Realware

Sproing!

Something like an enormous cube of gelatin was now bobbing in the sea, just barely afloat. A giggly, shuddery gelatin, alive with pulsing colors. Truly something for nothing. What was that Josef had said about the working of the alla? "Quark flipping is like jujitsu. As if to look at something and then to look at it in a different way."

'Tow!" exclaimed one of the Cappy Jane bird heads, eyeing the imipolex. Ordinarily, moldies reproduced in pairs, each acquiring half the necessary imipolex for new scion and each contributing about half of the newborn's nervous system and software. But given an opportunity like this, a moldie could reproduce all alone. If you gave a moldie a seventy kilogram chunk of imipolex, it could replicate itself in seconds -- provided it hadn't done so within the last six months.

The six-month condition had to do with the fact that, when reproducing, a moldie's system generated a growth hormone that spurred its mold-and-algae nervous system to speed-grow a fresh nervous system into virgin imipolex. Six months was how long it took a moldie's body to generate a sufficient amount of its reproductive growth hormone.

The big Cappy Jane pie undulated over to the cube and began madly pecking away. Minutes later there were two pies. Due to the growth hormone limitation, the Cappy Jane moldies couldn't reproduce any further than that, but for a while they kept pecking, bulking up their bodies with additional imipolex. Each of them grew to as large a size as his or nervous system could handle, and then they pooped out, leaving most of the gnawed imipolex cube still floating in the water.

"Urp," belched the nearest Cappy Jane beak. "What a blowout. A clone-fest. I wish I had enough mold in me to breed over and over and over. Where did you get that terrific tool, Sue?"

"From some aliens," said Yoke, not thinking to lie.

"Yeek!" screeched the pie-bird. "Aliens! Find them! Kill them! Emergency!" The pie lifted awkwardly out of the water, little take-off jets firing out of its underside. It was slow and heavy from having incorporated as much imipolex as it could possibly hold.

"Being a grex down here sucks," cawed one of the birds in the flying pie, and twitched itself free. The disk broke up into pieces then, into twenty-four awkward-looking moldies. For now the other pie kept its integrity, floating there in the water. The freed Cappy Jane birds looked like featherless pelicans. Or maybe pterodactyls.

Back beyond the pie and the squawky birds, Yoke could glimpse the navy launch trying to circle around toward them. A figure was standing in the bow, tiny at this distance.

"The Metamartians are our--" Yoke had been about to say "friends," but then she remembered Phil's last warning. About how Shimmer had deliberately told the powerball to swallow her mother. But if the Cappy Janes wiped out the aliens, that might scotch any hope of getting Phil and Darla back.

"What?" croaked the closest Cappy Jane bird. "What did you say about the aliens, Sue? Metamartians you call them?"

"I'm not sure they're enemies," said Yoke lamely.

"Who knows where the Metamartians are?" screeched one of the birds still in the pie. "I want our grex to be the one to get them! Let's test some poofballs, guys!" Like a flock of pistons, the birds in the pie rose and fell, successively belching out little balls of imipolex that burst into flame once they were well up into the air.

"Yee haw!" crowed one of the birds raucously. "Follow me to kill the Metamartians! I just found out their location from Squanto!"

"Ooops," said Cobb.

"Oh, Squanto," said Yoke.

"It's hard, dammit," said Cobb. "That Cappy Jane kept nosing at me and asking stuff about Vava'u and somehow an image popped out. I showed her the aliens looking out of that cave on the beach. But that's all. I'm sorry. Anyway, you're the one who really blew it. 'Where did you get that wonderful tool, Sue?' " Rather than probing any further, the Cappy Jane creatures lifted off in hot pursuit of the aliens. The leathery birds spread out their rumpled new wings. The great wobbly pie launched itself on steamy jets and, once airborne, began flapping like a stingray.

"I hope they find "em," said Vaana. "Aliens mean trouble, Bou-Bou. Especially for moldies. They can move their minds right into a moldie's body. They talk about freeware, 'cept we the ones that get taken for free. It's just as well if things get back to normal here."

"I suppose so," said the King. "And we're still lovers?"

"Sho'," said Vaana. "And the rest of the imipolex here, that's for my people, right?"

"We already had a lot of your 'people' clean the imipolex out of our ship, Vaana. It was -- daunting. I think it best to get rid of this. We've already had too much attention."

"Let me fill up," said Vaana, and assimilated as much of the imipolex as she could hold --swelling to perhaps twice her usual size. "I'm not quite ready to reproduce yet," she said. "But Lord knows when the time comes I'll be ready. You say all the other locals got some plastic too?"

"I don't know about all, but it sure seemed like a lot of them," said Yoke. "I think the King's right about getting rid of this evidence."

"Okay," said Vaana.

Yoke sent her control mesh out over the sullenly floating imipolex cube and turned it back into seawater, complete with an assortment of local diatoms and plankton.

"Cobb and I are ready to leave, aren't we, Cobb?" said Yoke.

"Okay," said the old man. "Did we finish doing whatever we came here for?"

"Diving," said Yoke. "I came here to dive. And Phil came to find me. We did have one good morning of snorkeling. I saw a wonderful little fish in a staghorn coral. And a giant clam."

"Don't forget the whale and squid," said Cobb.

"Do you think the Cappy Janes will kill the aliens?" asked Yoke. Cobb's answer was drowned out in the roar of the navy launch that pulled up next to them. Aboard were Ke

Ke

"Let's bail," Yoke said to Cobb. "Before everyone starts in on me again."

"Okay," said Cobb.

"Thanks awfully," said the King, still bobbing on Vaana's back. He extended his hand and Yoke shook it. "Do come visit Tonga again. Could I ask you one last favor?"

"You want more gold," groaned Yoke.

"Just, you know, as you're flying away, buzz the ship and put a few more tons in the hold? I'll tell the captain not to fire on you. It would be so lovely to have our budget balanced. I did get you the alla, you know. You're fixed for life now, Yoke. You're a golden goose."

"Honk honk," sighed Yoke, looking down at her alla. "Though I may end up throwing this thing into the ocean. So all right, one last favor. And in return, Bou-Bou, I want you to do whatever you can to block any publicity about me and the alla. Don't tell anything to the Cappy Janes. Stick to the Sue Miller and Squanto cover-up. And I hope the Tongan moldies don't know too much?"

"Tashtego and Daggoo know more than the others," said the King. "But so far I've been able to trust them as much as Vaana. The moldies who came and stole all the imipolex from the ship didn't know who you were or where it came from. And the local people won't talk much --and if they do, nobody will believe them. Nobody listens to Tongans. Let's do our best to consider this entire interlude expunged from the historical record. Deny, deny, deny. It's best this way for all of us. I wouldn't want the Fijians to know I'm selling fairy gold."