Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

“Sell her to who?”

“Stahn Mooney’s paying. He called Pop to arrange it last week. Didn’t Pop tell you? Yoke and I are supposed to pick Terri up and help her get back to Earth.”

“For free?” snapped Darla.

“Of course not,” said Joke, tapping her head. “We’re getting good money. Berenice made up the contract with Blaster.” For Joke, Emul and Berenice were living beings.

“Anyway,” chimed in Yoke, “we thought you might enjoy going out to the spaceport with us to greet her. Pop will be there too.”

“He could have called me about this,” complained Darla. “Sometimes I think Whitey doesn’t love me anymore.”

“Sure he does, Ma,” said Joke. “Are you gonna come?”

“All right,” said Darla. “I wouldn’t mind getting out a little. I have the creeps from this place, after Rags acting that way.”

“It was probably just a malfunction,” said Yoke soothingly. “Corey’s been known to err.”

“But he said all his Silly Putters had turned into . . . I think he said aliens ?” said Darla. “Are your Silly Putters acting weird today? You still have a lot of them, don’t you?”

“Joke took them all back to Corey,” said Yoke sadly. “Even the rath and the Jubjub bird.”

“For a while there, Emul and Berenice had me convinced that Silly Putters are wrong,” said Joke. “Berenice kept asking how I would feel about owning six-inch-tall pet humans programmed to be animals.”

“I doubt if pet humans would ever suddenly decide that they’re from another galaxy,” said Darla. “ Cthon —that’s what Rags said his name was. He was walking on his hind legs and he was talking. His eyes were different.”

“Well, maybe we should go out to the isopod and visit Corey,” suggested Joke. “If it’s really true.”

“That child molester?” flared Darla. “Locked in the bathroom is where he belongs! We’re not speaking to him anymore!”

“We’re not children anymore, Ma,” said Joke. “Anyway, I already have seen him again. He’s lonely since Willy moved out of the isopod and into the Nest. We’ve had dinner a couple of times. His studios are totally gogo. And I’ve decided Emul and Berenice were wrong about Silly Putters. Corey’s Silly Putters aren’t sad at all; they’re a great art-form. There’s no reason not to be like animals instead of being like people. Look at tropical fish, for instance. Instead of putting their computational energy into being smart, they put it into being beautiful.”

“Wait, wait, wait, Joke,” cried Darla. “Stop it right there. You’re telling me you’ve been to Corey’s isopod?”

“Interrupt,” said Yoke. “We gotta jam over to the spaceport right now, sistahs. Berenice says Blaster’s almost here. You two can finish arguing while we’re on the way.”

Outside the apartment, they walked down the corridor past other cubby doors closed off by the faintly buzzing curtains of zappers. At the end of the corridor was the vertical shaft that led down to the Markt and up to the domed city of Einstein.

“Are we gonna take the underground tunnel?” asked Darla.

“No,” said Joke. “We’ll rent a buggy and drive. It’s prettier that way. And Stahn’s paying. It’s in the contract.”

“Boway!” exulted Darla. “Wonderbuff. I haven’t been out under the stars in a long time. But maybe . . . maybe I should have worn more clothes.”

“Aw, you look bitchin’, Ma,” said Yoke. “The bubbletopper’ll keep you warm. Let’s go!”

They swung easily up the ladder that led to the top of the shaft and stepped out onto the streets of Einstein. High above them the huge dome arched over the city, with maggies flying this way and that. In the center of the street was a moving sidewalk with chairs.

“Look, girls, there goes a woman with a Silly Putter,” said Darla, pointing to a woman gliding past with what looked like a Siamese cat in her lap. “I wonder if—” But the imipolex cat was just sitting there, looking comfortable and normal. Yoke looked at Darla a little questioningly. “Well, maybe Corey hasn’t sent the virus to anyone else,” said Darla.

“Here comes a slot,” said practical Joke, and the three of them hopped onto the slidewalk and took a seat. The incredibly various architecture of Einstein streamed past, setting Darla to reminiscing.

Here came, for instance, the lotus-stem-columned Temple of Ra, a former bopper factory that had been a flophouse since the First Human-Bopper War in 2022. Darla had lived there when she’d first come up to the Moon in 2024; she’d come as the fungirl traveling companion of a construction company executive named Ben Baxter. Darla started out as the Baxter family’s baby-sitter back in her hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, but soon Baxter had fallen for Darla in a big way. Darla played along with the dook, but once he’d gotten her to the Moon, she’d ditched him and struck out on her own. Those had been some wild and scroungy times in the Temple of Ra. That was where Darla had discovered merge, and merge had led her to Whitey.

Darla’s reverie was interrupted by the sight of something odd in the alley that separated the Temple of Ra from the 1930s-style office building next door. The alley was largely filled with the rubble of discarded loonie utensils and furniture, most of it made of ceramics and polished stone, with the broken-up surfaces giving off random glints of light. A drift of polished pumice seemed to be moving around as if windblown, but there was never any wind in the Einstein dome. Could it be virus-infected rogue Silly Putters under the garbage? But just as the alley swung out of sight, Darla got a glimpse of a rat popping out from under the broken stones, a regular gray rat with a naked pink tail. Maybe Corey had just been stoned and Darla was just being paranoid. But then—what was it that had happened to Rags?

Now they slid past the old office building—it was called the Bradbury and Stahn Mooney’s detective office had been in there. What a strange skinny dook Stahn had been. Hard to believe he’d moved back to Earth and been a U.S. Senator for twelve years. Him and his Moldie Citizenship Act, what kilp. At least on the Moon, the moldies weren’t interested in acting like citizens. They stayed out of Einstein, and the humans stayed out of their Nest. It was better that way. Darla nodded to herself.

“’Sup, Ma?” said Yoke, throwing her arms around Darla and giving her a hug.

“I was watching an uvvy show about Earth the other day,” said Darla. “I can’t believe those filthy mudders live with moldies right among them.”

“Don’t whip yourself into a racist frenzy, Ma,” said Joke. “Remember that (a) it hurts my feelings and (b) we’re going to be surrounded by moldies at the spaceport trade center.”

“Well, how would you like it if some xoxxox bopper had caged you up and raped you like Emul did to me? Not that I don’t love you, Jokie, but—”

“Oh, give it a rest, you two,” interrupted Yoke. “We get off here.”

They hopped down from the moving sidewalk’s bench. They were near the edge of Einstein, with the dome wall just a few hundred feet ahead. Butted up against the wall was a pumice-block building with a high false front shaped like a crenellated castle wall. The wall was decorated with huge set-in polished obsidian letters saying MOON BUGGIES.

The three women went in and got bubbletopper spacesuits and a solar-powered buggy with large flexible wheels. The buggy’s metal surfaces were candy-flecked purple, and the wheels had orange imipolex DIM tires. The buggy had four independently stanchioned seats, each seat a minimal affair with a back pad and two butt pads. In a few minutes they were bouncing along the dusty gray tracks that led from Einstein to the spaceport. Yoke drove, Darla rode shotgun, and Joke sat in back. Back in the 2030s, when the loonie moldies were less proud, the bubbletoppers might have been full-fledged moldies, but now the bubbletoppers were back to being dumb piezoplastic with a DIM set in. At least the suits had uvvies, so it was easy for the women to talk.