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

Minutes of Fame show tomorrow at noon. I’m so proud of Manchile—and of myself for helping him. He wants to do the vizzycast live, right here in my apartment. Which reminds me, I have to ask him something. Enjoy yourself!”

Suesue hurried across the room to take her place at Manchile’s side. He was telling jokes to an admiring circle of well-dressed men and women. Everyone was laughing their heads off. Many of the women had belly bulges. Spotting Willy standing there alone, Manchile leaned over and whispered something in the ear of a cute little pregnant brunette. The brunette giggled and came over to Willy. She had a fine, clear forehead and a smeary, sexy mouth. She looked like a little girl who’d been sneaking chocolates.

“Hi, Willy, I’m Cisco. Manchile says you look lonely, and I should be your date. Do you know Manchile very well?”

“Oh, yeah. I wrote a few vizzyplays with him. Lately I’ve been blocked though, not able to write. It all has to do with some kind of sex hangups. Sometimes I worry I might be gay… ”

The party broke up around two, and Willy spent the night on the couch with Cisco. They made a few fumbling attempts at sex, but nothing came of it. Willy just wasn’t the type to take yes for an answer and make it stick, at least not on the first date.

It was midmorning when he woke up. Someone was pounding on the penthouse door. Everyone else was still asleep, so Willy got up to see who it was.

A lean, gray-haired man in a suit and topcoat glared in at Willy. “What are you doing here? Where’s Mrs. Piggot?”

“She’s still asleep. Who are you?”

“I’m her husband.” The man shoved Willy aside and marched through the littered main room of the penthouse, making a beeline for the master bedroom. Cisco squinted up at him, gave a brief wave of her pinky, and snuggled back down into the couch cushions. Willy sat down next to Cisco and stroked her hair. She pulled his hand towards her sticky mouth and planted a kiss on his fingers.

“Nothing I told you last night is true,” Willy said. “I’m really a computer hacker, and my only sex problem is that I’m too spastic to get laid.”

“I know,” said Cisco. “But you’re cute anyway.”

Just then the yelling started in Suesue Piggot’s bedroom. First it was her, and then it was her husband, and then you could hear the murmur of Manchile’s voice. Every time he talked, Mr. Piggot got madder. It was like Manchile was goading him on. Finally there was a series of crashes. Suesue screamed, and then Manchile appeared from her bedroom, carrying a dazed Mr. Piggot in his arms.

Manchile opened the penthouse door and dumped Mr. Piggot out onto the hall floor. Chuckling and sneering, the nude Manchile took his penis in hand and urinated all over Mr. Piggot. When he finished, he fastidiously shook off the last drops. He stepped back inside and carefully locked the door.

Catching Willy’s shocked expression, Manchile gave an exaggerated, country-boy wink. “Ah believe that dook wants to kiyull me,” he drawled.

“You were marvelous, Manchile,” sang Suesue.

“Ah tole him ah’d piss on him if he come here and fuss at me again,” said Manchile. He seemed to be getting in character for his upcoming speech. “When does the camera crew show up? I’ve gotta eat.”

“You’ve got an hour.”

Suesue activated the apartment’s various asimov cleaning devices and disappeared into her bedroom. Cisco asked Willy to make her some eggs, so Willy got to work in the kitchen, chatting all the while with Manchile, who was busy emptying out the fridge. Manchile asked Willy a few general questions about religion and race prejudice, but he didn’t divulge much about his impending performance.

“No sweat, Cousin Will,” Manchile said after a while. “I got it taped.” He tapped his head. “Tell you what. I’m gonna leave here after the show; you won’t see me again till the Fairgrounds tonight.”

“What’s happening there?”

“A big rally. I got some boys bringin a sound system and a flatbed truck for a stage. It’s gonna be out in that big Fairgrounds parking lot, and it’s gonna come down HOT and HEAVY. Promise me this, Willy.”

“What?”

Manchile lowered his voice. “When the shootin starts, grab Cisco and get her out to Churchill Downs. Take her to the stable of a horse called Red Chan. I got some friends there to watch her. Old Cobb might want to come with you, too, him bein your grandpa and all. Take them there and scoot.”

“But this idea of a billion meatbops by—”

“Hell, who knows what’s gonna happen. Just help us, man.”

“All right.”

By the time the vizzy crew showed up, the place was clean and everyone was all set.

They opened up the penthouse doors that led onto the open terrace, kept warm by floorcoils and quartz heaters. Manchile stood out there with Louisville’s somewhat featureless skyline behind him. Suesue, quite the tweedy anchorwoman, gave a brief introduction.

“Manchile is certainly the most interesting man to appear on the Louisville scene this year. He’s told me a little about his background but”— Suesue flashed a tough smile—“I’ve checked up on it, and everything he’s told me has been a lie. I have no idea what he has in store for us in the next fifteen minutes, but I’m sure it will be entertaining. Manchile?”

“Thank you, Suesue.” Manchile looked gorgeous as ever: handsome as a soap-opera star, but with that extra glint of intelligence and strangeness that spells superstar. “I want to talk to y’all about love and friendship. I want to talk about trust and acceptance of all God’s creatures—man and woman, white and black, human and bopper. God himself sent me here with a special teaching, friends. God sent me to bring peace.

