The Ware Tetralogy - Rudy Rucker (popular ebook readers .TXT) 📗

through the floor and saved me. He took me to watch the nursie take you apart. Ralph and the nursie taped you, and then the nursie grabbed Ralph Numbers and taped him, too. The diggers said… ”

Cobb’s face was working, as if he were arguing with a voice in his head. Now he interrupted. “Mr. Frostee wants to kill you, Sta-Hi. He says that if it weren’t for you blowing up GAX, the big boppers would have won.”

Cobb was twitching all over, as if he could hardly control himself. His voice grew thin and odd. “I’m not a puppet. Sta-Hi is my friend. I have free will.”

The words seemed to cost him a great effort. His eyes kept straying to a hunting-knife lying on his desk.

“No!” Cobb said, shaking his head jerkily. It wasn’t clear who he was talking to. “I’m not your hand. I’m your conscience! I’m a…”

Suddenly his voice stopped. The features of his face clenched in a final spasm and then slid back into the serene curves of Mel Nast. The thick lips parted to complete Cobb’s sentence.

“... hallucination. But this robot-remote is, in the last analysis, mine. I have temporarily had to evict Dr. Anderson.” The hand snaked over to pick up the knife.

Sta-Hi jumped to his feet and vaulted out of the tank in one motion. He hit the floor running, with the robot close behind.

The door out to the hall was open, and Sta-Hi managed to slam it behind him, gaining a few seconds. He got the second door closed too, closed tight, and he had his cab started by the time the robot came charging out.

Sta-Hi ignored it, and aimed his cab at the black panel truck parked across the lot. He revved the engine up to a chattering scream and peeled out.

The robot jumped onto his hood and punched his fist through the windshield. Sta-Hi squinted against the flying glass and kept the car aimed at the truck. He had it up to fifty kph by the time it hit.

The air-bag in the steering column burst out, punching Sta-Hi in the face and chest, keeping him in his seat. An instant later the bag was limp and the car was stopped. Sta-Hi’s lip had split. There was blood in his mouth. The car lights were out, and it was hard to see what had happened.

Footsteps came running across the parking lot.

“What happened? Sta-Hi? Mel?” It was Wendy. Sta-Hi got out of his cab. The girl ran past him, to reach out to the figure crushed between the cab and the dented side of the black van.

“Back up, Sta-Hi! Quick!”

But now the black van was moving instead. Its engine, already on, roared louder, and it backed out, grinding the pinned robot-remote against the cab’s hood. It looked like steam was leaking from a hole in the truck’s side.

The driverless van flicked its lights on, and Sta-Hi could make out the face of the broken robot slumped across his cab’s hood. The blank eyes may have seen him or not, but then the lips moved. It was saying…

“Look out!” Sta-Hi screamed, snatching Wendy back and flinging their bodies to shelter on the ground behind the cab.

The robot-remote exploded, just like the other one had, back in the cottage on Cocoa Beach.

As the ringing of the explosion died out in their ears, they could hear the black van’s engine, roaring south on Route One.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

As soon as Mr. Frostee seized control of the remote, Cobb was utterly shut off from the outside world. As during his first transition, he felt a growing disorientation, an increasing blurring of all distinctions. But this time it stopped before getting completely out of control. Vision returned, and with it the ghosts of hands and feet. He was driving the truck.

“I’m sorry to have done that, Cobb. I was angry. It seemed essential to me to disassemble that young man as soon as possible.”

“What’s happened?” Cobb cried voicelessly. There was something funny about his vision. It was as if he were perched on top of the truck, instead of being behind the wheel. But yet he could feel the wheel, twitching back and forth as he steered the truck south. “What’s happened?” he asked again.

“I just blew up my last remote. We’re going to have to find someone to front for us. One of the Personetics people in Daytona.”

“Your remote? That was supposed to be my body! I thought you said I had free will!”

“You still do. I can’t make you change your mind about anything. But that body was mine as much as yours.”

“Then how can I see? How can I drive?”

“The truck itself is a sort of body. There’s two camera eyes that I can stick out of the roof. You’re seeing through them. And I’ve turned the servos for manipulating the truck’s controls over to you as well. We may have our occasional differences. Cobb, but I still trust you. Anyway, you’re a better driver than I.”

“I can’t believe this,” Cobb wailed. “Don’t you have any survival instinct at all? I could have talked Sta-Hi into working with us!”

“He was the one who blew up GAX,” Mr. Frostee replied. “And now the war is lost. BEX told me about it on the broadcast last week. Disky has reverted to complete anarchy. They’ve smashed most of MEX, and there’s talk of disassembling TEX and even BEX as well. The final union is still… inevitable. But for now it looks as if… ”

“As if what?” Cobb asked. There was a resigned and fatalistic edge to Mr. Frostee’s words which terrified him.

“It’s like waves, Cobb. Waves on the beach. Sometimes a wave comes up very far, past the tide line. A wave like that can carve out a new channel. The big boppers were a new channel. A higher form of life. But now we’re sliding back… back into the sea, the sea of possibility. It doesn’t matter. It’s right, what you told the kids. Possible existence is as good as real existence.”

