"The man-hungry little moon-maid has a nasty mouth," said Kevvie regally. Her eyes were unforgiving. "I don't tolerate it. Begone!" She raised her hand as if she held a scepter. And now Phil glimpsed the purple tube of an alla in her hand.
It was over as soon as it started. Phil was turning to get in front of Yoke, Randy was leaning toward Kevvie, Yoke's mouth was opening to say something--but Kevvie's wish was fast as thought. In the same instant when Phil saw Kevvie's alla, a bright-line control mesh had already sprung into tight relief around Yoke's body and --poof--Yoke was gone, transmuted into a puff of air. Yoke's gold alla clattered to the stage and rolled to one side; it was the only sign of her that remained. Numbly, Phil picked it up. He couldn't wrap his mind around what had just happened. It was impossible. He'd just given Yoke Da's ring. They were going to be married. Everything was -- Phil pawed softly at the air that had been Yoke. Could she really be gone?
"See, Phil!" shouted Kevvie. "See!" Randy was trying to wrestle her to the ground.
"Kill her!" screamed Darla, and she, Tempest, and old Cobb moved forward to exact blood-vengeance. But Haresh didn't want any further violence. The alien sent Randy tumbling across the stage. And then Haresh picked up Kevvie and ran across the great hall, disappearing again through the far door.
"What's the use?" muttered Phil, as Darla tried to muster their forces for further pursuit. "Yoke's gone."
"Siss warned me something bad would happen," said Cobb, his body sagging. "But she said, um, Randy would know how to fix it."
"Where's Yoke's alla!" Randy was yelling, frantically crawling around on the stage. "Did anyone get it?"
"I got it," said Phil listlessly. "It's in my pocket."
"Well don't despair, old son." Randy's voice cracked with an odd jubilance. He looked around and lowered his voice. "Her alla remembers her. Body and mind both. Let's go back to Babs's where it's safe. We'll see if we can't whomp up a new realware Yoke."
"I --I want my Yoke," said Phil wretchedly. "I gave her Da's ring."
"Gonna be the same Yoke, Phil," said Randy, putting his arm around Phil's shoulder. "That's all we are: information. Come on."
"But we're not just information," murmured Phil brokenly, as Randy led him toward the door to the bar. "There's souls. I saw them in hyperspace. I had so much to tell everyone. Ow!" Ramses Snooks had just slammed into him.
"Where are those new moldies!" Ramses was shouting. He
O
had a phalanx of twenty Snooks moldies behind him. "That old woman said they're aliens! We have to exterminate them!" He and Isis were carrying serious-looking flamethrowers, and most of the other Snookses were packing O. J. ugly-stick rail-guns, each of them capable of shooting a thousand flechettes per minute. They surged into the ballroom, with Tempest following along, looking bloodthirsty and vindictive.
"They've gone up the back stairs to the deck!" called Kevvie, suddenly appearing from the far door again. "Someone stop them! They mustn't leave without me! I'm --I'm their Queen!"
"Keep goin', gaaahs," Randy murmured to Babs, Cobb, Phil, and Darla. They were already out in the bar. "Don't go after Kevvie. Might just get another of us killed. Only thing we gotta do now is get back to Babs's and fix Yoke before something happens to her alla. Up the stairs and out!"
So Phil stumbled up the stairs with the others. They got up top before the Snookses did, and sure enough, the seven Metamartians were on the deck, standing in a circle holding hands -- or legs in the case of tiny Josef, who hung suspended between devilish Peg and sinister Siss.
Jostled by a knot of bewildered lifters, Phil was seized with a sudden terror that he'd lost Yoke's alla. He dug out the contents of his pocket. His fuzz-knife, his "fishbowl," and, yes, Yoke's alla. Wubwub happened to look over at Phil just then, and did kind of a double take, as if he was surprised at the stuff in Phil's hands.
But then the Snookses had arrived. At the very last moment before they opened fire on the aliens, the air around the Metamartians flickered, and a silvery disk-shape formed to enclose them. The supersonic flechettes from the rail-guns bounced off the silver disk like hail off a tin roof; the hot tongues from the flamethrowers licked against the disk as harmlessly as water on a stone. The flying saucer lifted slowly into the sky, gave a twitch and shot off toward the heartland at an incalculable speed. Kevvie stood in the center of the deck, stretching up her arms and screaming that she wanted to come along. Tempest and her dog got into a Snooks moldie and headed for Santa Cruz. And Phil and his friends hurried down the gangplank toward Babs's warehouse, not looking back.
CHAPTER SIX
YOKE, BARS, RANDY, YOKE
Yoke, February 26
"Pig!" is what Yoke had been about to shout --defiant to the last. But the sound never made it to her lips. As soon as Kevvie said "Begone," Yoke felt the alla-mesh tingling on her skin, and the next instant she was air. There was an uncanny moment of transition when Yoke was still materially alive --her old flesh patterns fleetingly preserved as worming, ionized air. But the currents and charges quickly dissipated, and then every physical remnant of the pattern that had been Yoke Starr-Mydol's body was gone.
I'm dead, thought Yoke. I'm a ghost!
She could sense the people who'd been all around her just now, not that she could see them anymore, but she could feel their presence: her mother, and Babs and Randy, and Phil -- had she really said she'd marry him? Kevvie's vibe was out there too. Triumphant.
Yoke convulsed in a spasm of stark hatred. It was disorienting, and when she tried to find Ma and the others again, she couldn't. It was like being blindfolded and feeling around in a china shop with baseball-bat arms, even-thing getting smashed and falling apart, oh no this was the end -- but, wait, what about her alla? Randy had said her alla could remember her, which meant--what? Yoke couldn't seem to think logically, there was dark slush all around her and something was coming for her, something making a sound that wasn't a sound.
Krunk krunk krunk.
It was prying at her--ow--scraping at her like she was a stain on a piece of cloth -- krunk krink krunky -- oh this felt bad. And then she was drifting out into some other level, she was out of normal space entirely and -- yes! -- she could see something bright.
It was a light, a White Light. Yoke was flying gladly toward it. God. There were others flying with her. Yoke flashed a vision of someone driving a car in a snowstorm with the snow-flakes flying into the headlights, not that Yoke had ever seen snow in real life, but now she did see it, she was the driver, tasting coffee in her mouth, and then she was one of the snowflakes, rushing through the cold black toward the car, yet never reaching it, as if the path to the Light were being stretched.
Yoke was a flat little thing endlessly tumbling after the Light. It felt good to do this, she was happy, getting good vibes off that Light but--zow! -- now something shot past in front of her, a thing like a Bardo demon, gulping down a bunch of the snow-flakes, danger, danger--zow!--another one going by with something like a beak, but, oh well, nothing to be done, once you're dead the worst has already happened, right, and once you're born you're in for it too--zow! --"Hi, there!"
Yoke kept flying on toward the Light and kind of laughing at the Bardo demons, they made it interesting was all, the demons were woof shuttles for this tapestry, with Yoke and the other souls the world-line warp threads on the White Light loom, it was good and--zow!!-- why worry, the Light would take care of all things.
And then all of a sudden it was like in a flying dream when your dream self remembers you can't really fly--and you fall, pulled down from the heavens by reality's anchor-rope --"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaauuugh! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaauuugh! Aaaaaaaaaa-aaaauuugh!"