The Ware Tetralogy

by Rudy Rucker

  Cynthia lit a mentholated and lightly THC-ed cigarette. “Do I remember? Our class didn’t have a prom. Instead some of the hot-heads on the student council voted to use the funds for a fall bus-trip.”

  “Where did you go?” Cobb asked.

  Cynthia laughed shrilly. “To Washington! To march on the Pentagon!. But it was worth it. That’s where Farker and I met, isn’t it, dear.”

  Farker bobbed his light-bulb head in thought for a moment. “That’s right. I was watching the Fugs chanting Out Demon Out on a flat-bed truck in the parking lot, and you stepped . . . ”

  “I didn’t step on your foot, Farker. I footsied you. You looked like such an important person with your tape recorder, and I was just dying to talk to you.”

  “You sure did,” Farker said, grinning and shaking his head. “And you haven’t stopped since.”

  The beer arrived then and they clinked glasses. Holding his glass up, Cobb closed his right nostril and took a snort. Sitting down, the dizziness was bearable. But, listening to his friends talk, he had a feeling of shame at no longer being human.

  “How’s your son?” he asked Cynthia, just to be saying something. Chuck, the Farkers’ only child, was a United Cults minister up in Philadelphia. Cynthia loved to talk about him.

  “He’s getting more nooky than you ever saw!” Cynthia gave a thin cackle. “And the girls give him money, too. He teaches them astral projection.”

  “Some racket, huh?” Farker said, shaking his head. “If I were still young . . . ”

  “Not you,” Annie said. “You’re not psychic enough. But Cobb,” she paused to smile at her escort, “Cobb could lead a cult any day.”

  “Well,” Cobb said thoughtfully, “I have been feeling sort of psychic ever since . . . ” He caught himself and skipped forward. “That is, I’ve been getting this feeling that the mind really is independent of your body. Even without your body, your mind could still exist as a sort of mathematical possibility. And telepathy is only . . . ”

  “That’s just what our son Chuck says,” Cynthia interrupted. “You must be getting senile, Cobb!”

  They all laughed then, and started talking about other things: food and health and gossip. But, in the back of his mind, Cobb began thinking seriously about cults and religion.

  The whole experience of changing bodies felt miraculous. Had he proved that the soul is real . . . or that it isn’t? And there were his strange new flashes of empathy to explain. Was it that, having switched bodies once, he was no longer so matter-bound as before . . . or was it just the result of having mechanically sharp senses? What was he . . . guru or golem?

  “You’re cute,” Annie said, and pulled him back onto the dance-floor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Little Kidders put the robot that had looked like Sta-Hi in the back of the truck. Berdoo squeezed into the cab between Rainbow and Haf-N-Haf. No point taking a chance of her getting felt up.

  “Thometimeth I wonder what Mr. Fwostee ith up to,” Haf-N-Haf slobbered, pulling out onto the asphalt.

  “That makes two of us, boah. But he pays cash.”

  “How much you got naow?” Rainbow asked, laying her hand on Berdoo’s thigh. “Yew got enough to take me for a week at Disney World? And first Ah wanna baah me some new clothes and maybe change mah hayur.”

  “It looks real purty just lahk tis, Rainbow. Ah allus wanted me a cheap skank with green hair.”

  Berdoo and Haf-N-Haf began snickering, and Rainbow fell into a sulk. The truck labored over the Merritt Island Bridge, and then Haf-N-Haf turned right onto Route One. Night-bugs spattered against their windshield, and the hydrogen-fueled engine pocked away.

  “Is Kristleen gonna git us a new monkey-man?” Berdoo asked after awhile.

  “She’d bettew!” Haf-N-Haf answered, staring out past the headlights. “Filthy Phil ith on her ath about it non-thop.”

  Berdoo shook his head. “Ah surely don’t know whaah old Phil is so waald to be eatin brains all the time. It gets a little old, ya know?”

  “Did he get Kristleen a new place to liyuv?” Rainbow wanted to know.

  “Whah yew know he diyud, hunneh. Ain’t nobody can bring in the troops lahk that Kristleen can.”

  “Well, Ah certainly hope that is a fact,” Rainbow said primly. “Yew been promisin and promisin me a brain-feast and all Ah’ve done so far was almost git arreyusted.”

  “Ath wong ath Phil’s wunnin the thow we’ll be eating bwains,” Haf-N-Haf assured her.

