I don't really know," said Onar, stubbornly staring down at his cup. "Hurry up and eat your breakfast, Yoke. Cobb, why don't you wait on the porch so I can drink my coffee without vomiting."

And then they were out in the Sea Cuke dive boat: Oofa, Yoke, and Onar; Daggoo, Tashtego, and Cobb. Tashtego and Daggoo looked like ca

Yoke ended up sitting next to Tashtego in the bow of the boat. Behind them sat Cobb and Onar, and in the stern were Oofa and Daggoo. After leaving the Nuku'alofa harbor, the boat circled around to the south side of the island, there to rise up on its hydrofoils and speed southeast across the open ocean. They slowed down once to view a pair of spouting sperm whales. Yoke wanted to dive in and get a good look at them, but Onar urged Oofa on.

By eleven a.m. the sun was incredibly hot and bright. The water-jet motor was whisper-quiet; the only sound was the hissing of the hydrofoils through the sea. For no particular reason Tashtego was making a great show of combing out his matted blond hair--really just strands of imipolex, of course --and one of his undulating arms bumped Yoke on the shoulder. Hard.

"Why behave like a fakaleiti?" snapped Yoke. She felt anxious and irritable; the light breakfast had worn off. "It doesn't make sense. A moldie is whatever sex it decides on at birth. So you're a male moldie, fine. If you wanted to, you could shape yourself like a human woman. Why take on the form of a man impersonating a woman? It's stupid."

"Fakaleiti make happy thing happen," said Tashtego, archly-looking down at his false breasts. As part of their images, he and Daggoo insisted on speaking a barbaric pidgin English. "Tashtego boom boom boy girl." He threw back his head and cackled. His teeth were as sharp and pointed as if they'd been filed. "You no dive in me today, Yoke? Me open up very good." Tashtego playfully split himself slightly open along a heretofore invisible seam down the front of his body. Like a clam cracking its shell open for a bit of water. The appearance of the savage Tashtego's halved face was deeply disturbing. Yoke shook her head and looked away. "I'm diving in Cobb and that's final."

"I'd like to dive in you, Tashtego," said Onar, who was eavesdropping over their shoulders. "I want to come along. More sunscreen, Yoke?"

"Thanks." It still seemed odd to Yoke to be bare beneath the sun. She was following the fair-ski

"How much further are we going?" she asked. "I don't see anything but open sea. We're going so fast that we must have come seventy miles by now."

"Oofa?" called Onar.

But Oofa was asleep, lounging back against Daggoo's sun-puddled body. Onar had to shake Oofa's bare foot to rouse her.

"No problem, soon come, the boat knows where to go," mumbled Oofa, rubbing her eyes and looking around. "We'll be near our dive-site when you can see 'Ata over there. And then you look for something like a lily pad." She waved her hand toward the starboard and relaxed back against Daggoo's smooth black flesh.

" 'Ata is the southernmost island of Tonga," explained Onar. "The deepest part of the Tonga Trench runs right past it. The Vityaz Deep. Better than six miles to the bottom. That's where Shimmer is."

Yoke felt a hollowness in her chest. "We're supposed to dive down six miles? I'd need a submarine for that. A bathyscaph, not a moldie wet suit."

"I be hard as you need, Yoke," leered Tashtego. Daggoo let out a carnivorous yelp of laughter.

"It's true," said Cobb. "We can switch our imipolex to a rigid form that's stronger than diamond. The loonie moldies taught me all the tricks."

"Why can't Shimmer just swim up to meet us?" wailed Yoke.

"She's shy," said Onar. "And, look, on the horizon over there, it's 'Ata! And here's Shimmer's ante

The boat came to a stop and sank down to bob in the slow ocean swells. Floating in the sea near them was a thick fleshy disk of silvery imipolex. Its upper surface was cupped like a parabolic dish.

"Ahoy, Turklee," called Tashtego, waving his snaky arms.