Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

Sure enough, Gate 13 was fifty yards down the hallway, surrounded by milling passengers and with the figures of the four dacoits dark and clear to one side. Through the hall windows Randy could see the airliner: a giant moldie-enhanced machine in the shape of a flying wing.

“Isn’t there some other gate I can use?” asked Randy. “Like for first-class or for the handicapped?”

“Yes, Gate 14 is the VIP gate,” said Jenny. “But it’s only twenty yards past Gate 13 and the dacoits can see it too. We have to distract them. I notice they’re all wearing uvvies. I can blast them with noise, but that’s only good for a few seconds before they think of removing their uvvies. We need something more. Any ideas?”

“I’ll use Willa Jean!” Randy switched his attention to Willa Jean and got her to hop out of the bag and trot along ahead of him. Randy watched through Willa Jean’s eyes until she was near the dacoits, and then he launched her toward them like a flying boxing glove. At the same moment, Jenny sent a mind-numbing current of noise into the dacoits’ uvvies. Willa Jean bounced among the stunned dacoits, knocking them over like bowling pins. Moving just short of a run, Randy breezed past the dacoits and in through the first-class Gate 14. As he headed down the tunnel to the aircraft, Willa Jean ran to join him. The turbanned dacoit tried to follow her, but Jenny sent some message to the airline personnel that caused them to drag the dacoit out of the boarding area. The plane left on time.

Randy had a comfortable window seat. He stared down at India for a while, thinking about all the things he’d seen here. California would be good too and maybe then the Moon. It would be a long time before he returned to Kentucky. He smiled, leaned back in his seat, and fell asleep.

Although Dom and Alice Percesepe were loyal to their children, they were only fitfully attentive. Terri and Ike had to do most of the housework while they were growing up. Often as not, big sister Terri made supper for Ike, with Dom off at the restaurant and Alice somewhere with her friends. A typical supper would be tuna or peanut butter sandwiches. Ike would always ask for dessert, and Terri would tell him, “There’s lemonade for dessert.”

“Why doesn’t Mother shop?” complained Ike one day in June 2043. It was the last day of school. “We can afford food. Dad owns a restaurant and a motel.”

“When Mother shops, it’s just for clothes,” said Terri. “The only time she buys food is to put on a special dinner for Dom .” She said her father’s name with vicious emphasis.

“Did you get your final grades today?” asked Ike.

“Yeah. I got all A’s. How about you?”

“C’s and—finally—a B. In History. I’m stoked.”

“Dad is gonna be excited about that,” said Terri sourly. “Not that he’d ever notice my A’s. I’d like to do something to really shake him up.”

“Well, he’s not too happy about the boys you’ve been going out with,” said Ike. “Kurtis Goole and those other stoner surf rats.”

“I know,” smiled Terri. “For Kurtis and his friends, adults are bowling pins you knock over. Like inflatable clown dolls with weights on the bottom so you can hit them again and again and they keep bouncing back up.”

“Poor Dad,” said Ike. “What a way to talk.”

“Yeah, poor Dad and his Sons of Adam Heritagist hate group,” said Terri. “You know what I ought to do? I ought to start hanging around with moldies. Maybe that would make him notice that I’m alive.”

“What is your problem today, sis? Did something bad happen to you?”

“Yes,” said Terri, “something did. About a half hour ago, while I was cleaning the house and emptying the trash cans as usual, I saw some papers on Dad’s desk. You know what I saw there? His will.”

“Oh God, is he sick?”

“Just because you have a will, it doesn’t mean you’re about to die, idiot,” said Terri. “It’s just something that grown-ups do. Like taxes. So anyhow, the will says that you inherit the restaurant, I get ten thousand dollars, and Alice gets the motel, the house, and everything else.”

“Ten thousand dollars,” said Ike enviously. “That’s righteous bucks. Why don’t I get any money?”

“The restaurant is worth a lot more than ten thousand dollars, you fool.”

“Oh yeah, I guess it is.”

“And you get it all to yourself,” spat Terri. “Just because you’re a boy with a stupid gross ball sack.”

“ Whoah!”

That summer Terri had a summer job running the cash register in Dom’s Grotto out on the Santa Cruz Wharf. Dom was virulently antimoldie, and he made a point of advertising that no moldies were employed in any capacity by his restaurant. ALL HUMAN-PREPARED FOOD read the signs outside. HERITAGISTS WELCOME. NO MOLDIES WORK HERE. Due to the stench of moldies, not many restaurants employed them anyway, except perhaps to wash dishes or keep the books, but Dom liked to promote the Heritagist cause, even at the risk of getting in trouble for violating the equal rights clause of the Moldie Citizenship Act.

Terri was a calm and efficient cashier, sitting there afternoons and evenings on a high stool. She wore pink lipstick, and she wore her hair long and straight. She chewed gum. Her face was thin, her skin was dark, she was sexy. Terri slept late in the mornings, and at night she went to as many beach parties as her parents would let her get away with.

Ike was working as a deckhand on a Percesepe day-cruise fishing boat run by Dom’s brother Carmen. Ike’s boat would leave early and come back to the wharf around 4 P.M. He’d help clean the fish the tourists had caught, collect his tips, hose himself off with fresh water, and go over to Dom’s Grotto to get his main meal of the day. Terri would order it up as takeout and let Ike have it for free; this was approved by Dom, with the stipulation that Ike’s meals not be extravagant.

One foggy day in August, Ike came in wet and wiry, his brown eyes big and his short hair bristling. He wore boots, baggy shorts, and a damp, stained T-shirt.

“Yaar, Terri!”

“Yaar, kiddo. How were the tips?”

“So-so.” He shoved his hand in his pocket and held out a small wad of ones and fives. “The customers caught their limit of rockfish, but they were cheap bastards. They were Baptist Heritagists from Texas; Dad’s group invited them here and gave them a reduced rate. They kept hoping someone would hook a rogue moldie so we’d have to flame it. Instead of tipping me, one couple gave me, look at this—” Ike dug in his other pocket and produced a gospel DIM that displayed a little hollow film loop about moldies being the Beast predicted by the Book of Revelations.

“Moldies are Satan,” chirped the little DIM as it played its images.

“How bogus,” said Terri. “How valley. And I notice they don’t hate moldies too much to use a DIM for their gospel tract. Like they don’t realize that DIMs are small pieces of moldie?”

“They don’t know shit,” said Ike. “When I mentioned that we’re Catholic, they said that the Virgin Mary is a false idol. Whatevray. I’m starving, Terri. Can I get a Dungeness crab? Just this once?”

“You know Dad says to give you cheap food,” said Terri. “Unsold fish for upstart barbarians.”

“Yeah,” said Ike, “with lemonade for dessert. Come on, Terri. Let me have a crab today. If Dad complains, I’ll take the blame.”

“He won’t let you take the blame,” said Terri. “You’re the son . Dad saves all the blame for me. But what the hey, big sis can handle it. What do you want with your crab?”