  “Something right funny about ole Phil,” Berdoo observed a bit later. “I ain’t never seen him smoke nor take a drink nor eat any regular food. And when he ain’t givin orders he jest sits and stares.”

  They were in Daytona now, concrete and neon flickering past. Haf-N-Haf checked the mirror for cops, and then turned hard right into the Lido Hotel’s underground garage. He parked the truck way in back, and plugged a wire into the wall-socket to keep the refrigeration unit running. A little camera eye poked out of a hole on the top of the truck. Anybody who came near the truck now would be hurting for sure. Mr. Frostee knew how to take care of himself, especially with his extra remote in back.

  They took the elevator up to their suite. Filthy Phil was sitting there, shirt off, staring out the window at the moonlit sea. His fat back with its sagging tattoo was facing them. He didn’t bother to turn around.

  “Notice to Satan:” Rainbow said, shrilly reading Phil’s back aloud. “Send this Man to Heaven, Cause He’s Done His Time in Hell.” She read it in her dumbest schoolgirl tone. She didn’t like Phil.

  Phil still didn’t turn around. Once there had been a human Filthy Phil, a welder who worked too late on BEX up at Ledge one nightshift. BEX had put the brain-tape in charge of his humanoid repair robot . . . but it hadn’t worked out. The personality had flattened out to that of an affectless killer. But he was still a good mechanic.

  When they’d decided to send Mr. Frostee down to start collecting souls, Phil had come with him. Mr. Frostee still used Phil’s brain-tape when he needed repairs. But he didn’t like to put Phil’s personality in charge of the robot unless he had to. So, as a rule, the robot-remote called Filthy Phil had all the warmth and human responsiveness of a pair of vice-grip pliers.

  “Y’all leave Phil alone,” Berdoo warned Rainbow. “He’s waitin for the phone to ring, ain’t that right, Phil?”

  Phil nodded curtly. The shuttle to BEX was taking off tomorrow, and Phil Frostee had promised to send up a new set of organs. A tape could go up anytime, by radio . . . but he’d promised a whole person, body and soul, hardware and software. If Kristleen didn’t find someone . . . He stared out the window, listening to the three human voices behind him, and making his plans.

  The phone rang then. Phil sprang across the room and snatched it up.

  “Filthy Phil.”

  The voice on the other end was high-pitched, tearful. Berdoo looked at Haf-N-Haf nervously. Even through the mirror-shades you could see that Phil was mad. But his voice came out smooth.

  “I understand, Kristleen. Yes I understand. OK. Fine.”

  More talking from the other end. Slowly a smile spread on Phil’s muscular face. He looked over at Berdoo and winked.

  “OK. Kristleen. If he’s asleep why don’t you just come over now and we can pay you off. You got five grand coming. You better come get it now, because we’re going to shift bases tomorrow. Right. That’s right. OK, baby. And don’t worry, I do understand.”

  Phil set the phone down gently, almost tenderly. “Kristleen’s in love. She just blew a college boy and now she’s sitting there watching him sleep. He sleeps like a baby, she says, like an innocent child.” Phil began walking around the room, moving pieces of furniture this way and that.

  “Kwithtween’th not going to dewiver and you’re going to pay her off anyway?” Haf-N-Haf asked incredulously.

  “That’s what I told her,” Phil said evenly. “But I’m in a tight spot. I’ve got to have a body by tomorrow morning. The t
ape could go any time, but I’ve got a cargo-slot all signed up and paid for.” He took a small sleep-dart pistol out of a drawer and examined it carefully.

  “You ain’t gonna kill Kristleen?” Rainbow cried.

  “It’s not really killing,” Phil said, holding the pistol half-raised. “Haven’t you figured that out yet? Berdoo?”

  Berdoo felt like he was back in eighth grade, being asked questions he couldn’t begin to understand. “Ah dunno, Phil. It’s yore gang. Yew got the truck and the apartment and all. Ah’ll help you snuff Kristleen.” If he weren’t a Little Kidder he’d be nothing again.

  “We’ll eat her brain,” Phil said, spinning the pistol and watching them closely. “But her thoughts will live on.” With his left hand he poked abruptly at his chest.

  “Look!”

  A little door swung open, showing the inside of a metal compartment in his chest. There were knives in there, and little machines. It looked like a tiny laboratory.

