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

an intense magnetic field keyed to a big field generated by wires set into the dome. They were expensive. It was funny that a junkie lab assistant like Della Taze would have had her own maggie. Stahn could hardly wait to see her apartment. Maybe she was actually there, just not answering the vizzy, but there and like waiting for a guy with merge. He had lock-picking wares in case she wouldn’t open.

The entry system at Della’s building was no problem. Stahn used a standard nihilist transposition on the door down from the roof, and a tone-scrambler on her apartment door. The apartment was Wigglesville. Creative Brain Damage, Vol. XIII. As follows.

The walls weren’t painted one uniform color. It was all bursts and streaks, as if the painter had just thrown random buckets around the apartment till everything was covered: walls, floors, and ceilings all splattered and dripped beyond scuzz.

The furniture was pink, and all in shapes of people. The chairs were big stuffed women with laps to sit in, and the tables were plas men on all fours. He kept jerking, seeing that furniture out of the corner of his eye, and thinking someone was there. Twist and shout. The whole place had the merge wine-turkey fragrance, but there was another smell under it… a bad smell.

Which, as it turned out, came from the bedroom. Della had her love-puddle in there—a big square tub like a giant wading pool. And next to it was… sort of a corpse. It had been a black guy.

Gross—you want to hear gross? A merged person is like Jell-O over some bones, right. And you can… uh… splatter Jell-O. Splatter a merged person into a bunch of pieces, and the drug wears off—the cells firm up—and there is this… uh… guy in a whole lot of pieces.

The skin had covered on up around each of the pieces—here was a foot with a rounded-off stump at the ankle, here was his head all smoothed off at the neck. He looked like a nice enough guy. Plump, easygoing. Here was an arm with his torso—and over there a leg hooked onto his bare ass… and all of it sagging and starting to rot…

Zzuzzzzzzz.

The vizzy in the living room was buzzing. Stahn ran in, covered up the lens, and thumbed the set on.

It was a hard-faced Gimmie officer. He wore hair spikes, and he had gold studs set into his cheeks. Colonel Hasci. Stahn knew the “cat.” Muy macho. Trés douche.

“Miss Della Taze? We’re down in the lobby. Can we come up and ask you some questions about Buddy Yeskin?”

Stahn split fast. It was a little hard to judge, but Buddy looked to have been dead two days. Why would anyone splatter good old Bud? Death is so stupid; always the same old punch line. It reminded him of Wendy. Whenever he was coming down everything reminded him of Wendy. He’d been stoned on three-way, shooting horseflies with his needler and he’d hit her by accident. Some accident. Sold her body to the organleggers and moved up to the Moon before the mudder Gimmie could deport him. Her poor limp body.

Stahn’s black saucer circled aimlessly. He wondered where Della Taze had gotten to. Merge with the cosmos, sister. Can I get some, too? WHAT TYPE, baby, WHAT TYPE OF SEX? Shut up, Stahn. Be quiet, brother. Chill out.

CHAPTER TWO

CHRISTMAS IN LOUISVILLE

December 24, 2030

Merged. Gentle curves and sweet flow of energies—merged in the love-puddle, the soft plastic tub set into the floor of her bedroom. Exquisite ecstasy—Della melted and Buddy just sliding in; the two of them about to be together again, close as close can be, flesh to flesh, gene to gene, a marbled mass of pale and tan skin, with their four eyes up on top seeing nothing; but now, just as Buddy starts melting… suddenly…

Aeh!

Della Taze snapped out of her flashback and looked at the train car window. It was dusk outside, and the glass gave back a faint reflection of her face: blonde, straight-mouthed, her eyes hot and sunken. Her stomach hurt, and she’d thrown up three times today. Burnt-out and worldly wise… the look she’d longed for as a teenage girl. She tried a slight smile. Not bad, Della. But you’re wanted for murder. And the only place she could think of going was home.

The train was coasting along at a slow 20 mph now, click-clanking into Louisville, gliding closer to the long trip’s end: Einstein-Ledge-Florida-Louisville via spaceship-shuttle-train. Two days. Della hoped she was well ahead of the Einstein Gimmie—the police. Not that they’d be likely to chase her this far. Here in 2030, Moon and Earth were as far removed from each other as Australia and England had been in the 1800s.

Louisville in the winter: rain not even snow, lots of it, gray water, the funny big cars, and real sky—the smells, after two years of dome air, and the idle space! On the Moon, every nook and cranny had its purpose—like on a sailboat or in a tent—but here, gliding past the train, were vacant lots with nothing in them but weeds and dead tires; meaningless streets with marginal businesses; tumbledown houses with nobody home. Idle space. There were too many faces up in Einstein, too many bodies, too many needs.

