Realware

"What's the ship's name?"

"Anubis. It's decorated all ancient Egyptian. It used to be a party boat, and before that it was a freighter."

They walked the rest of the block hand in hand, the crazy urgent yelling of the Snooks moldies and their customers getting louder.

"On the Moon we hardly mingle with moldies at all," said Yoke. "They stay in their underground Nest and we stay in the Einstein dome."

'A shiny gold moldie came humping across the street like a big inchworm and reared up in front of them. He had a stylized chin-beard and a striped scarf on his head just like a pharaoh. "Come aboard the ship Anubis, spiritual seekers. We feature the stuzziest camote in town. Key a timewave to ancient Egypt."

"It's just me, Thutmosis," said Phil.

"Neighbor Phil?" said the moldie, peering closer. "The eternal return. Metempsychosis. Yet never the same river twice. Who's the woman?"

"I'm Yoke Starr-Mydol," said Yoke. "I've just come here from the Moon."

"How about those crazy loonie moldies?" asked Thutmosis. "Are they still kidnapping Earth moldies?"

"Maybe they are," said Yoke, cocking her thumbs and pointing her forefingers at Thutmosis like guns. "Maybe I'm about to put a leech-DIM on you. Better run!" Thutmosis Snooks grunted and went undulating back toward his ship. Phil undid the heavy locks on his warehouse door and ushered Yoke inside. The lights were on; Derek was in his workshop in the far corner, doing something with one of his air-sculpture machines. Umberto the dog peered watchfully out from under Derek's workbench. Derek caught Phil's eye right away and pointed meaningfully toward the bathroom. Phil's heart sank as he went to look. Yoke followed along behind.

There was a throw of skin in the bathtub, bumpily billowing like a sheet with lovers under it. Now the mass surged and Phil could see four eyes in two faces; it was Kevvie and Klara Bio, merged together into one ungainly bod; the skin was theirs.

"Hi there, Phil and Yoke," said Kevvie, except it seemed like she said it out of Klara Bio's mouth, a somewhat hard-looking mouth in a rough-ski

"Naranjo told me you went off with Yoke," said Kevvie, talking out of her own mouth now. "So I brought Klara over here to help me wait for you." Slowly, she sat up in the tub. Her neck and shoulders pulled free of Klara. Her still-fused breasts stretched and jiggled.

"Phil, I'm going back to Babs's," said Yoke, and in an instant she was across the floor and out the door into the shadows.

"You're trying to sneak around," said Kevvie. She looked wildly unpretty. "You like that little moon-maid more than me. Her and her bullshit about aliens with no flying saucers."

With a sudden great wallowing motion, Klara tore completely loose and got up out of the tub. "You're a zerk, Phil," she said, pulling on her clothes and pushing past him. "You have no idea how much Kevvie loves you."

Kevvie went on a crying jag then, and Phil held her. She felt unsettlingly fluid--as if she might pop. After a while Phil helped her to go up to their room and get into bed. As soon as she lay down, she nodded out. He went back downstairs.

"This isn't good, Phil," said Derek. "Calla wants to evict you two."

"Is she in her room?"

"No, man, she walked in on them in the bathroom with her date, and he's this very clean wetware engineer, so you can imagine. They went back to his place in Cole Valley."

"And you?"

"You know me, Phil, I'm an anarchist. I think it's wavy to have two skanks merged in our tub. Local color. But I'm worried about Umberto here." Derek leaned down to pet his dog, who'd perked up at the sound of his name. "I'm afraid Kevvie might really hurt him one of these times. She doesn't like him, fine, I can accept that. But when Kevvie's lifted she gets so harsh and rigid, you wave? Like a killer robot. And I don't like cleaning up after her either." Derek's attention turned back to the machine he was working on. "Hey, I've got this new effect, man. Cha

"I have to go back out, Derek."

"Oh no you don't."

"Kevvie's asleep for the night, Derek. When she gets like this it means she took quaak or gabba behind the merge."

"I don't want to be sitting here with her crying and melting on my shoulder when she gets up to puke, man."

"I promise I'll be right back, Derek. I just want to run over to Babs's."

"To try and square it with that other girl. What's up with her?" Derek did something to make his fire tongue reach way across the room toward Phil.

"Confess to the fire-god, my son."

"I think I love her," said Phil as the cool flames licked all about him.

"Go in peace."

Phil's simple declaration to Derek crystallized his feelings. He had to find Yoke and tell her. He hurried back outside.

Across the street some wasted sporeheads were capering along the ship's railing, doing the flat-footed newt dance that sporeheads always did, their diagonally opposite legs and arms rising and falling together. A purple Snooks moldie named Ramses was playing them some trance music from a long horn he'd grown out of his nose. Gold Thutmosis came bustling over once again.

"Was that moon-girl really packing a leech-DIM?" Thutmosis wanted to know. Moldies were terrified of leech-DIMs, which were control patches that could turn them into slaves. For the sake of human-moldie relations, the leech-DIMs were illegal, just as were the thinking-cap devices that moldies could use to enslave humans. But there was a lively commerce in both products just the same.

"Where did she go?" Phil countered.

"Back the way she came."

Phil took off ru

"Where's Yoke?" demanded Phil.

"Out flying," said Babs. "Onar bought Cobb that sheet of piezoplastic from me. And then Cobb grew wings and took Yoke and Onar out to see the Golden Gate Bridge. Yoke knew you'd come back, Phil. She said she didn't want to see you again tonight. Maybe you should try again in the morning."

"Let me introduce you, Phil," said Saint, kindly changing the subject. "Randy Karl Tucker. He's Cobb's great-grandson."

"Hi guy," said the lanky yokel, only it sounded more like "Haaah gaaah." He had pale hair and a narrow head. He was dressed in very generic clothes: white shirt and black pants. "This is a stuzzy art scene y'all got goin' here," he opined.

"If I could get my dad to give me the money, I wouldn't mind buyin' me one o' these warehouses. Reckon a fella can do pretty much whatever he wants here." He smiled at Babs.

"Put the worms back now, Randy," said Babs. "You're going to hurt them. Randy just got back here from Real Compared To What, Phil. That moldie sex-club in North Beach?"

"Oh yeah," said Phil noncommittally.

"I laaahked what I saw," said Randy. "But I didn't have the dough for a real date with a San Francisco moldie. I'm still all fired up."

"Gnarly!" whooped Saint. "A true cheeseball."

"It's a lift," said Randy mildly. "Don't knock it if you ain't tried it."