Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

His hair was blond, and his skin was pink and blotchy, with no trace of Buddy’s deep mocha shading. It was hard to form a clear impression of his features, as he was constantly drinking formula or yelling for more. Della helped feed him for a while, but then she drifted off to dreamless sleep. She woke to the sound of arguing from downstairs. It was still dark. Dad was yelling at Mom.

“Why don’t you let that baby sleep and come to bed? Who do you think you are, Florence Nightingale? You’ve been drinking, Amy, I can tell. You’re just using this as an excuse for an all-night drinking session. And what the HELL do you think you’re doing feeding OATMEAL to a newborn baby?”

There was the clatter of a dish being snatched, followed by loud, powerful crying.

“SHUT UP, Jason,” screamed Mom. “I’ve had ONE drink. The baby is not NORMAL. Look how BIG it’s gotten. Whenever I stop feeding it, it cries and WON’T STOP CRYING. I want poor Della to get some SLEEP. YOU take over if you’re so smart. And STOP YELLING or you’ll WAKE DELLA!!!”

The baby’s crying grew louder. Uncannily, the crying sounded almost like words. It sounded like, “GAMMA FOOD MANCHILE! GAMMA FOOD MANCHILE!”

“GIVE THE BABY SOME OATMEAL!” yelled Mom.

“ALL RIGHT,” answered Dad. “BUT BE QUIET!”

Della wanted to go downstairs, but she felt like her whole insides would fall out if she stood up. Why did her parents have to turn so weird just now when she needed them? She groaned and went back to sleep.

When she woke up again, someone was tugging on her hair. She opened her eyes. It was broad daylight. Her vagina felt torn. Someone was tugging on her hair. She turned her head and looked into the face of a toddler, a pink-faced blond kid standing unsteadily by her bed.

“Manchile Mamma,” said the tot in a sweet lisping voice. “Mamma sleep. Gamma Gappa food Manchile.”

Della jerked and sat bolt upright. Her parents were standing off to one side of the room. The child scrambled up on her bed and fumbled at her breasts. She pushed it away.

“Mamma food Manchile?”

“GET RID OF IT,” Della found herself screaming. “OH TAKE IT AWAY!”

Her mother marched over and picked up the baby. “He’s cute, Della. He calls himself Manchile. I’m sure he’s normal, except for growing so fast. It must be that drug you were taking, that merge? Was your Negro boyfriend a very light one?”

“Gamma food Manchile?” said Manchile, plucking at Mom’s face.

“He calls us Gappa and Gamma,” said Dad. “We’ve been feeding him all night. I had to go out to the 7-Eleven for more milk and oatmeal. I tell you one thing, Della, this boy could grow into one hell of an athlete.”

“Hoddog Manchile?”

“He likes hotdogs, too,” said Mom. “He’s ready to eat just about anything.”

“HODDOG!”

Now Bowser came trotting into the room. He strained his head up to sniff at the new family member’s feet. Manchile gave the dog a predatory, openmouthed look that chilled Della’s blood.

“Have you called the Gimmie?”

“I don’t see that it’s any of their business,” said Dad. “Manchile’s just a fast bloomer. And remember, Della, you may still be in trouble with the law for that business up on the Moon. You know the old saying: when the police come is when your troubles begin.”

“HODDOG FOOD MANCHILE BWEAD MILK!” roared the baby, thumping on Mom’s shoulders.

Della spent the next week in bed. The high-speed gestation had taken a lot out of her. If Manchile had grown at a rate of a month a day while inside her, now that he was outside, he was growing a year a day. Mom and Dad fed him unbelievable amounts of food; and he went to the bathroom every half hour. Fortunately he’d toilet-trained himself as soon as he’d started to walk.

The uncanniest thing about all this was the way that Manchile seemed to learn things like talking not from Mom and Dad, but rather from within. It was as if there were a vast amount of information stored inside him, as if he were a preprogrammed bopper.

Just as he remembered Hanna calling him a “manchild,” he remembered Della screaming “Get rid of it.” Sometimes, when he took a few minutes off from eating, he’d peer into her room and sadly say, “Mamma wants get rid of Manchile.”

This broke Della’s heart—as it was intended to do—and on the third or fourth day, she called him in and hugged him and told him she loved him.

“Manchile loves Mamma too.”

“How do you know so much?” Della asked him. “Do you know where you come from?”

“Can’t tell.”

“You can tell Mamma.”

“Can’t. I’m hungry. Bye bye.”

By the week’s end, he looked like a seven-year-old, and was perfectly able to feed himself. Della was out of bed now, and she liked taking him for little walks. Every day he’d notice new things outside; everything living seemed to fascinate him. The walks were always cut short by Manchile’s raging hunger—he needed to get back to the kitchen at least once every half hour.

He was a handsome child, exceedingly symmetrical, and with a glamorous star quality about him. Women on the street were constantly making up to him. He resembled Della little, if at all.

After everything else, it was hardly a surprise when Manchile taught himself how to read. He never seemed to need sleep, so each evening they’d give him a supply of books to read during the night, while he was up eating.

Colin, Ilse, and Willy came over daily to check Manchile’s progress. Colin was leery of the unnatural child, and privately urged Della to call in the authorities. He wondered out loud if Manchile might not be the result of some kind of bopper gene tinkering. Ilse snapped at him that it didn’t matter, the child was clearly all human, and that there was no need to let a bunch of scientists turn him into a guinea pig. Willy adored Manchile, and began teaching him about science.

The big crisis came when Manchile killed Bowser and roasted him over a fire in the backyard.

It happened on the night of the twelfth day. Della and her parents had gone to bed, leaving Manchile in the kitchen, reading a book about survival in the wilds, and eating peanut-butter sandwiches. At the rate he’d been eating, they’d run out of money for meat. When they woke up the next morning, Manchile was out in the backyard, sitting by a dead fire littered with poor Bowser’s bones.

Della’s growing unease with Manchile boiled over, and she lashed out at him, calling him a monster and a freak. “I WISH I’D NEVER SEEN YOU,” she told him. “GET OUT OF MY LIFE!!!”

Manchile gave her an odd look, and took off running. He didn’t even say good-bye. Della tried to muster a feeling of guilt, a feeling of missing him—but all she could really feel was relief. Mom and Dad didn’t take it so well.

“You told the poor boy to leave?” asked Mom. “What will happen to him?”

“He can live on roast dogs,” Della snapped. “I think Uncle Colin is right. He’s not really human. The boppers had something to do with this. Manchile was a horrible experiment they ran on me. Let him go off and . . . ” She was sandbagged by an image of her child crying, alone and lost. But that was nonsense. He could take care of himself. “I want to get back to real life, Mom. I want to get a job and forget all about this.”

Dad was more sympathetic. “If he stays out of trouble we’ll be all right,” he said. “We’ve kept this out of the news so far; I just hope it keeps up.”

The Belle of Louisville was a large paddleboat powered by steam that was heated by a small fusion reactor. It was moored to an icebound dock in the Ohio River near Louisville’s financial district, and its many lights were left on all night as a symbol of civic pride.