Della was glad to be back here, with a real sky and real air; even though her body was filled with a dull ache. The weight. Old Mr. Gravity. In Florida she’d spent the last of her money on an Imipolex flexiskeleton with the brand name: Body by Oozer. She wore it like a body stocking, and the coded collagens pushed, stiffened, and pulled as needed. The ultimate support hosiery. Most returning loonies checked in for three days of muscle rehabilitation at the JFK Spaceport, but Della had known she’d have to keep running. Why? Because she’d jelled back from that last merge-trip to find her lover splattered into pieces, and before she’d had time to do anything, there’d been a flat-voiced twitch-faced man on the vizzy.

“I killed him, Della, and I can kill you. Or I can tell the Gimmie that you did it. I want to help you, Della. I love you. I want to help you escape. There’s a fake passport and a ticket to Earth for you at the spaceport… ”

Aeh!

Della’s parents, Jason and Amy Taze, were at the station, the same as ever—strungout and hungover, mouths set into smiles, and their self-centered eyes always asking, Do you love me?

Amy Taze was small and tidy. She wore bright, outdated makeup, and today she had her blonde hair marcelled into a tight, hard helmet. Jason was a big, shambling guy with short hair and messy prep clothes. He had a desk job at a bank, and Amy was a part-time saleswoman in a gift shop. They both hated their jobs and lived to party. Seeing them there, Della felt like getting back on the train.

“My God, Della, you look fantastic. Is that a leotard you have on under your clothes?” Mom kept the chatter going all the way out to the car, as if to show how sober she was. Dad rolled his eyes and gave Della a wink, as if to show how much more together than Mom he was. The two of them were so busy putting on their little show that it was ten minutes before they noticed that Della was trembling. It was Dad who finally said something.

“You do look nice, Della, but you seem a little shaky. Was it a hard trip? And why such short notice?”

“Somebody framed me for a murder, Dad. That’s why I didn’t want you all to tell anyone else I’m back in town.” Her stomach turned again, and she retched into her handkerchief.

“Was it some kind of hard-drug deal? Something to do with that damn merge stuff that your Dr. Yukawa makes?” Dad fished nervously in his pocket for a reefer. He shot her a sharp glance. “Are you hooked?”

Della nodded, glad to upset them. Taste of their own medicine. No point telling them she’d taken gamendorph blocker to kick. Dr. Yukawa had always made sure that she had blocker around.

“That’s what we get for not being better people, Jason,” said Mom, her voice cracking in self-pity. “The only one of our children coming home for Christmas is a killer dope queen on the lam. And for the two years before this we’ve been all alone. Give me a hit off that number, I think I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.” She took a puff , smiled, and patted Della’s cheek. “You can help us trim the tree, Della honey. We still have the styrofoam star you decorated in kindergarten.”

Della wanted to say something cutting, but she knew it would feel bad. Instead she put on her good-girl face and said, “I’d like that, Mom. I haven’t seen a Christmas tree in three years. I… ” Her voice caught and the tears came. She loved her parents, but she hated to see them. Holidays were always the worst, with Jason and Amy stumbling around in a chemical haze. “I hope this won’t be like all the other Christmases, Mom.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Della. It will be lovely. Your Uncle Colin and Aunt Ilse are coming over for dinner tomorrow. They’ll bring Willy, he’s still living at home. Of course your two little sisters are both visiting with their husbands‘ families again.”

Jason and Amy Taze lived in an eighty-year-old two-story tract home east of Louisville. The neighborhood had sidewalks and full-grown trees. The houses were small, but well-kept. Della found her tiny room to be more or less as it had always been: the clean, narrow bed; the little china animals on the shelf she’d nailed into the papery drywall; the hologram hoops hung in the two windows; and her disks and info-cubes all arranged in the alphabetical order she liked to keep them in. When she was in ninth grade, she’d programmed a cross-referenced catalog cube to keep track of them all. Della had always been a good student, a good girl, compulsively tidy as if to make up for her parents’ frequent sloppy scenes.

Someone let Bowser, the family dog, in the back door then, and he came charging up the narrow carpeted stairs to greet Della, shaking his head, and whining and squirming like a snake. He looked as mangy as ever, and as soon as Della patted him, he lay on his back spreading his legs, the same gross way he’d always done. She rubbed under his chin for a while, while he wriggled and yipped.

“Yes, Bowser. Good dog. Good, smart dog.” Now that she’d started crying, she couldn’t seem to stop. Mom and Dad were downstairs in the kitchen, talking in hushed tones. Della was too tired to unpack. She hurt all over, especially in her breasts and stomach. When she slipped out of her flexiskeleton, she felt like a fat, watery jellyfish. There was a nightgown on the bed—Mom must have laid it out. Della put it on, glad no one was here to see her, and then she fell into a long, deep sleep.

When Della woke up it was midmorning. Christmas! So what. Without her two sisters Ruby and Sude here, it didn’t mean a thing. Closing her eyes, Della could almost hear their excited yelling—and then she realized she was hearing the vizzy. Her parents were downstairs watching the vizzy on Christmas morning. God. She went to the bathroom and vomited, and then she put on her flexiskeleton and got dressed.

“Della!” cried her mother when Della appeared.