Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

“Phil, I’m going back to Babs’s,” said Yoke, and in an instant she was across the floor and out the door into the shadows.

“You’re trying to sneak around,” said Kevvie. She looked wildly unpretty. “You like that little moon-maid more than me. Her and her bullshit about aliens with no flying saucers.”

With a sudden great wallowing motion, Klara tore completely loose and got up out of the tub. “You’re a zerk, Phil,” she said, pulling on her clothes and pushing past him. “You have no idea how much Kevvie loves you.”

Kevvie went on a crying jag then, and Phil held her. She felt unsettlingly fluid—as if she might pop. After a while Phil helped her to go up to their room and get into bed. As soon as she lay down, she nodded out. He went back downstairs.

“This isn’t good, Phil,” said Derek. “Calla wants to evict you two.”

“Is she in her room?”

“No, man, she walked in on them in the bathroom with her date, and he’s this very clean wetware engineer, so you can imagine. They went back to his place in Cole Valley.”

“And you?”

“You know me, Phil, I’m an anarchist. I think it’s wavy to have two skanks merged in our tub. Local color. But I’m worried about Umberto here.” Derek leaned down to pet his dog, who’d perked up at the sound of his name. “I’m afraid Kevvie might really hurt him one of these times. She doesn’t like him, fine, I can accept that. But when Kevvie’s lifted she gets so harsh and rigid, you wave? Like a killer robot. And I don’t like cleaning up after her either.” Derek’s attention turned back to the machine he was working on. “Hey, I’ve got this new effect, man. Channel this.” Derek turned on his machine and a big tongue of flame went whipping up into the air. “Looks like a dragon-fart, hey? And it’s not really fire. It’s a plasma. Cool to the touch.” Derek ran his arm through the forking pillar of flame.

“I have to go back out, Derek.”

“Oh no you don’t.”

“Kevvie’s asleep for the night, Derek. When she gets like this it means she took quaak or gabba behind the merge.”

“I don’t want to be sitting here with her crying and melting on my shoulder when she gets up to puke, man.”

“I promise I’ll be right back, Derek. I just want to run over to Babs’s.”

“To try and square it with that other girl. What’s up with her?” Derek did something to make his fire tongue reach way across the room toward Phil. “Confess to the fire-god, my son.”

“I think I love her,” said Phil as the cool flames licked all about him.

“Go in peace.”

Phil’s simple declaration to Derek crystallized his feelings. He had to find Yoke and tell her. He hurried back outside.

Across the street some wasted sporeheads were capering along the ship’s railing, doing the flat-footed newt dance that sporeheads always did, their diagonally opposite legs and arms rising and falling together. A purple Snooks moldie named Ramses was playing them some trance music from a long horn he’d grown out of his nose. Gold Thutmosis came bustling over once again.

“Was that moon-girl really packing a superleech?” Thutmosis wanted to know. Moldies were terrified of superleechs, which were control patches that could turn them into slaves. For the sake of human-moldie relations, the superleechs were illegal, just as were the thinking-cap devices that moldies could use to enslave humans. But there was a lively commerce in both products just the same.

“Where did she go?” Phil countered.

“Back the way she came.”

Phil took off running down the block and around the corner to Babs’s. But when he got inside, Saint and Babs were alone with a pale gangly guy who was lounging back in a beanbag chair, fondling a handful of Babs’s imipolex worms. Cobb, Yoke, and Onar were gone.

“Where’s Yoke?” demanded Phil.

“Out flying,” said Babs. “Onar bought Cobb that sheet of piezoplastic from me. And then Cobb grew wings and took Yoke and Onar out to see the Golden Gate Bridge. Yoke knew you’d come back, Phil. She said she didn’t want to see you again tonight. Maybe you should try again in the morning.”

“Let me introduce you, Phil,” said Saint, kindly changing the subject. “Randy Karl Tucker. He’s Cobb’s great-grandson.”

“Hi guy,” said the lanky yokel, only it sounded more like “Haaah gaaah.” He had pale hair and a narrow head. He was dressed in very generic clothes: white shirt and black pants. “This is a stuzzy art scene y’all got goin’ here,” he opined. “If I could get my dad to give me the money, I wouldn’t mind buyin’ me one o’ these warehouses. Reckon a fella can do pretty much whatever he wants here.” He smiled at Babs.

“Put the worms back now, Randy,” said Babs. “You’re going to hurt them. Randy just got back here from Real Compared To What, Phil. That moldie sex-club in North Beach?”

“Oh yeah,” said Phil noncommittally.

“I laaahked what I saw,” said Randy. “But I didn’t have the dough for a real date with a San Francisco moldie. I’m still all fired up.”

“Gnarly!” whooped Saint. “A true cheeseball.”

“It’s a lift,” said Randy mildly. “Don’t knock it if you ain’t tried it.”

“You’d probably like the Anubis,” said Phil. “It’s just down the block from here. Though if you go aboard you better know how to take care of yourself.”

“Oh, I’ve been around all kinds of moldies,” said Randy. “Thanks for the tip. Hey, Babs, I’m gonna feed one of your worms to Willa Jean. This oughta be a hoot. Chick-chick-cheer !”

At Randy’s call, a little imipolex chicken appeared from the depths of the warehouse. It walked with a jerky strut, abruptly turning its little head this way and that. It was yellow, with a dark patch on its back.

“My pet chicken,” said Randy Karl. “See that purple spot on her back? That’s a special superleech that’s controlled by my uvvy. Willa Jean’s practically like an extra hand for me. Want a worm, chick-chick?” The grinning Randy dangled a twisting green imipolex worm a few feet above the floor.

Willa Jean beat her stubby wings and hopped, trying to get at the worm. The worm was writhing and Willa Jean was cheeping frantically. Finally Randy dropped the worm and the little chicken caught it in midair. Now the chicken squatted on the floor, stretching out her neck so as to swallow her prey the faster.

“Gobble gobble,” said Randy. “Want ‘nother one, Willa Jean?”

“One more, but that’s the last one, Randy,” said Babs. She didn’t seem as annoyed with Randy as Phil might have expected. It was almost as if Babs thought Randy was cute and interesting. No accounting for tastes.

Phil looked out Babs’s warehouse door, scanning the dark sky for a sign of Yoke, Onar, and Cobb.

“Poor Phil,” said Babs. “You’d be much better for her than Onar.”

“Yaaar,” agreed Saint. “Onar’s a windbag. A sneak. I know him from work. Normally I don’t hang with him, but somehow he heard we were going out with Yoke tonight and he begged me to come along.”

“Oh well,” sighed Phil. “ ‘Night, guys.”

By the time Phil got back to his place, Kevvie had started throwing up. Derek was nowhere to be seen, but of course Umberto was right there sniffing at the vomit, and Kevvie was cursing at the dog and trying to kick him, which made her lose her footing and fall down really hard. Seeing the toll drugs took on Kevvie made Phil grateful that he didn’t do the same thing. But as always, there was a part of him that wished he could. Being a druggie would be so easy.

“Are you mad at me?” Kevvie asked him.