Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

“Clear. Let me show you around.” Long and undulant, Yukawa drifted back into the lab. The low lunar gravity seemed to agree with him.

The closer tables were filled with breadboarded electronic circuits and mazes of liquid-filled tubes. Computerized relays shunted the colored fluids this way and that. A distillation process seemed to be underway. The overall effect was of a miniature oil refinery. In contrast, the tables towards the rear of the lab were filled with befouled animal cages. It had been a while since Stahn had seen animals. Live meat.

“Watch,” said Yukawa, shoving two cages together. One cage held a large brown toad, the other a lively white rat. Yukawa drew a silver flask out of his coat pocket and dribbled a few drops onto each of the subject animals. “This is merge,” he explained, opening the doors that separated the cages.

The toad, a carnivore, flung itself at the rat. For a moment the two beasts struggled. But then the merge had taken effect, and the animals’ tissues flowed together: brown and white, warts and hair. A flesh-puddle formed, loosely covering the creatures’ loosened skeletons. Four eyes looked up: two green, two pink. Faint shudders seemed to animate the fused flesh. Pleasure? It was said that merge users took a sexual delight in puddling.

“How do they separate?”

“It’s automatic. When the merge wears off, the cell walls stiffen and the body collagens tighten back up. What the drug does is to temporarily uncoil all the proteins’ tertiary bunchings. One dose lasts ten minutes to an hour—and then back to normal. Now look at these two cages.”

The next two cages held something like a rat and something like a toad. But the rat’s hair was falling out, and its feet were splayed and leathery. The toad, for its part, was growing a long pink tail, and its wide mouth showed signs of teeth.

“Chimeras,” said Yukawa with some satisfaction. “Chimeras like me. The trick is to keep them merged for several days. Gene exchange takes place. The immune systems get tired.”

“I bet. So the Japanese man you merged with turned into you?”

Yukawa made a wry face. “That’s right. We beat cancer together, and he got a little younger. Calls himself Bei Ng these days. He runs his own fake religion here in Einstein, though it’s really an ISDN front. Bei’s always trying to outdo me and rip me off. But never mind about him. I want you to look at this one back here. It’s my pet project: a universal life form.”

At the very rear of the lab was a large pen. Huddled in the pen was a sodden, shambling thing—an amalgam of feathers and claws. Chitin , man, and hide, and the head had (A) long feelers, (B) a snout, (C) a squid-bunch of slack mandibles, dot dot dot , and (Z) gills. Gills on the moon.

“You’re nuts, Yukawa. You’re out of your kilpy gourd.”

At the sound of Stahn’s voice, the monstrosity hauled itself over to rattle the pen’s bars with tiny pink hands.

“Yes, Arthur,” said Yukawa. “Good.” He fished a food pellet out of his lab jacket and fed it to his creation. Just then a bell chimed.

“Back to business,” said Yukawa, giving Stahn a U-shaped smile. “I don’t know why I’m showing you all this anyway. Loneliness, I suppose. Della’s been my only companion for the last two years.”

Stahn tagged along as Yukawa made his way back to the thick window looking onto the vestibule. A light was flashing over the other door out there.

“Time’s up,” said Yukawa, speaking into a microphone. “The session’s over, Mrs. Beller.” Stahn got the full picture.

“You retail the merge right here? You’re running a love-puddle?”

“That is the vulgar terminology, yes. I have to fund my ongoing research in whatever fashion I can. I sell merge both wholesale and retail. There’s nothing really wrong with merge, you know. It’s terribly addictive, but if someone wants to quit, why, I’m perfectly willing to sell them the proper blocker.”

Outside the window, the lit door opened. Two people stepped out—a wide-mouthed brunette and her funboy. He wore a black-and-white bowling shirt with Ricardo stitched over the breast pocket. She was hot stuff . Their faces looked soft and tired, and they were holding hands.

Yukawa powered a drawer out through the wall. “Same time tomorrow, Mrs. Beller?”

“Feels so rave, Max.” The woman dropped some money into the drawer. She was hot stuff . What type of sex do you like, Mrs. Beller, WHAT TYPE??? She was used-looking , and she had a slow lazy voice and the big soft lips to match. She raked a stare across Stahn’s face and led Ricardo up the ladder to the street. As they left, Stahn noticed that their two joined hands were actually fused into a single skin-covered mass. Hot.

Yukawa caught Stahn’s expression, caught some of it. “They’ll pull apart later, when the stuff fully wears off. In some circles it’s quite fashionable to walk around part merged.”

“How come they don’t look like each other—if they’re merging every day?”

“Dosage control. Unless you set up an all-day drip, merging has no lasting effects. And the drip has to be just right, or you end up as an entropic solution of amino acids. No one can do the gene exchange right but me.”

“Other people have done it. Vic Morrow did it, dad.” Vic Morrow had been a truck-farmer in the San Joaquin Valley. In 2027, he’d hit on the idea of treating his migrant workers to a series of weekend-long mergedrip parties. Once the workers had all flowed together, Morrow would throw a couple of dogs into the love-puddle with them. He was nuts. Over the weeks, the workers had transmuted into beasts, ever more tractable, ever less demanding. The big scandal came when Morrow had a heart attack and his workers ate most of his corpse and rolled in the rest of it. A month later, the Anti-Chimera Act had passed Congress by acclaim.

Yukawa frowned and fumbled in his desk. “I told Morrow how to do it. It was a big mistake. I owed him money. I don’t trust anyone with my secrets anymore. Especially . . . ” He stopped himself and pushed a folder across the desk. “Here’s the full printout on Della—I already accessed it for you. Last Friday—that was the 20th—I was with Della all day as usual, and at four she left in her maggie. Monday and Tuesday she didn’t come in. I called her apartment, nobody home. Yesterday was Christmas and I didn’t bother calling. I figured maybe she’d taken an extra-long holiday weekend, gone on a party or a trek in the crater. She doesn’t tell me her plans. But now she’s still not here and her vizzy still doesn’t answer. I’m worried. Either something’s happened to her, or . . . or she’s run away.”

Stahn picked up the folder and leafed through it. Focus . DELLA TAZE.

Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. Twenty-eight years old. Ph.D. in molecular genetics, U. Va., 2025. Same year he’d fled to Einstein. Her photo: a nice little blonde with a straight mouth and a button nose. Fox. Unmarried.

“She was your girlfriend?” Stahn glanced up at Yukawa. His long, thin head looked cruel and freakish. The “universal life form” at the back of the lab was crying out for more food, making a sound midway between a squeal and a hiss. Arthur . It was hard to see why Della Taze hadn’t split like . . . two years ago.

“ . . . wouldn’t let me come to her apartment,” Yukawa was saying. “And she wouldn’t ever merge with me either. We argued about it Friday. I know she was using, towards the end she asked me for it all the time. Maybe that was the only reason she stayed with me as long as she did. But now . . . now she’s gone, and I have to get her back. Track her down, Mooney. Bring my Della back!”