“Now I know that most of y’all don’t like boppers. But why? Because you don’t know any of them. Nothing feeds prejudice like ignorance. When I was growin up on the farm, the black and white children played together, and we got to toleratin each other pretty good. But Latinos? Hell, we knowed that Latinos was bad news.”

Manchile paused to give an ambiguous smile for the benefit of those listeners who shared this sentiment.

“Or that’s what we thought we knowed, when really we didn’t know squat! When I was in the Navy, I was stationed down in San Diego, and I got to know lots of Latinos. And they’s fine people! They’s just like us! So then I knowed that blacks is OK and Latinos is OK, but I was pretty sure that Asians are cold in the heart.”

Manchile chuckled and shook his head. Watching the performance, Willy had trouble reconciling this simple country preacher with the sneering hipster who’d just pissed on Mr. Piggot. Suesue’s face was slack with surprise. A sermonette was the last thing she’d expected from Manchile. Surely he was putting them all on… but when was he going to pull the rug?

“On account of I’d never talked to any of ‘em. Course next week our ship sailed to Okinawa, and I started hanging around with Asians. And I don’t need to tell you what I found out, do I? They’s good people. They’s real good people.”

Another of his Robert Redford smiles.

“Boppers is different, you’re thinking. But are they really so different? In all the different kinds of folks I’ve met, I’ve seen one thing the same— everybody wants the best for their children. Now thass simple, and thass what keeps the race alive, the carin for the little ones. But boppers is the same! They reproduce, you know, and just like you’d want a college education for your son, a bopper wants a good new processor for his scion.

“So, yeah, you thinking, but boppers is machines that we made.

God made us and gave us souls, but we made the boppers and they ain’t diddley. Well, I’m here to TELL you somethin. YOU WRONG!!! People made boppers, but apes made people, if you want to trace out the truth of it. And now, just now, God has given the boppers a new gift. BOPPERS CAN MAKE PEOPLE!! BOPPERS BUILT ME!! YES THEY DID!! GOD SHOWED THEM HOW!! Ain’t no difference between people and boppers NO MORE!! GOD WANTS IT LIKE THAT!!”

Manchile raised his voice to a full bellow.

“DEAR GOD, SHOW THEM A SIGN!!!”

Someone on the camera crew shouted just then, and pointed up. Everyone on the terrace looked up into the sky. There was sweet music coming from up there, and two white-robed figures were drifting down. They came to a stop slightly above and behind Manchile. One of them was a pink, clean-looking man, and the other was a gorgeous copper-skinned woman. They smiled seraphically at Manchile and vibrated their mouths in celestial song.

“God’s angels are with me,” Manchile said. “God says I’m right to spread this teaching—boppers are not your slaves and boppers are not your enemies. Boppers are part of YOU! We are coming to Earth and you must welcome us! God wants you to let the poor despised boppers into your hearts, and into your brains, and into your genes, dear PEOPLE!”

Now the two angels reached forward and lifted Manchile up from beneath his two arms.

“I don’t come just to free the BOPPERS,” he cried. “I come to free the BLACK man, and the POOR man, and the WO-man, and the ones who DON’T FIT IN. Come to the rally tonight at the State Fairgrounds. Come to be part of MANCHILE’S THANG!!!”

“CUT!” Suesue was screaming. Her face was hard and angry. “Cut the goddamn cameras!”

But Manchile was already finished. With a last brain-melting smile, he rose up into the sky, borne as on angel’s wings.

CHAPTER NINE

HAIL DARLA

January 27, 2031

Darla woke up to see Whitey pulling on his jeans by the pale pink light of the zapper. The vizzy showed a crescent Earth floating in a starry sky.

“What time is it, Whitey?”

“It’s 8:30. I got to run up to ISDN again. Yukawa and Bei have that chipmold almost ready. We’ll crash the bops for sure. Hey, do you feel OK?”

Darla was leaning off the edge of the bed, retching up bile into an empty glass. She’d thrown up every morning for the last three days. Whitey got a wet rag and wiped her mouth and forehead.

“Darla, baby, it just hit me, you got morning sickness.”

“I know, Whitey.” She retched again. “And my boobs ache and I’m always tired.”

“So you’re pregnant! I mean, that’s… ” Whitey paused, wondering. “Our baby, right?”

“Or Ken Doll’s.”

“Oh God. Like Della Taze, you think?”

“Manchile only took nine days, and so far it’s the same for all his children. It’s been almost a month since we were with Ken. He never even came, right?”

“Maybe, but we were asleep for a while there. He might have kept on. Even if the baby is human, it could still be Ken’s.” Whitey winced at the thought. “Darla, you’ve got to go see Charles Freck about some ergot.”

“But Whitey, if it’s our baby… ”

“I want a baby with you, Darla, don’t worry. You’re my mate, no problem. But this right now is too kilpy. Cancel the baby and then—”

“Oh, I don’t know, Whitey, I don’t know.” Darla burst into sobs, and Whitey sat on the bed next to her, holding her against his