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

Take my brothers out of here. They hunger. Carry them to the light-pool.

“No way. That’s too far. Darla won’t go for it. But maybe… ” Stahn remembered his good smart bomb: his flickercladding Superball that had bounced so well. “How about this, cloak. If your brothers can roll themselves up like big balls, we can throw them off the balcony towards the light-pool. They can bounce and roll all the way there.”

Yes. I understand.

Stahn limped around the room patting the loose claddings, one by one, so that his cloak could tell them what to do. There were fifteen of them—thirteen from the vats and two from Oozer and Emul, not that you could tell who was which. The claddings pulled themselves together, and then they lay there like fifteen variegated marbles, each about the size of a bowling ball. Darla watched Stahn from the lab door. She had her hands on her hips and she was tapping her foot. Stahn walked over and pushed his face against hers. She was wearing a tough frown.

“What are you doing, Mooney, you slushed pig?”

“Darla-pie, let’s get it straight: I’m saving your life. My cloak wants us to throw these balls off the balcony out there. We’ll do that, and then we’ll get Wendy, and then we’ll go home. There’s no big rush, because all the boppers are dead. I killed them with chipmold; that’s what ISDN used me for, baby, so shut your crack.”

It was Stahn’s turn to snap his head back. And then, just to bug Darla the more, he rolled the fifteen balls together into a triangular pattern like a rack of fresh balls on a pool table. He couldn’t visualize the triangle in advance, but he could tell when he was done. He picked up two of the balls—three would have been too awkward—and followed his cloak’s blue mindstar through the tunnels to the balcony. Darla followed suit. She jerked in surprise when they got out to the edge; she’d never seen the Nest.

Stahn pointed across the dead underground city at the light-pool. A straight street ran from the pool to the base of the wall below them. He set down one of his cladding balls and lifted the other one overhead with both arms. He threw it out and up, putting all he had into it. The ball shot along a soaring lowgee trajectory, bounced perfectly, sailed, bounced, sailed and dribble-rolled towards the light-pool’s distant, bright spot. Stahn threw his second ball, and then Darla threw both of hers.

On their fourth trip, Darla only had one ball to carry. She pressed her face against Stahn’s face. The exercise had put her in a better mood.

“Can we go now, Mooney?”

“Sure. And call me Stahn. What were those S-cubes on the desk in there?”

“Personality cubes for Emul and some of his friends. He was always fiddling with them. Do you think we ought to bring them? Valuable info, right?”

“Hell, let’s not bother. I don’t want to see any of those boppers for a long time. I’m glad the mold killed them.”

Follow the star to Wendy, Stahn.

They scrambled down the balconies to the Nest floor and turned right on a circumferential road along the cliffs base. They walked and walked, until the star darted into one of the cliff-base doors. They went in, and there they were, back at the pink-tank labs.

Darla cycled them through the lock into the room with the tanks. Wendy was right where Stahn had left her, lying on her back with her blank eyes wide open. She was staring at her fingers and wiggling them. Stahn pushed his cloak off his face and Darla did the same.

“Stinks in here,” said Darla. “So that’s Wendy? Poor clone. She’s like a baby. Did you see how high up it is to the hole at the top of the Nest?”

“Really far,” said Stahn. “But I ain’t going without my Wendy. She’s what I came here for, all right?”

I have a suggestion, said the voice in Stahn’s head. The cloak you brought for her can drive her.

“Can you hear your spacesuit talking to you?” Stahn asked Darla.

“Is that what it is? I thought I was hallucinating from all the sense-depriv. These things are like really alive?”

“Especially now that they’ve got chipmold nodules in them. We used to call them Happy Cloaks, but now maybe we should call them moldies. My cloak—my moldie—it says that the one I brought for Wendy’s spacesuit can drive her body around.”

And talk through her.

“And talk through her,” said Darla. “Stop that.” She slapped at the splotchy, flickering moldie that covered her bod. “So do it, Stahn.”

Stahn flopped the extra moldie over Wendy. It flowed all over her. For a long time it seemed like nothing was happening. But then Wendy began to tremble, first a little, and then a lot. All at once the trembling stopped. More time passed and then Wendy stood up. Now it was Stahn who was trembling. He reached his shaky hands forward and pulled the cladding down from off her face.

“Hello,” said the bright happy face. “This is very nice!” The voice sounded just like Stahn had remembered it, for all these years.

“Oh Wendy.” Stahn put his arms around her and held her tight.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DELLA

March 7, 2031

Della didn’t recognize the man at her door. He was fat and pale and fortyish, with black shoes and a cheap, ill-fitting suit. Though his features were snubbed and boyish, his face was puffed, giving him a callow, watery air. Perhaps he’d been handsome in his youth, but something must have gone badly wrong for him since; some kind of hormone imbalance. Della was glad she had the doorchain fastened.

