Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

As if in answer to Whitey’s question, there was a slight scuffling noise in the hall. A tall, slim guy with lank dark hair was just turning around to hurry off. He wore a black jumpsuit with numerous bulging pockets. Whitey sprang out the door and caught him by the left wrist. “Don’t be rude,” he snarled, bending the guy’s arm behind his back. “Darla’s ready for you. I’ll blend in.”

The slim guy surprised Whitey with a powerful punch to the stomach. As Whitey sagged, the guy twisted free of his grip and chopped him in the side of the neck. Whitey saw stars and his knees buckled, but as he went down, he got his arms around the guy’s waist. He came out of a crouch to butt the guy in the crotch. The slim body bent in half. Metal and plastic clattered in his pockets. Moving fast, Whitey got under him, carried him into their cubby, threw him against the wall over their bed, and drew out his needler.

“Cut on the zapper, Darla. And get us some privacy.”

His tone of voice was such that Darla hastened to obey. She snapped the cover over the vizzy’s camera, and she filled the doorframe with pink light. “He’s sort of a new friend, Whitey. I asked him to fall by for a fuff . He said he might have some merge. You said before that it was—”

“It is,” said Whitey, showing his teeth. “It’s fine.” He leaned against the wall and put one hand on his crotch. “What’s your name, dook?”

“Ken Doll. Put the gun away, would you? You want to watch me pumping Darla? Well, that’s the whole idea of this, isn’t it? And I did bring some merge. Here.” He sat up on the edge of the bed, took a four-hit vial out of one of his pockets, and handed it to Whitey.

“Stuzzy,” said Whitey, putting the merge in his jeans.

Ken’s wet lips spread in an odd smile: at first only the right half of his face was smiling, and then the left half caught up. There was something wrong about his eyes. They looked like they were screaming. Still, the guy had brought them four hits of merge. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Ken stuck his long tongue out, touched his chin with it, and wagged his head, looking from Whitey to Darla and back again. “You ready?” asked Ken.

“Clear,” said Whitey, pocketing his gun. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this. He figured he’d know after he saw what he did. “Go ahead.”

Darla slipped her clothes back off. She was kind of heavyset, but her big breasts and thighs looked nice in the low lunar gravity. She stood in front of Ken and pushed her bottom against his face, the way she always did with Whitey. Ken was fully into it. Darla put her hands on her knees. Her big breasts bobbled. She looked up at Whitey, her eyes already glazing a bit, and opened her black-painted lips to waggle her tongue beckoningly. Whitey dropped his pants and plugged in. The angle was just right. Ken got up on his knees and began pumping her from behind, the right half of his face grinning like a madman. The left half of his face was slack and drooling. The two men took hold of Darla and jiggled her back and forth between them. She made noises like she was happy. Whitey liked it all, except for Ken’s weird, lopsided mouth. Where was this guy from anyway?

They got on the bed, then, and tried the whole range of other positions, even the gay ones. Whitey was determined not to come before Ken; but finally he did, and Darla too. The big climax blanked them both right out.

Suddenly Whitey thought he heard a cop’s voice—the voice of Colonel Hasci, a Gimmie pig who’d hassled him many a time. “Miss Della Taze?” he was saying. “We’re down in the lobby. Can we come up and ask you some questions about Buddy Yeskin?”

Whitey lifted his head then, wide awake. It was the Mooney tap, still tuned in. Hasci had been talking to Mooney. Door slam and footsteps. So what. Mooney had found Yeskin’s corpse; Bei Ng had known about that since Monday. Everyone connected with Yukawa was tapped—that’s how obsessed with the guy Bei was. ISDN wanted all Yukawa’s secrets, but Bei had a special fixation on Yukawa as well. They’d done a gene exchange or something . . . but what was going on here and now in this room?

Darla and Ken were both on their backs next to him, both with their eyes closed. Ken was catatonically still, breathing quietly with his mouth wide open. Looked like a cave in there. Apple blossoms were blowing across the vizzy screen. Darla’s little hologram of Bei Ng glowed in the corner. Ken stank. The guy was definitely a skanky dook; Whitey and Darla’d have to be sure and take some interferon. Be bad to make a habit of this kind of thing, with so many people out to burn . . .

Whitey had been gazing fondly down at Darla’s plump face, but just then he saw something that made him jerk in surprise. Her hair was moving . Darla’s hair filled the space between her head and Ken’s, and something was crawling under it!

Whitey shoved Darla’s head to one side and saw a flash of hardened plastic. A rat! Ken was a meatie! Whitey snapped his hand down to the floor where he’d left his needler—but it was gone.

“Whitey?” Darla sat up and felt the back of her head. “Whydja push me, Whitey—” Her hand came away wet with blood.

“RAT!” Whitey pulled her off the bed. There was a spot of blood on Darla’s pillow, and a multiwired little zombie box, not yet hooked up. A zombie box for Darla. The rat—a thumb-sized, teardrop-shaped robot remote, darted across the sheet, scuttled up onto Ken’s face, and crawled back into his mouth. Darla was screaming very loud. She turned off the door’s zapper and hurried out into the hall, still screaming. Whitey searched desperately for his needler, but Ken must have bagged it before letting his rat start in on Darla’s spine.

Ken’s systems came back up and he leaped to his feet. Whitey ran out the cubby door after Darla. All the other cubbies on their hall had their zappers on. After all the bad deals that Whitey had been involved in, no one was likely to open up for him. He sprinted towards the chute, catching up with Darla on the way. A needler-burst splintered the floor between them. Whitey glanced back. The meatie was down on one knee, firing at them left-handed with Whitey’s needler. If Ken could kill them both, his cover wouldn’t be blown. Whitey and Darla were really moving now, covering ten meters at a step. In seconds they’d leaped into the chute, caught hold of the pole, and pushed themselves downward towards the Markt. The meatie would be scared to follow them there. Whitey maneuvered himself to a position lower on the pole than Darla, just in case Ken started shooting down at them. There were limits to what he’d do for Darla.

Fortunately the chute was so crowded that the meatie didn’t risk coming after them. They slapped down at the Markt level safe and sound . . . except for being naked and having a gouge in the back of Darla’s neck.

“Let me see it, sweets,” said Whitey. It was a round, deeply abraded spot half an inch across, still bleeding. Whitey had surprised the rat while its microprobes were still mapping out the main nerve paths of Darla’s spine. Some of her hair had matted into the wound. It was starting to scab over, but Darla was turning limp. The rat had probably shot her up with something. People were staring at them; full nudity was relatively rare in Einstein, and Darla had blood all over her shoulders.

“Get me some blocker, Whitey,” mumbled Darla, stumbling a bit. “Everything’s lookin at me funny.”

“Clear.” He steered her down the long arcade past the Markt stands and shops, heading for a health club called the Tun. Just when he thought he’d made it, a nicely dressed realwoman blocked his way. She had silver-blonde hair and big shoulderpads. Her handsome face was trembling with anger.