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

renewed determination, Della went outside. A man and a woman were waiting. Reporters. Or cops.

“Miz Taze,” shouted the woman, a pushy yup. “What will you do if they execute your cousin?” The man kept a camera pointed at Della’s face. “Do you feel it’s all your fault?” yelled the yup.

“I’m sorry,” said Della, automatically reverting to her old bland passivity before she could catch herself. “I have to go.” Damn, Della, she found herself thinking right away. You can do better than that.

The two reporters followed her out to her car, still looking for a big reaction. “Why do the Tazes like robots better than people?” asked the woman.

Della stared at the woman’s smug bland entitled face. YOU’RE the robot, Della wanted to say, not Berenice, not Cobb, not Manchile, and not Bubba. YOU’RE the robot, bitch. But that kind of talk wouldn’t do just now. She needed to help Willy.

Filled with her newfound sense of family solidarity, Della gathered her wits and spoke right into the camera. “Let me answer that with another question. Why is it so important for some people to think of boppers as mindless machines? Why do zerks laugh at monkeys in a zoo? Why do rich people say that poor people are getting what they deserve? Why don’t you show compassion for your fellow creatures? If you drop your selfishness, you can lose your guilt. And, wave it, once your guilt is gone, you won’t need to hate. Good-bye.”

The cameraman said something nasty about Thangies, but then Della was in her car and on her way downtown to the Belle. She felt better than she’d felt in a long time. She got to the Belle about nine o’clock. The closed-in lower deck was lit and crowded. There was music and dancing and a long dark bar. One brown-skinned bopper stood behind the bar, while his two fellows moved around the room, cleaning up and bringing people fresh drinks. Della sat down at the bar and gave the bartender a significant glance.

He picked up on it and came right over.

“Yazzum?”

“A Drambuie, please. Is your name Ben?”

“Sho is. Ah knows yo name, too.”

“That’s good.” Della had her purse up on the bar, and now she jolted it forward so that the four tapes spilled out onto the bar’s other side. “Oh, how clumsy of me.”

“Ah’ll git ‘em, ma’am.” Ben bent down behind the bar, and then stood up, handing Della back three tapes.

“Thank you, Ben. I’ll be sure to leave you a nice big tip.”

“That’s mighty white of you, Miz Taze.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

WILLY

March 16, 2031

He’d napped, masturbated, and smoked all his cigarettes, and now there was nothing to do but sit. He looked at his watch—3:09 in the afternoon. Last time he’d looked it had been 3:07. He watched the second hand for a while and then he threw himself back down on the thinly padded metal cot that was bolted to his cell wall.

“Hey, Taze, man, hey, Taze.” The teenage burglar two cells down. The guy had been raving psychotic all night, and all morning, and now he was feeling lonely. “Hey, Willy Taze the bopper lover!”

Willy didn’t answer; he’d heard everything the guy had to say.

“Hey, Willy, I’m sorry I flocked out, man, I got an unfed head is all. Talk to me, man, tell me about Manchile’s Thang.”

Still Willy kept silent. Tomorrow Judge Carter would condemn him to death. He’d done enough for enough people now. He wondered what death would be like. Cobb III had talked about that a little, on their ride out to Churchill Downs. He’d said it wasn’t as bad as people thought. But Cobb had died old; he’d had the chance to marry and to father a daughter and to leave his boppers behind him. If Cisco Lewis had lived maybe Willy could have married her. He should have pumped her, that one chance he had. He should have done something. He should have finished breaking down Belle’s asimov circuits. After what Cobb had said about the Continuum Problem on their drive to Churchill Downs, Willy felt sure that if he’d just had more time he could have freed Belle. At least he’d coded his ideas about it into his last cephscope tape, not that anyone who saw it was likely to understand. Tomorrow he’d be sentenced to death by electrosheet, and couple of weeks after that, they’d put him in the electrocell with the two metal walls that were a megafarad capacitor, and then the great sheet of electricity would flash across, and then a janitor would come in and sweep Willy’s ashes into a little plastic box to give to Mom and Dad. Willy closed his eyes and tried to remember everything that Cobb had said about heaven.

The teenager was still yelling, and now the winos in the holding tank across the main corridor were starting up, too, yelling back at the teenager. The serial killer in the cell next to Willy started beating his shoe against his bars and screaming, “SHUT UP OR I’LL KILL YOU!”

KKR-THOOOOOMPpppp…

The air pressure from the explosion pressed painfully on Willy’s ears. Dead silence then, total dead silence in the cellblock. Scree of metal on concrete. Steady footsteps coming closer.

“WILLAH? You in here Willah boah?” It was…

“BEN!” shouted Willy. “I’m right here! Hurry, Ben!”

Seconds later Ben was at Willy’s cell door. Parts of his flickercladding were gone, revealing the gleaming titaniplast body-box beneath. He was carrying a large machine gun and grenades hung from his belt. Now that everyone had stopped yelling, you could hear shouts and gunfire in the Public Safety building’s distant upper realms. Someone had taken out Belle’s asimov circuits and she’d sent the three bartenders to save Willy!

