“We’re married,” laughed Babs. “It’s going to be so fun.” But there was a shrill edge to her gaiety. Disaster was stalking them all.
Everyone was there. Yoke’s bridesmaid was Joke, of course, and Babs’s was her art-gallery friend Kundry Asiz. Saint was Phil’s best man, and Corey Rhizome served as Randy’s.
Randy and Corey had taken quite a liking to each other over the last couple of weeks. One thing they had in common was that they were both really into garage-style limpware engineering. Corey even helped Yoke to finally get her imipolex coral working. Yoke’s new thing this week was growing her reefs in air instead of water; she’d started using DIM gnats for the polyps. In fact yesterday she’d grown a fabulous organic-looking headboard for her and Phil’s bed. It was a struggle to keep on doing things, with the murders and battles and bombing getting worse every day. But love and art still mattered; yes, they mattered more than hate and war.
The older generation at the wedding party included Darla and Whitey, Stahn and Wendy, Randy’s father Willy Taze, Phil’s mother Eve, and even Phil’s stepmother Willow. Phil’s Uncle Rex was there too, as well as his grandmother Isolde and his great-aunt Hildegarde, who had the most astonishing face. They all thought Yoke was wonderful, and said they’d known she was perfect for Phil when they’d seen him talking to her at poor Kurt’s funeral. Oh, and Randy’s newfound aunt Della Taze had turned up from San Diego, mainly to see Willy. Della had brought her aunt along, seventy-nine-year-old Isle, a bit wobbly and sour, but Cobb Anderson’s daughter nonetheless. Cobb was overwhelmed to see her.
Among the younger guests, Terri and Tre Dietz had come up from Santa Cruz with their kids Dolf and Wren, who were loving it. In honor of the happy day—and who knew how many more happy days there would be?—Randy and the Dietzes even made friends, with apologies and forgiveness all around. In fact little Wren was on the floor playing with Randy’s plastic chicken Willa Jean. Aarbie Kidd hadn’t been invited, but Theodore was there with a leather biker as his date. Derek and his dog Umberto had come with Kundry. There were plenty of others as well; in fact at the last minute, Yoke’s friends Kandie and Cocole had even turned up from the Moon, they said they’d been wanting to visit Earth anyway, so why not now, before it was all blown up.
There were even a few moldies among the guests. Phil had asked Isis Snooks, who’d been such a help with his blimps, and Isis had brought along the flashy Thutmosis as her date. Wendy and Cobb each had a few moldie friends, and they were there too. Thanks to the stinkeater bug, mixing with moldies wasn’t much of a problem anymore, so long as you had an open mind.
People were drinking champagne like there’d be no tomorrow, jabbering away like magpies, everyone jumping at every loud noise. In the last month, Dakar, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Belfast, Antwerp, and Paris had been hit by enormous bombs. Allas had repaired the buildings, but a lot of people had died. And just yesterday New York City had been bombed too. Everyone was on edge, waiting for the next thing to happen. And then it did.
“A flying saucer!” screamed Phil’s mother, Eve. “Look out, Phil! Oh, what if they’ve come for you again!”
The saucer hanging outside the ballroom windows was a traditional metal disk with a dome in the middle. The Metamartians’ ship.
“They can help us!” shouted Randy. “They can take away the allas!”
The frames and sashes of the windows quivered as if water were passing over them, and then the saucer had slid through the wall and into the ballroom. It rested there, cocked a bit toward one side, just fitting between floor and ceiling. A radial line appeared along the curve of the central dome, and then a pie-shaped sector of the curved metal slid open. Out came eight figures: the seven Metamartians from before, plus a new one, a gray little shape like a bald girl with big, almond-shaped eyes.
Yoke sniffed at the air—yes, there was the scent of old-fashioned moldies. The Metamartians hadn’t yet caught the stinkeater bug.
“We are here to salute the nuptials,” said Shimmer, holding up her hands and making soothing gestures. “Please remain calm, dear friends. We come in peace, seeking your aid. I am Shimmer from Metamars, and my companions are Ptah, Peg, Josef, Siss, Wubwub, Haresh. As many of you know, it is we and our god Om who have brought mankind and moldies the alla. And our gift has been mediated by these four whose marriages you celebrate today: Yoke, Phil, Randy, and Babs. We too have a blessed event to rejoice in: the birth of our sevenfold daughter Lova.” The gray little Lova bent her mouth up into a U-shaped smile and bowed, making flowing gestures with her long-fingered hands.
“Skip the bullshit and take away the fucking allas!” yelled Willow. “They’re ruining our world and you know it!”
“She’s right,” called Randy. “Tell Om to take the allas away!”
“Please, Om!” shouted Babs. “The allas are wrong for us. We aren’t ready.”
Lova bowed again.
“She’s butt-ugly,” said Yoke, all her tension rushing out into a sudden guffaw. “They’re making fun of us.”
“Careful,” said Darla, coming up behind Yoke. “They’re going to ask for something big. It’s like in a fairy tale. The witches at the princess’s wedding.”
“You right, Darla,” said Wubwub. “But what we after is no big thing: we need help gettin’ outta here is all. We don’t know which way to go toward two-dimensional time. And we got the notion one of you can help us. How ‘bout it, Phil?”
Yoke threw her arms around Phil. “You leave him alone!”
“Wait!” said Phil, digging in his pocket. “Maybe it’s this thing—” He pulled out his little black ball with the bright spots inside it. “Is this what you need, Wubwub? The fishbowl thing I got from Om? It’s a star map, isn’t it? Turn off the allas and use the star map to go.”
“It’s a map, but it ain’t gonna help us none,” said Wubwub, showing his crooked, yellow teeth in a long smile. “But let me see it anyhow.”
“Throw it to him, Phil!” said Yoke. “Don’t let him come near you!”
So Phil tossed his little ball, and Wubwub caught it. The Metamartians pressed forward to peer at it, and the beetle Josef actually crawled around upon it.
“Yes, Om already gave me one of these through my alla,” said Shimmer shortly. “It’s a star map, but it’s of no use. It only shows your part of the cosmos. Your map shows your zone, and we have another map that shows our zone, the good part of the cosmos with two-dimensional time. But there’s no master map that shows the interdimensional connection. We can’t find the passage, and we can’t understand Om’s explanations of where it is.”
There was an explosion somewhere outside, not too terribly distant. A few of the guests screamed.
“Turn off the allas right now!” cried Yoke. “Can’t you see they’re a disaster?”
“We can ask Om to do it,” said Ptah quietly. “In fact Om can even disactualize all of the bombs and weapons that people’s allas have made. Turn them back into air. All this can happen—provided that one of you will help us on our way. It’s your ability to dream that we need, you see. Human dreaming is a rudimentary reaching out toward two-dimensional time. If one of you comes with us as we travel out across your galaxy, then we can watch this person repeatedly sleep and dream—and we’ll be able to sniff our way out toward the fat part of time. We need a harbor pilot, in other words. A native guide. So how about it, Phil? You can bring Yoke if you like.”
A sudden mesh of alla-control lines appeared around the seven Metamartians. It was Whitey, standing at Yoke’s side, holding out his alla and trying to turn the aliens into air. But at the instant Whitey said “Actualize,” each of the aliens hopped off to one side. Whitey accomplished nothing more than turning some air into air.