Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

When they’d decided to send Mr. Frostee down to start collecting souls, Phil had come with him. Mr. Frostee still used Phil’s brain-tape when he needed repairs. But he didn’t like to put Phil’s personality in charge of the robot unless he had to. So, as a rule, the robot-remote called Filthy Phil had all the warmth and human responsiveness of a pair of vice-grip pliers.

“Y’all leave Phil alone,” Berdoo warned Rainbow. “He’s waitin for the phone to ring, ain’t that right, Phil?”

Phil nodded curtly. The shuttle to BEX was taking off tomorrow, and Phil Frostee had promised to send up a new set of organs. A tape could go up anytime, by radio . . . but he’d promised a whole person, body and soul, hardware and software. If Kristleen didn’t find someone . . . He stared out the window, listening to the three human voices behind him, and making his plans.

The phone rang then. Phil sprang across the room and snatched it up.

“Filthy Phil.”

The voice on the other end was high-pitched, tearful. Berdoo looked at Haf-N-Haf nervously. Even through the mirror-shades you could see that Phil was mad. But his voice came out smooth.

“I understand, Kristleen. Yes I understand. OK. Fine.”

More talking from the other end. Slowly a smile spread on Phil’s muscular face. He looked over at Berdoo and winked.

“OK. Kristleen. If he’s asleep why don’t you just come over now and we can pay you off. You got five grand coming. You better come get it now, because we’re going to shift bases tomorrow. Right. That’s right. O.K., baby. And don’t worry, I do understand.”

Phil set the phone down gently, almost tenderly. “Kristleen’s in love. She just blew a college boy and now she’s sitting there watching him sleep. He sleeps like a baby, she says, like an innocent child.” Phil began walking around the room, moving pieces of furniture this way and that.

“Kwithtween’th not going to dewiver and you’re going to pay her off anyway?” Haf-N-Haf asked incredulously.

“That’s what I told her,” Phil said evenly. “But I’m in a tight spot. I’ve got to have a body by tomorrow morning. The tape could go any time, but I’ve got a cargo-slot all signed up and paid for.” He took a small sleep-dart pistol out of a drawer and examined it carefully.

“You ain’t gonna kill Kristleen?” Rainbow cried.

“It’s not really killing,” Phil said, holding the pistol half-raised. “Haven’t you figured that out yet? Berdoo?”

Berdoo felt like he was back in eighth grade, being asked questions he couldn’t begin to understand. “Ah dunno, Phil. It’s yore gang. Yew got the truck and the apartment and all. Ah’ll help you snuff Kristleen.” If he weren’t a Little Kidder he’d be nothing again.

“We’ll eat her brain,” Phil said, spinning the pistol and watching them closely. “But her thoughts will live on.” With his left hand he poked abruptly at his chest.

“Look!”

A little door swung open, showing the inside of a metal compartment in his chest. There were knives in there, and little machines. It looked like a tiny laboratory.

Rainbow screamed and Berdoo stepped over to cover her mouth. Haf-N-Haf made a noise that might have been a laugh.

“I’m part of Mr. Frostee,” Phil explained, snapping the door back shut. “I’m like his hand, you wave? Or his mouth.” Phil smiled broadly then, revealing his strong, sharp teeth. “We boppers use human organs to seed our tissue farms. We use brain-tapes for simulators in some of our robot-­remotes. Like me. And we just like brains anyhow, even the ones we don’t actually use. A human mind is a beautiful thing.”

“Well you kin leave us out!” Rainbow cried. “Ah’ll be buggered befo ah help yew!”

“Shut up, fool,” Berdoo snarled at her. “Ah buggered yew yestidday, yew should recall.”

“Ah am not gonna stand baah and let . . .” Rainbow began.

The doorbell cut her off in mid cry. Phil aimed the sleep-dart gun at Rainbow.

“Are you going to let Kristleen in, Rainbow? Or should I use you instead?”

Rainbow went to the door and opened it for Kristleen. Standing across the room, Phil was able to nail the two women with two quick shots. The sleep-drug took effect and they collapsed. Haf-N-Haf dragged them in and closed the door.

Berdoo stood watching, miserable and confused. Rainbow was the only girl-friend he’d ever had. But Phil had always been right before. Phil was Mr. Frostee, really. And Mr. Frostee was smarter than anyone in the world.

“She’s going to make trouble if we let her go, Berdoo.” Phil was looking at him across the room, his gun still leveled. There was a silence.

“But ah cayun’t! ” Berdoo cried finally. “Not that sweet girl. Ah cain’t let you cut her all . . .”

Suddenly there was a pistol in Berdoo’s hand, a .38 special. Faster than thought, his street-fighter’s reflexes had carried him over to the window and fanned the drape out in front of him. Phil’s sleep-dart bounced off the drape and dropped to the floor.

“Be reasonable, Berdoo.” Phil lowered his dart pistol. “We’ll take Kristleen apart, but we’ll send Rainbow up whole. She can work for BEX as a stewardess, to replace that girl Misty from last year. Now you just let me get Rainbow stoned up good, and I’ll talk to her, and then she flies up to Disky and gets herself an everlasting body. I promise they’ll leave her personality in. You’ll be able to see her once in a . . .”

Berdoo stepped out from behind the curtain, his small face set in a snarl. He shot Phil through the head, just like that.

“Oh, Bewdoo,” Haf-N-Haf moaned as the ringing of the pistol-shot died down. “We’re going to have to wun wike hell. Mr. Fwostee’s got that other wemote in the twuck!”

“We’ll go out front and steal us a car,” Berdoo said tersely. “Ah’ll drag Rainbow, an you handle Kristleen.”

Just as they left the room, something in there exploded. Phil’s body? They didn’t stop to find out. Staggering under the women’s dead weight, they bumped down the fire-stairs and out through the lobby.

An athletic young man was just parking a red convertible in front. Berdoo still had his pistol out. Haf-N-Haf tapped the man’s shoulder and said something. The guy looked them over, handed off the keys, and walked away without saying a thing. Haf-N-Haf and Berdoo often affected people that way.

They put the girls in back and took off for the thruway to Orlando.

The Golden Prom was a lot of fun. Cobb hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in years. The beauty of the DRUNKENNESS subprogram was that you could move your intoxication level up and down at will, instead of being caught on a relentless down escalator to bargain basement philosophy and the parking garage. He found that if he tried to go further than ten drinks, to the blackout point, then an automatic override would cut in, and he’d loop back to where he started.

Leaving the dance with Annie, he took a few sobering right-nostril breaths and wrapped his arm around her waist. She was acting girlish and giggly.

“Have you finished your research, Cobb?”

“What?” The moon was hanging over the sea now. Its light made a long lapped lane of gold, leading out to the edge of the world. “What research?”

She slipped her hand into his pants in back and smoothed his buttock. “ You know.”

“That’s right,” Cobb said. “Be-boppa-lu-la.”

“Library accessed,” a voice in his head said.

“I want to have sex.”

“I’m glad,” Annie said. “So do I.”

“SEX subroutine now activated,” the voice said.

“OUT,” Cobb said.

“It’s out?” Annie asked. “I thought you wanted to.”