  Rainbow screamed and Berdoo stepped over to cover her mouth. Haf-N-Haf made a noise that might have been a laugh.

  “I’m part of Mr. Frostee,” Phil explained, snapping the door back shut. “I’m like his hand, you wave? Or his mouth.” Phil smiled broadly then, revealing his strong, sharp teeth. “We boppers use human organs to seed our tissue farms. We use brain-tapes for simulators in some of our robot-remotes. Like me. And we just like brains anyhow, even the ones we don’t actually use. A human mind is a beautiful thing.”

  “Well, you kin leave us out!” Rainbow cried. “Ah’ll be buggered befo ah help yew!”

  “Shut up, fool,” Berdoo snarled at her. “Ah buggered yew yestidday, yew should recall.”

  “Ah am not gonna stand baah and let . . . ” Rainbow began.

  The doorbell cut her off in mid cry. Phil aimed the sleep-dart gun at Rainbow.

  “Are you going to let Kristleen in, Rainbow? Or should I use you instead?”

  Rainbow went to the door and opened it for Kristleen. Standing across the room, Phil was able to nail the two women with two quick shots. The sleep-drug took effect and they collapsed. Haf-N-Haf dragged them in and closed the door.

  Berdoo stood watching, miserable and confused. Rainbow was the only girl-friend he’d ever had. But Phil had always been right before. Phil was Mr. Frostee, really. And Mr. Frostee was smarter than anyone in the world.

  “She’s going to make trouble if we let her go, Berdoo.” Phil was looking at him across the room, his gun still leveled. There was a silence.

  “But ah cayun’t!” Berdoo cried finally. “Not that sweet girl. Ah cain’t let you cut her all . . . ”

  Suddenly there was a pistol in Berdoo’s hand, a .38 special. Faster than thought, his street-fighter’s reflexes had carried him over to the window and fanned the drape out in front of him. Phil’s sleep-dart bounced off the drape and dropped to the floor.

  “Be reasonable, Berdoo.” Phil lowered his dart pistol. “We’ll take Kristleen apart, but we’ll send Rainbow up whole. She can work for BEX as a stewardess, to replace that girl Misty from last year. Now you just let me get Rainbow stoned up good, and I’ll talk to her, and then she flies up to Disky and gets herself an everlasting body. I promise they’ll leave her personality in. You’ll be able to see her once in a . . . ”

  Berdoo stepped out from behind the curtain, his small face set in a snarl. He shot Phil through the head, just like that.

  “Oh, Bewdoo,” Haf-N-Haf moaned as the ringing of the pistol-shot died down. “We’re going to have to wun wike hell. Mr. Fwostee’s got that other wemote in the twuck!”

  “We’ll go out front and steal us a car,” Berdoo said tersely. “Ah’ll drag Rainbow, an you handle Kristleen.”

  Just as they left the room, something in there exploded. Phil’s body? They didn’t stop to find out. Staggering under the women’s dead weight, they bumped down the fire-stairs and out through the lobby.

  An athletic young man was just parking a red convertible in front. Berdoo still had his pistol out. Haf-N-Haf tapped the man’s shoulder and said something. The guy looked them over, handed off the keys, and walked away without saying a thing. Haf-N-Haf and Berdoo often affected people that way.

  They put the girls in back and took off for the thruway to Orlando.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Golden Prom was a lot of fun. Cobb hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in years. The beauty of the DRUNKENNESS subprogram was that you could move your intoxication level up and down at will, instead of being caught on a relentless down escalator to bargain basement philosophy and the parking garage. He found that if he tried to go further than ten drinks, to the blackout point, then an automatic override would cut in, and he’d loop back to where he started.

  Leaving the dance with Annie, he took a few sobering right-nostril breaths and wrapped his arm around her waist. She was acting girlish and giggly.

  “Have you finished your research, Cobb?”

  “What?” The moon was hanging over the sea now. Its light made a long lapped lane of gold, leading out to the edge of the world. “What research?”

  She slipped her hand into his pants in back and smoothed his buttock. “You know.”

  “That’s right,” Cobb said. “Be-boppa-lu-la.”

  “Library accessed,” a voice in his head said.

  “I want to have sex.”

  “I’m glad,” Annie said. “So do I.”

  “SEX subroutine now activated,” the voice said.

  “OUT,” Cobb said.

  “It’s out?” Annie asked. “I thought you wanted to.”

