Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

“Wassup, Sen-senator Stahn!” shrieked a lifted young Cicciolina from a passing gaggle of morphs. A bride and a Betty Page were in the group as well.

“Out for a night on the town?” asked the tall bride in a deep, honking voice. “Does Wendy know?”

The Betty Page snorted, chortled and bent over, rucking up a tight skirt to expose a reasonable facsimile of a woman’s naked ass. “Take a taste of Betty, Senator Moo! Relish the fine fine superfine succulence of a bad-girl butt too good for tacos!”

The kid was trying to needle Stahn about wendy meat, but Stahn gave a politician’s genial, dismissive wave, expecting the morphs to move on. Most people didn’t understand about the wendy-meat ads; the fact that they showed Wendy with her Happy Cloak was intended to be a positive force for human-moldie friendship.

“Shut your rude tuh-twat, Betty,” stuttered Cicciolina. “Yo-yo-yo, brah Stahn, wanna puh-peg of gabba? It’s straight out of the resolver; I harvested the kuh-kuh-crystals today.”

“Affirmo everplace,” said Stahn on a sudden impulse. “I can relate. Gabba gives me the yipes, you wave, but I already got the yipes on account of what I did last night, and if I can get some gabba-yipes happening, why then I’ll feel normal; it’ll be a lift instead of a drag. So come on over here, you big deeve.”

The Cicciolina drew a squeezie out of his decolletage and strutted over to Stahn, holding the little bulb up high like a magical lantern. “Tuh-toot the snoot, Senataroot!”

Stahn took the squeezie and pulsed a dose for each nostril. Ftooom! Fireworks of pleasure exploded behind his eyes, a chrysanthemum bloom of evil joy, a flower with a ring of screamers around the outer edge, screamers that floated to earth and took the form of darting, two-legged yipes.

“ Ftoom yipes,” jabbered Stahn. “ Ftoom ftoom fuh-fuh-ft oom yipes.”

“Gabba hey,” said the Cicciolina. “The fringe still luh-loves you, Senator.”

“Long may it wuh-wave,” said Stahn.

The three morphs moved on, camping and laughing. Stahn looked up at his house, its windows mellow yellow with electric light. The yipes felt good. He was lucky to have a good house in the city. He was lucky to be alive. He was lucky to have a family. How sad it would be if all of this should end.

With a sudden flurry of footsteps, Wendy swept out of the house and down the steps. “Hi, Stahn! I’m ready!” She was dressed like a witch, with high-heeled boots, long dress, large Happy Cloak, and rakish pointed hat—all a bright, matching red. The ‘Cloak was a beloved moldie that Wendy continually wore to make up for the unparalleled developmental deficiencies caused by the fact that her body was a tank-grown clone.

“You look guh-great, Wendy. You’re a red witch.”

“You sound funny, Stahn,” said Wendy suspiciously. “Don’t tell me you took even more drugs!”

“Nuh-nuh-nothing really. Some deeves gave me a pulse of guh-gabba. I’m trying to feel normal, you understand. We’re wuh-walking to the Castro, right?”

“Yes. Did you wake up a dragonfly?”

“I fuh-forgot. I don’t feel like wearing my uvvy, Wendy, not after last night. Luh-like I was telling you, Tre Dietz uvvied me all this wuh-weird shit and and—”

“Oh, spare me the wasted slobbering. I’ll get the dragonfly.” Wendy used her Happy Cloak to uvvy a message, and right away a little dragonfly telerobot flew down from its perch in the eaves of their house. The streetlights made gleaming Lissajous patterns on the dragonfly’s shiny, rapidly beating wings. “You stay about a block ahead of us and watch the foot traffic,” Wendy told it, speaking out loud. “We’re walking over the hill to Market and Castro. And keep scanning faces for Saint and Babs. We’re expecting you to find them.” The dragonfly whirred away.

“Really, Stahn,” continued Wendy as they walked up Masonic together. “You’re starting to worry me. A man your age. Two more years and you’ll be sixty!” Wendy was effectively eleven years younger than Stahn, and she worked hard to keep Stahn from turning senile. “What is it that Tre showed you anyway?”

“Perplexing Puh-Poultry N-dee,” said Stahn, clamping his hands tightly together in an effort to hold back the gabba stutter. “Some kind of freelance software agent called Jenny told him this thing called Ramanujan’s Tuh-Tessellation Equation, and right away he found a new kind of higher-dimensional quasicrystal design. The new Poultry puh-peck and peck and peck. He wants me to suh-sell the new idea before Jenny can. And we were also talking about how to ruh-ransom his wife.”

They paused on the saddle of the Buena Vista hill between the Haight and the Castro, catching their breath and looking at the view. “Oh, it’s beautiful out tonight, isn’t it, Stahn?”

“Yeah. I’m glad you got me to go outside.” He took a deep shaky breath, and the gabba shuddering left the hinges of his jaws. The first part of a gabba lift was always the hardest. “Reality is such a gas.” His words in his ears sounded smooth, pneumatic, resonant.

“What was that about ransoming Tre Dietz’s wife?”

“The loonie moldies kidnapped her by accident yesterday. She’s on her way to the Moon. I’m supposed to pay a big ransom and get Whitey Mydol and Darla Starr to pick her up. I already transferred the credit to Whitey’s account.”

“Whitey and Darla! But why should you have to pay for stupid Tre Dietz’s wife?”

“He’s made me lot of money, and this new thing’ll make a lot more. His poor wife is up there in the sky inside a moldie on the way to the Moon.”

“It’s not such a bad flight,” said Wendy. “It was fun when you and me flew from the Moon to the Earth together in 2031. It might be good for you to do it again.”

“Forget it, Wendy.” Stahn started walking again. “Which way are we supposed to go?”

“Judging from what the dragonfly’s showing me, we should walk down Ord Court to States Street to Castro,” said Wendy, cocking her head. “That’s the least crowded way.” As they linked arms and headed downhill, she turned her attention back to Stahn. “So you saw N-dimensional Perplexing Poultry, huh? Have you ever heard the theory that mathematics keeps people young? I think it’s good for you to be thinking about these things. Instead of about power and money. And all your hangovers.”

“I wish you wouldn’t obsess about age all the time, Wendy. You know damn well that with DIM parts and tank-grown organs, anyone with our kind of money can live to a hundred and twenty.”

“Yes,” said Wendy. “All thanks to the wonderful compatibility of me. But because Wendy Meat and W. M. Biologicals do, in fact, grow clones of me, I can do something better than get patched up. I can start over in a blank twenty-five-year-old wendy. My ‘Cloak could transfer all the information. I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”

“Oh, don’t, Wendy. What would happen to this body?” Stahn snaked his arm under Wendy’s Happy Cloak and around her waist to hug her. “This body I’ve loved so long? Would you cut it up and sell off the meat and the organs?”

“I’m serious about this, Stahn, so don’t try and make it hard for me. But let’s not talk about it now. You’re in no condition.” She twisted away from Stahn’s grip and brightened her voice. “Look, we’re almost there. And—yes!—the dragonfly just spotted the kids.”

Wendy stopped walking for a second, the better to absorb the images the dragonfly was uvvying to her, and as she viewed them she began to laugh. “Saint is—he’s wearing a silvered coat and he has tinfoil on his head. And Babs is—oh, Babs—” She laughed harder. “I can hardly describe this, Stahn. She’s got a little tray around her waist with things on it and a terrible yellow shirt; I have no idea what she’s supposed to be. Let’s hurry and meet them.”