Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

Tokens of gratitude , each and every one? No way. What did the boppers want?

He heard the screen-door slap then. It was Annie. She’d done something to her hair and face. Seeing him, she shone like a sunflower.

“It’s almost six, Cobb. I thought maybe we should walk over to the Gray Area now and have some supper there first?” He could feel her fragile happiness as clearly as if it were his own. He walked over and kissed her.

“You look beautiful.” She had on a loose Hawaiian-print dress.

“But you, Cobb, you should change your clothes!”

“Right.”

She followed him into his bedroom and helped him find the white-duck pants and the black sport-shirt she’d gotten ready for tonight.

“What about him?” Annie asked, whispering and pointing at the inert figure on Cobb’s bed.

“Let him sleep. Maybe he’ll pull through.” The truck would come get him while they were out. Good riddance.

He could see through her eyes as he dressed. His new body wasn’t quite as fat as the old one, and the clothes fit, for once, without stretching.

“I was afraid you’d be drunk,” Annie said hesitantly.

“I could use a quick one,” Cobb said. His new sensitivity to other people’s thoughts and feelings was almost too much to take. “Wait a second.”

Presumably the DRUNKENNESS subroutine was still activated. Cobb went into the kitchen, pressed his finger to his right nostril, and inhaled deeply. A warm feeling of relaxation hit him in the pit of the stomach and the backs of the knees, spreading out from there. It felt like a double shot of bourbon.

“That’s better,” Cobb murmured. He opened and closed the kitchen cupboard to sound as if he’d had a bottle out. Another quick snort, and then Annie came in. Cobb felt good.

“Let’s go, baby. We’ll paint the town red.”

“They’re collecting human brain-tapes,” Sta-Hi said as his father parked the car. “And sometimes they take apart the person’s body, too, to seed their organ tanks. They’ve got a couple hundred brains on tap now. And at least three of those people have been replaced by robot doubles. There’s Cobb, and one of the Little Kidders, and a stewardess. And there’s still that robot who looks like me. Your surrogate son.”

Mooney turned off the ignition and stared out across the shopping center’s empty parking lot. An unpleasant thought struck him.

“How do I know you’re real now , Stanny? How do I know you’re not another machine like the one that had me fooled all week?”

The answering laugh was soft and bitter. “You don’t. I don’t. Maybe the diggers switched me over while I was sleeping.” Sta-Hi savored the worry on his father’s face. My son the cyborg . Then he relented.

“You don’t have to worry, Dad. The diggers wouldn’t really do that. It’s just the big boppers that are into it. The diggers only work there, making the tunnels. They’re on our side, really. They’ve started a full-scale revolution on the Moon. Who knows, in a month there may be no big boppers left at all.”

A dog ran across the parking lot. keeping an eye on their car. They could hear loud rock music from two blocks away. The pheezers were having some kind of party at the Gray Area bar tonight. In the distance the surf beat. A cooling night breeze flickered in and out of the car windows.

“Well, Stanny . . .”

“Call me Sta-Hi , Dad. Which reminds me. You holding?”

Mooney rummaged in his glove compartment. There should be a pack of reefer in there somewhere . . . he’d confiscated it from one of his men who’d been smoking on duty . . . there it was.

“Here, Sta-Hi. Make yourself at home.”

Sta-Hi pulled a face at the crumpled pack of cheap roach-weed, but lit up nonetheless. His first hit of anything since back at the Disky Hilton with that Misty girl. It had been a rough week hiding out in the pink­

houses and then getting smuggled back to earth as a shipment of spare innards. Rough. He smoked down the first jay and lit another. The music outside focused into note-for-note clarity.

“I bet old Anderson’s at that party,” Mooney said, rolling up his window. Damned if he was going to sit here while his son smoked a whole pack of dope. “Let’s go check out his house, Sta-Hi.”

“OK.” The dope was hitting Sta-Hi hard . . . he’d lost his tolerance. His legs were twitching and his teeth were chattering. A dark stain of death-fear spread across his mind. Carefully, he put the pack of reefers in his pocket. Must be good stuff after all.

Father and son walked across the parking lot, behind the stores and onto the beach. The moon, past full, angled its silvery light down onto the water. Crabs scuttled across their path and nipped into hidey-holes. It had been a long time since the two of them had walked together. Mooney had to hold himself back from putting an arm across his son’s shoulders.

“I’m glad you’re back,” he said finally. “That robot copy of you . . . it always said yes. It was nice, but it wasn’t you.”

Sta-Hi flashed a quick smile, then patted his father on the back. “Thanks. I’m glad you’re glad.”

“Why . . .” Mooney’s voice cracked and he started again. “Why can’t you settle down now, Stanny? I could help you find a job. Don’t you want to get married and . . . “

“And end up like you and Ma? No thanks.” Too harsh. He tried again. “Sure I’d like to have a job, to do something important. But I don’t know anything. I can’t even learn how to play the guitar good. I’m only . . . ” Sta-Hi spread his hands and laughed helplessly, “I’m only good at waving . . . at being cool. It’s the only thing I’ve learned how to do in twenty-four years. What else can I do?”

“You . . . ” Mooney fell silent, thinking. “Maybe you could make something out of this adventure you’ve had. Write a story or something. Hell, Stanny, you’re meant to be a creative person. I don’t want to see you end up wearing a badge like me. I could have been an illustrator, but I never made my move. You have to take that first step. No one can do it for you.”

“I know that, too. But whenever I start something it’s like I’m . . . a nobody who doesn’t know anything . Mr. Nobody from Nowhere. And I can’t process that. If I’m not going to win out anyway, I’d rather just . . .”

“You’ve got a good brain,” Mooney told his son for what must have been the thousandth time. “You tested 92nd percentile on the MAGs and then you . . . “

“Yeah, yeah,” Sta-Hi said, suddenly impatient. “Let’s talk about something else. Like what are we going to do at Cobb’s house anyway?”

They had walked a couple of kilometers. The cottages couldn’t be much further.

“You’re sure they built robots to look like you and like Anderson?” Mooney asked.

“Right. But I don’t know if the robots still look like us or not. They use this stuff called flickercladding for the skin, and it’s full of little wires so if you pass different currents through it, the stuff looks different.”

“But you figure Anderson’s in one of these robots now?”

“Come shot! For sure. I saw a nursie taking him apart. It . . .” Sta-Hi broke off, laughing hard. Suddenly, with a reefer in him, the image of Cobb lying down in that giant toothed vagina . . . it was too funny for words. It was so good to be stoned again.

“But why lure you and him all the way up to the Moon just to tape your brain-patterns?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they respect Cobb too much to kidnap him and eat his brain like anyone else. Or maybe they don’t have any really good brain-dissecting machinery down here. And me . . . they just wanted to get me out of sight any way that . . . “