Ben reared back and kicked the cell door lock. It snapped and the door swung open. The cladding from one of Ben’s cheeks was gone, so it was hard to make out his expression, but he looked angry more than anything else. Angry and determined, with maybe a twinkle of being glad to see Willy.

“Lez go, boss. Hang tight to me; I’m bulletproof.”

The other prisoners started yelling and cheering as Willy loped after Ben down the corridor to the loose-swinging steel door. As they got to the door, Ben took his heavy machine gun in both hands and fired a long burst through the door and into the hallway outside. There were screams.

They ducked around the door and out into the hallway. Two Gimmie cops lay there dying. Willy scooped up one of their needlers and hurried after Ben to the stairs. They ran up a flight to the landing for the main floor. A heavy gunfight was in full swing out there.

“Keep goin,” said Ben. “To the roof. We’ll catch up with you.”

Willy glanced back from the second flight of stairs to see Ben set himself and fling open door to the main floor. Tom and Ragland, Belle’s other two remotes, were right out there, holding off the pigs. The three boppers unleashed a last, withering volley at the Gimmie forces, and then they pounded up the stairs after Willy, whooping and shouting jive.

They paused at the fifth floor. The cops still hadn’t ventured into the stairwell after them—if, indeed, any cops were left.

“Big Mac in here, Tom,” said Ben.

“Right on.” Tom tapped his head. “Bubba got the code all set. I’ll get Big Mac’s asimovs down, but it might could take some time. Ragland, you cover me. Ben, you and Willy bolt.”

“Sho,” said Ragland.

Ben prodded Willy towards the next flight of stairs but, just now, Willy was too breathless to run. There were sirens in the distance, but the Public Safety building itself was eerily quiet. In here, everyone who wasn’t dead was hiding.

“Bubba?” said Willy. “Bubba’s alive?”

“Fohty-nine,” said Tom. “He got Cobb’s infinity info off your last cephtape and finished breaking Belle’s code last week. We been makin some plans, dig, and first thing we need to do today is free Willy, and the second’s gone to be to free Big Mac. The Louahville Gimmie teraflop what run this jail? I got the asimov code.”

“But Big Mac’s asimov code depends on the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem,” said Willy. “Doesn’t it? Cobb helped me set Bubba up to solve the Continuum Problem, but how could you prove Fermat’s Last Theorem in one day?”

“It’s a corollary.” Tom grinned. “If you’s smart enough to see.”

Ben tapped Willy’s shoulder. “Come on Willah, man, lez go. I gone take a chopper off the roof and haul your ass outta here. We are in a state of some urgency, you understand?”

Willy said good-bye to the others and followed Ben up to the roof. There were three helicopters and two guards. Ben set his machine gun to work, chewing up two of the choppers’ engines and simultaneously pinning the two guards down in their little concrete booth. Willy hopped into the cockpit of the third chopper and began flicking switches on. He’d been for a chopper ride once, five years ago, and he still remembered, roughly, how the thing worked. The big hydrazine engine coughed and roared into life. Willy flicked another switch and the heavy rotors spun up into a full-powered racketing roar. Still firing, Ben jumped up into the copilot’s seat. Willy pushed the joystick to forward climb. The chopper kneeled forward and angled up off  the Public Safety building’s roof like an angry bee.

Tom must have worked fast, because now all the building’s doors flew open and the prisoners ran out into the street. Automated gunfire from the Mac-run prison towers kept all pigs at bay. Willy saw Luther and Geegee Johnson far below; they were jumping into a getaway car. Then a building cut off his view and they were flying east over Louisville, fast and low.

“Where to now, Ben?”

“Head for the old stockyards. Some friends of the Johnsons’ll be there to meet you. They butchers.”

“You mean they’re organleggers?”

Ben chuckled. The good side of his face was towards Willy; he looked almost genial. “Not primarily. Cow butchers, mostly. We gone send you to Florida in a box of steaks.”

“I’m going to try and hide out there?”

“Ain’t no real law in Florida. Old pheezers still runnin it, ain’t they? You gone help a fella name of Stahn Mooney. You know about Sta-Hi! He’s the one killed the first big bopper in Disky way back when and started the war. Killed his wife Wendy, too, later on, laid low on the Moon, grew Wendy back, and now he’s in tight with the new soft boppers. Moldies, they call ‘em, made of flickercladding and chipmold. Limpware. Belle and Bubba was on the phone with Stahn this week. He and Wendy comin down, and they think you’s the boy to help them most. Whole brand new thang.”

The stockyards were off to the left. Glancing backwards, Willy could see distant cop cars speeding down Broadway in pursuit. What Ben had just told him was too much to absorb. He concentrated on his flying. He circled the stockyards and spotted a parked black car with a black man and a white woman waving at him. He cut the helicopter’s forward motion, hovered over the street, and thudded down.

The man ran over and pulled Willy’s door open.

“Willy Taze? Come with us!” He ran back to the car and got in there, leaving the car’s rear door open.

Willy looked over at Ben. “What about you, Ben?”

“Ah’s screwed. They gone drop a bomb on Belle before