“Who are you?” she asked through the crack. Her new apartment’s location was supposed to be private—so many nuts had come traipsing by the Tazes’ that Della’d had to move out. “What do you want?”

“I got this address from Ilse Taze. If you don’t want to let me in, why don’t you come out and we can take a walk.” He tapped his mouth and his ear, suggesting that what he had to tell Della was private.

Della shook her head. The guy could be a Gimmie agent, an ISDN newshound, a crazed Thangie, a Racial Puritan, or an ordinary sex criminal. A lot of weirdos had it in for her, ever since it had become widely known that Della’s womb had borne Manchile. The story had come out after Manchile’s assassination and Willy’s arrest. Della had refused all interviews, though she’d had to tell most of her story in court during the ongoing meatbop conspiracy trial. Lots of people wanted to meet Della, which was the main reason she had gotten this absolutely secret apartment to live in. This visitor was the first to have tracked her here. Why had Ilse told him where to come?

He looked like he hadn’t seen sunlight in years. His pithy fatness was diseased and unnatural. And as the smell of Della’s microwaved dinner floated out past her and through the door’s crack, he licked his lips in a wet, hungry way that was utterly revolting.

“Go away,” said Della, showing him the needler attached to her belt. The man took two steps backwards. On top of it all, he had a nasty limp. Della slammed the door closed and secured the bolts. Why the hell was Aunt Ilse giving out her new address to unny creeps? Hadn’t Della told all her goddamn family members that she needed very much to be alone? What would Aunt Ilse have to gain by giving out Della’s address—MONEY, for God’s sake? Couldn’t old Jason and Amy and Colin and Ilse EVER stop thinking about themselves?

One of the main reasons Della had taken that shady job with Yukawa on the Moon had been to get away from them all: her relatives, her friends, her acquaintances. Of course, in Einstein, it had all started up again, people bothering her, one way or another, boss and cops and leeches and so-called friends, not that Buddy Yeskin had been a bother, no, he’d been gentle as a lamb, and even less talkative. With all the merge, Buddy and Della had never needed to talk, which had been fine, not that merge was an experience that Della wanted to repeat anytime soon. As far as she was concerned, Einstein was a drag now, what with all the old merge crowd running around giving vizzy interviews—if Della went back, they’d scoop her up like money in the street, no thanks. And of course Yukawa was still throbbing his half-pervo torch for “poor Della Taze,” yes, even though Della wouldn’t ever answer, Max Yukawa still kept writing and calling her at her parents’, which had been yet another good reason to get her own private apartment. Della still had nightmares about the private Dr. Y. With all the merge nothing had mattered.

She got her chicken dinner out of the microwave and sat down at her dinette table facing the vizzy. One result of this kilp was that she’d gotten in the habit of watching the evening news. She could see all the people she wanted on the screen. There’d probably be something about Willy’s case—the verdict was expected any day.

The news had already started. Right now it was a live broadcast from the Einstein ISDN building: yet another interview with Stahn Mooney and Whitey Mydol, who sat grinning on two couches with their women, Wendy and Darla. Della knew Whitey and Darla from the merge scene: he was a ridgeback, and she was his rocker wife. Della had never run into Stahn Mooney, but she knew him from the family stories and from the old newsreels. Wendy was an exceptionally clear-skinned blonde woman. She was supposed to have amnesia.

Every sentient being on Moon or Earth knew the story by now. ISDN’s Dr. Max Yukawa, incensed by the boppers’ meatbop rape of Della Taze, had designed the chipmold that could fry their circuits. Whitey Mydol, outraged by the boppers’ abduction of his wife Darla Starr, had coerced Stahn Mooney into carrying some spores of Yukawa’s chipmold into the Nest. Mooney had accomplished his mission and had escaped the dead Nest with Darla and with the mysterious Wendy.

The moderator was handsome, personable Tobb Zununu. Della listened with interest, eating her food in large bachelor-gal mouthfuls.

Tobb:        How HARD did Whitey and ISDN pressure you to go, Stahn?

Stahn:       How low is up? A little. But, hey, I’m glad I got to save D and W. We had a heck of a climb out. We were lucky about the bubble-toppers, they were ultragood cladding pals. I still wear mine, it helps my bad brain. (Close shot of the thick splotchy scarf around his neck.)

Stahn:        (Serious and open.) I call it a moldie. It’s a symbiote.

Tobb:       (Grinning.) Could be the start of a new fad. I notice this lovely young lady next to you is wearing one as well. (Sympathetically.) Wendy, we’re all still wondering where you’re from and what you were doing down in the Nest. Can you tell us a bit about your background?

Wendy:       (Radiant.) My body’s a tank-grown clone of Stahn’s dead wife Wendy, Tobb. He’s thrilled to bits to be living with the same wetware. Of course, growing up in an organ farm pink-tank doesn’t give a girl much of a preparation for city life, but I’ve got my moldie to help me out. (Slow, knowing laugh.) As soon as I