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

Outside the window, the lit door opened. Two people stepped out—a wide-mouthed brunette and her funboy. He wore a black-and-white bowling shirt with Ricardo stitched over the breast pocket. She was hot stuff. Their faces looked soft and tired, and they were holding hands.

Yukawa powered a drawer out through the wall. “Same time tomorrow, Mrs. Beller?”

“Feels so rave, Max.” The woman dropped some money into the drawer. She was hot stuff. _What type of sex do you like, Mrs. Beller, WHAT TYPE??? _She was used-looking, and she had a slow lazy voice and the big soft lips to match. She raked a stare across Stahn’s face and led Ricardo up the ladder to the street. As they left, Stahn noticed that their two joined hands were actually fused into a single skin-covered mass. Hot.

Yukawa caught Stahn’s expression, caught some of it. “They’ll pull apart later, when the stuff fully wears off. In some circles it’s quite fashionable to walk around part merged.”

“How come they don’t look like each other—if they’re merging every day?”

“Dosage control. Unless you set up an all-day drip, merging has no lasting effects. And the drip has to be just right, or you end up as an entropic solution of amino acids. No one can do the gene exchange right but me.”

“Other people have done it. Vic Morrow did it, dad.” Vic Morrow had been a truck-farmer in the San Joaquin Valley. In 2027, he’d hit on the idea of treating his migrant workers to a series of weekend-long mergedrip parties. Once the workers had all flowed together, Morrow would throw a couple of dogs into the love-puddle with them. He was nuts. Over the weeks, the workers had transmuted into beasts, ever more tractable, ever less demanding. The big scandal came when Morrow had a heart attack and his workers ate most of his corpse and rolled in the rest of it. A month later, the Anti-Chimera Act had passed Congress by acclaim.

Yukawa frowned and fumbled in his desk. “I told Morrow how to do it. It was a big mistake. I owed him money. I don’t trust anyone with my secrets anymore. Especially… ” He stopped himself and pushed a folder across the desk. “Here’s the full printout on Della—I already accessed it for you. Last Friday—that was the 20th—I was with Della all day as usual, and at four she left in her maggie. Monday and Tuesday she didn’t come in. I called her apartment, nobody home. Yesterday was Christmas and I didn’t bother calling. I figured maybe she’d taken an extra-long holiday weekend, gone on a party or a trek in the crater. She doesn’t tell me her plans. But now she’s still not here and her vizzy still doesn’t answer. I’m worried. Either something’s happened to her, or… or she’s run away.”

Stahn picked up the folder and leafed through it. Focus. DELLA TAZE.

Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. Twenty-eight years old. Ph.D. in molecular genetics, U. Va., 2025. Same year he’d fled to Einstein. Her photo: a nice little blonde with a straight mouth and a button nose. Fox. Unmarried.

“She was your girlfriend?” Stahn glanced up at Yukawa. His long, thin head looked cruel and freakish. The “universal life form” at the back of the lab was crying out for more food, making a sound midway between a squeal and a hiss. Arthur. It was hard to see why Della Taze hadn’t split like… two years ago.

“... wouldn’t let me come to her apartment,” Yukawa was saying. “And she wouldn’t ever merge with me either. We argued about it Friday. I _know _she was using, towards the end she asked me for it all the time. Maybe that was the only reason she stayed with me as long as she did. But now… now she’s gone, and I have to get her back. Track her down, Mooney. Bring my Della back!”

“I’ll do my best, Mr. Yukawa. Man.” As Stahn got to his feet, Yukawa leaned across the desk and handed him a wad of bills, and the silver flask of dope.

“Here’s money for you, Mooney, and merge. Sta-Hi. Didn’t they used to call you Sta-Hi?”

“That was a long time ago. Now I’m all grown up.”

“I gave Della blocker, just in case, but if you find her sick, just show her the flask.”

Before getting a slot over to Della’s place, Stahn went back to his office to do some computer searching. Maybe Della had taken Yukawa’s blocker and checked into an endorphin clinic. The blocker would gene-tailor out the specific enzymes that made merge necessary for her body, but sometimes it took a clinic to keep you from going back to what your mind still wanted. Or maybe Della was dead and in the organ banks, the cannibal mart, or worse. Everyone on the Moon—loonies and boppers alike—had lots of uses for fresh meat. Or, on the other hand, maybe Della had caught a ship to Earth.

Yukawa hadn’t called anyone at all; he was too paranoid. Stahn worked his vizzy through all the info banks—and drew a blank. Could she have been picked up by the Gimmie? Better not to ask. Or maybe the boppers had zombie-boxed her off to the ratsurgeon? He leaned back in his chair, trying not to think about the flask of merge. Focus.