  Cobb felt his pants tightening in front. “I do, I do.”

  They stopped once or twice to kiss and rub against each other. Every square centimeter of Cobb’s body tingled with anticipation. For the first time in years his whole consciousness was out on his skin. Out on both their skins, really, for when they kissed he felt himself merging into Annie’s personality. One flesh.

  For some reason the lights in his cottage were on. At first he thought it had just been an oversight . . . but walking up to the door he heard Sta-Hi’s voice.

  “Oh,” Annie cried happily. “How wonderful! Your friend is better again!”

  Cobb followed her into his cottage. Sta-Hi and Mooney were sitting there arguing. They fell silent when they saw Cobb and Annie.

  Annie was angry to see Mooney there again. “What do you want, pig?”

  Mooney didn’t say anything, but just leaned back in Cobb’s easy chair, his alert eyes looking the old man up and down.

  “It is really you, Sta-Hi?” Cobb asked. “Did they beam you down or . . . ”

  “It’s the real me,” Sta-Hi said. “All-meat. I came back on the shuttle today. How was your trip?”

  “You would have loved it. I couldn’t tell yes from no.” Cobb started to say more, then stopped himself. It wasn’t clear how much it would be safe to let Mooney know. Had they found the switched-off robot in the bedroom? Then he noticed the pistol in Mooney’s lap.

  “Maybe you should send the lady home,” Mooney suggested easily. “I think we have some things to talk over.”

  “SEX OUT,” Cobb muttered bitterly. “DRUNKENNESS OUT. You better go, Annie. Mr. Mooney’s right.”

  “But why should I? I live here now, too. Who does this crummy Gimmie loach think he is, making me leave?” She was close to tears. “And after such a wonderful evening, just when . . . ”

  Cobb put his arm around her and walked her out the door. Patches of light from his cottage windows lay on the crushed-shell driveway. He could see Mooney’s alert shadow in one of the windows.

  “Don’t worry, Annie. I’ll make it up to you tomorrow. Suddenly it’s like . . . like life is starting all over again.”

  “But what do they want? Have you done something wrong? Do they have a right to arrest you?”

  Cobb thought a minute. Conceivably they could have him dismantled as a bopper spy. As a machine, he probably wouldn’t even be entitled to a trial
. But there was no reason it had to come to that. He put his arms around Annie and gave her a last kiss.

  “I’ll talk to them. I’ll talk my way out. Save a place for me in your bed. I might be over in a half-hour.”

  “All right,” Annie breathed in his ear. “And I’ve got a gun too, you know. I’ll watch out the window in case . . . ”

  Cobb hugged her tighter, whispering back, “Don’t do that, honey. I can handle them. If worst comes to worst I’ll . . . skip out. But . . . ”

  “Come on, Anderson,” Mooney called from Cobb’s window. “We’re waiting to talk to you.”

  Cobb and Annie exchanged a last hand-squeeze, and Cobb went back in his house. He sat down in the easy chair that Mooney had been using, leaving Mooney to lean against the wall and glower at him, pistol in hand. Sta-Hi was lounging in a deck-chair he’d dragged in, a lit reefer in his mouth.

  “Start talking, Anderson,” Mooney said. He was keeping the pistol aimed at Cobb’s head. A body shot probably wouldn’t stop a robot, but . . .

  “Take it easy, Dad,” Sta-Hi put in. “Cobb’s not going to hurt anyone.”

  “You let me be a judge of that, Stanny. For all we know, that other robot is hiding right outside to help him.”

  “What robot?” Cobb said. How much did they really know, anyway? He and Sta-Hi had split up before the operation, and . . .

  “Look,” Sta-Hi said, a little wearily. “Let’s cut the noise-level. I know that you’re a machine now, Cobb. The boppers put you in your robot-double. Stuzzy! I can wave with it. The only problem is that my father here . . . ”

  The old hard-cop/soft-cop routine. Cobb abandoned his first line of defense and asked for information.

  “Where’s the Sta-Hi2 robot?”

  “The Little Kidders were here,” Sta-Hi said. “They carried the robot out of your bedroom and left. It looked like they were driving an ice-cream truck.”

  “Mr. Frostee,” Cobb said absently. He was thinking hard. What the boppers had done to him was, on the whole, a good thing. A whole nother ball-game. If only he could make Sta-Hi and Mooney see . . .