They were driving into Daytona now. Lights flashed by. One of Cobb’s “eyes” watched the road, and the other scanned the sidewalk, looking for one of the Personetics followers. The girls whored and the boys dealt dope. But it was so hard to remember their faces!

“You know,” Mr. Frostee said. “You know he split the panels?”

“What do you mean?” There was nothing but darkness, and the two spots of vision, and the controls of the truck.

“There’s heat leaking in from where your friend rammed us. The temperature’s up five degrees. One more, and our circuits melt down. Thirty seconds, maybe.”

“Am I on tape somewhere else?” Cobb asked. “Is there a copy on the Moon?”

“I don’t know,” Mr. Frostee said. “What’s the difference?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Wendy got the keys for the red sedan, and Sta-Hi drove them back to Daytona. They didn’t talk much, but it was not a strained silence.

The police were all around the truck when they found it. Driverless, it had veered off the road, snapped a fire-hydrant, and smashed in the front of a Red Ball liquor-store. The police were worried about looting, and at first they wouldn’t let Sta-Hi and Wendy through the line.

“That’s my father!” Wendy screamed. “That’s my father’s truck!”

“She’s right!” Sta-Hi added. “Let my poor wife through!”

“He’s not in the truck now,” a cop said, letting them approach. “Hey chief,” he called then. “Here’s two individuals who say they knew the driver.”

The chief walked over, none other than Action Jackson. He had a mind like an FBI file, and recognized Sta-Hi instantly. “Young Mooney! Maybe you could enlighten me as to what the hail is goin on?”

The crash had widened the rip in the truck’s side, and clouds of helium were billowing out. The gas itself was invisible, but the low temperature filled the air with a mist of ice-crystals. A by-product of breathing the helium-rich air was that everyone’s voice was coming out a bit high-pitched.

“There’s a giant robot brain in the back,” Sta-Hi piped. “A big bopper. It’s the same one that killed my father and tried to eat my brain.”

Jackson looked doubtful. “A truck tried to eat your brain?” He raised his voice, “Hey, Don! You and Steve open it up! See what’s in back!”

“Be careful!” Wendy squeaked, but by then the door was open. When the mist dispersed you could see Don and Steve reaching in and poking around with billy-clubs. There was a sound of breaking glass.

“Whooo-ee!” Don called. “Got nuff goodies in here to open us a Radio Shack! Steve and me saw it first!” He swirled his club around, and there was more tinkling from inside the truck.

The others walked over to look in. The truck was lying half keeled-over. There was a lot of frost inside, like in a freezer chest. The liquid-helium vessel that had surrounded Mr. Frostee was broken and there in the center was a big, intricate lump of chips and wires.

“Who was drivin?” Action Jackson wanted to know.

“It could drive itself,” Sta-Hi said. “I rammed it and made a hole. It must have heated up too much.”

“You a hero, boy,” Jackson said admiringly. “You may amount to something yet.”

“If I’m a hero, can I leave now?”

A hard glance, and then a nod. “All right. You come in tomorrow make a deposition and I might could get you a reward.”

Sta-Hi helped himself to a bottle from the liquor-store window and went back to the car with Wendy. He let her drive. She pulled down a ramp onto the beach, and they parked on the hard sand. He got the bottle open: white wine.

“Here,” Sta-Hi said, passing her the wine. “And why did you say he was your father?”

“Why did you say I was your wife?”

“Why not?”

The moon scudded in and out of clouds, and the waves came in long smooth tubes.

WETWARE

For Philip K. Dick 1928-1982

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

CHAPTER ONE

PEOPLE THAT MELT

December 26, 2030

It was the day after Christmas, and Stahn was plugged in. With no work in sight, it seemed like the best way to pass the time… other than drugs, and Stahn was off drugs for good, or so he said. The twist-box took his sensory input, jazzed it, and passed it on to his cortex. A pure software high, with no somatic aftereffects. Staring out the window was almost interesting. The maggies left jagged trails, and the people looked like actors. Probably at least one of them was a meatie. Those boppers just wouldn’t let up. Time kept passing, slow and fast.

At some point the vizzy was buzzing. Stahn cut off the twist-box and thumbed on the screen. The caller’s head appeared, a skinny yellow head with a down-turned mouth. There was something strangely soft about his features.

“Hello,” said the image. “I’m Max Yukawa. Are you Mr. Mooney?”

Without the twist, Stahn’s office looked unbearably bleak. He hoped Yukawa had big problems.

“Stahn Mooney of Mooney Search. What can I do for you, Mr. Yukawa?”

“It concerns a missing person. Can you come to my office?”

“Clear.”

Yukawa twitched, and the vizzyprint spat out a sheet with printed directions. His address and the code to his door-plate. Stahn thumbed off , and after a while he hit the street.

Bad air out there, always bad air—_yarty_ was the word for it this year. 2030. Yart =