If Della was still strung on merge, she’d be puddling at least once a day. That meant she might be holed up with some other local users. So it would make sense to check out the local merge scene, which centered, Stahn recalled, in the catacombs around the old dustbaths. How good _was _merge, anyway? Stahn opened Yukawa’s silver flask and… uh… took a sniff. Nice: red wine and roast turkey, nice-smelling stuff. He couldn’t stop wondering what it would feel like to use a little. Yukawa shouldn’t have given it to him. But, Stahn realized, Yukawa had known what he was doing. Don’t start, Stahn, he told himself. Don’t start all that again. Why not? he answered himself. Who are you to tell me what to do? I’ll do what I like! Remember, Stahn, responded the first voice, you didn’t quit drugs for other people. You didn’t quit for society, or for Wendy’s ghost. You quit for yourself. If you go back on the stuff you’re going to die.

Just then someone started pounding on the door. Stahn twitched and a fat drop of merge splashed out onto his left hand. His stomach clenched in horror, but a part of him—the bad part—was very glad. He put his hands and the flask under his desk and told the door to open.

It was the blond ridgeback who’d given him the Or-My pamphlet before. Stahn got the cap back on Yukawa’s flask and tried to flex his left hand. It felt like it was melting. This stuff was for real.

“Stahn Mooney,” said the ridgeback, closing the door behind him. “Sta-Hi.” His face had junk-hunger. “My name’s Whitey Mydol. I heard you were over at Yukawa’s. I was wondering if… ” He paused to sniff the air. The room reeked of merge. “Can I have some?”

“Some what?”

The melting feeling had moved up into Stahn’s forearm. His shabby office walls looked prettier than the twist-box had ever made them. All right. Eighteen months since he’d felt this good. He forced his attention back to Mydol’s hard young face. “How do you know who Yukawa is?”

“Oh… we know.” The kid smiled in a conspiratorial way. “I’ll give you two hundred dollars for a hit. Just between the two of us.”

Stahn took his flare-ray in his right hand and leveled it at Mydol. He wanted Mydol out of here before he melted all over. “I’m going to count to three. One.” Mydol stopped moving and glared. “Two.” Mydol snarled a curse and stepped back towards the door. He was jangling up Stahn’s first rush in almost two years, and Stahn wanted to kill him.

“AO, Junk-Hog Sta-Hi Rent-Pig Mooney. What’s the shudder, scared to merge with a man? Tubedook.”

“Three,” Stahn clicked off the safety and burned a shot across Mydol’s left shoulder. The ridgeback winced in pain, opened the door and left.

Stahn slumped back. God, this was fast dope. His left arm looked like candle wax, and he was having trouble staying in his chair. He let himself slide down onto the floor and stared up at the ceiling. Oh, this did feel so good. His bone joints loosened, and his skeleton sagged beneath the puddle of his flesh. It took almost an hour to ride the trip out. Towards the middle Stahn saw God. God was about the same as usual—a little more burnt, maybe. He wanted love as bad as Stahn did. This life was taking its toll on everyone.

What is merge like? Baby, if you don’t know by now… Wonderful. Horrible. After Stahn hit the floor and puddled, he wasn’t really there. The space of the room became part of his consciousness. He was the room, the chipped beige plas, the dingy black floor, the old-fashioned windows, the desk and chair and computer; he was the room and the building and Einstein and the Earth. Standard ecstatic mystical vision, really. But fast. He was everywhere, he was nowhere, he was the same as God. And then there were no thoughts at all. Stuzzy, sis, all right.

It wore off WHAM as quickly as it had come on. There was a tingling in Stahn’s flesh, a kind of jelling feeling, and then he was lying there shaking, heart going a mile a minute. Too fast. This dope was giga too fast. Death practice, right: hit, melt, space, blank. Final blank. He wished his dead wife Wendy were still alive. Sweet, blonde, wide-hipped Wendy. Times like this—in the old days—she’d hug him and pat his head real soft… and smile… And you killed her, Stahn. Oh God, oh no, oh put that away. You blew a hole in her head and sold her corpse to the organleggers and used the money to come to the Moon.

Stahn alone on the office floor, shuddering. Bum kicks. Think about anything but Wendy. Flash of an old song: Coming down again, all my time’s been spent, coming down again. Old. Gettin old. Coming down gets too old. Does that even mean anything? Language with a flat tire. Talk broken, but keep talking. Regroup.

His clothes were awkwardly bunched around him. When he sat up, the headache started. Bummer bummer bummer bummer bummer. He took Yukawa’s silver flask and shook it. There was quite a bit in there, a few months’ worth if you only took it once a day. If he got back on drugs he was dead. He should be dead. He wished he was dead. Lot of slow death in that flask.

If one drop was a dose, and a dose was worth… uh… two hundred dollars, then this flask was something that certain elements—certain criminal elements—would… uh… kkkkkillll for. And that ridgeback cultie knew he was holding, oh my brethren. Can I get some head? “Hello, Mrs. Beller, you don’t know me, but I… uh… ” Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. WHAT TYPE OF SEX, BABY, WHAT TYPE?

The thing to do right now was to not go back out the office building’s front door. Focus. Rent a maggie. Garage on top of the building.

He picked out a black saucer-shaped maggie, fed it some money, and told it where to go. The maggies were like hovercars; they counteracted the Moon’s weak gravity with fans, and with