Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

Stahn tried to stand up, but Ricardo and Whitey still had their two hands clamped together across his arms and stomach. They were strong guys. They had him pushed right down into the cushions. Ricardo snickered and spoke. He had a slight lisp. “You know about slack , Sta-Hi? Like to take it easy , man? Slack means no more yelling from the right half of your head. You going to be very happy, my friend.” He lefthanded a stick of gum out of his shirt pocket. “You want a piece, Stahn? You want to get high?”

“No,” said Stahn, “I don’t.” This was really happening. “I quit using two years ago. If it wasn’t for drugs I wouldn’t have lost my job and killed Wendy. I was working as a cop for a while there, you know, down there in Daytona after I broke Frostee.” He sighed shakily. “Man oh man, those boppers never quit. I wonder if they’ll still give me a wendy when I’m a meatie.”

“You’ll be a charming couple,” purred Mrs. Beller. “With half an adult brain between the two of you.”

“Just like an ex-cop and his old lady,” said Ricardo, happily chomping his gum. “What you say they call those pleasant tract homes, Dr. Yukawa? Say Happy Acres? ” Ricardo shook his head in mock wonder as Yukawa guffawed. “You won’t have a care in the world, Mooney man, boffing that fine fresh tank-grown chick. With her brain all blank, she’ll believe anything you want to tell her. You’ll live like a king. When she get smart maybe they make her a meatie, too—I hear they cut out a piece of the left half of a woman’s brain, man—”

“Shut up, Cardo,” snarled Mydol, digging his elbow so hard into Stahn’s stomach that Stahn gasped. “Don’t talk to me about woman meaties.” He made his voice calm again and addressed Stahn. “So Cobb gave you a map, did he? Now we’re getting somewhere. Is the map in your office?”

“Kill me slow, punk. Smother me with Darla’s fat whore ass and—”

The thud of Whitey’s fist against his neck knocked Stahn unconscious. When he came back to, Mrs. Beller was leaning over him with a bulb of water. “Drink this, Stan, it’s just water. You shouldn’t tease Whitey, he’s very upset. He’s worried about Darla.”

Stahn’s throat felt broken. He could barely get the water down. Some of it went the wrong way, and he coughed for a long time, thinking hard. The question was: what could he get for the map? A chance to escape, at best. Still, just in case, he had to ask.

“If I give you the map, you’ll let me go, won’t you? You can use someone else for the meatie agent.”

“No, Mooney,” whispered Whitey. “We’re gonna use you. Bei promised me.”

“It is for good of the human race,” said old Bei. “Truly, Stahn. You will be hero; you will atone for many sin.”

“But what good will I be as an agent?” protested Stahn, his voice cracking. “You can’t put a mikespike on me. The boppers can sense them and pick them right out like Cobb did. It’s pointless. I’ll just disappear into the Nest.”

“Here, Stahn,” said lovely Fern Beller, still standing over him. “Drink some more water. Your voice sounds awful.” Stahn drank deep. Fern’s hands were soft and sweet, oh Mrs. Beller, what type of sex.

“Whitey and I have something in common,” said Yukawa then, running a hand through his thinning hair. “I loved Della Taze, Stahn, I still do. You know that. She’s all right now, but what the boppers did to her was wrong. I want to punish them. And I am a bioengineer. I am a very brilliant man.”

“You always say,” put in Bei. There seemed to be a friendly sibling rivalry between him and Yukawa. “You very brilliant except sometimes you not very smart.”

“I’ve designed a chipmold,” said Yukawa. “Fern just infected you with it. It’s a bit like thrush, quite opportunistic, and you’ve got it. I don’t care if we lose track of you or not, once you take my chipmold into the Nest.”

“Max,” interrupted Mrs. Beller, sidestepping the spray from Stahn’s mouth. “Do you really think you should—”

“Tell him, tell him,” said Bei Ng. “Once we replace his right parietal lobe with a neuroplug, he got nothing else to lose. Stahn going to play ball with us, no problem. Is all decide.”

Yukawa steepled his fingers and wagged his long head happily. “Chipmold in that water, Stahn, and you drank it .”

Ricardo cackled joyfully, and even Whitey cracked a smile.

“What’s chipmold?” said Stahn presently.

“In general, biotic life can flourish whenever there is an energy gradient,” said Yukawa. “Think of the tubeworms who live around deep-sea volcanic vents. Or lichen growing on a sunlit Antarctic rock. There’s an energy gradient across all the boppers’ silicon chips, and I’ve designed an organism that can live there. Chipmold.”

“I don’t get it,” said Stahn. “The chipmold will crud up their circuits?”

“Better than that. The chipmold likes a steady thousand-cycle per second frequency. That’s what it ‘eats,’ if you will: kilohertz electromagnetic energy. For a mold, it’s quite intelligent. It’s able to selectively suppress or potentiate the chips’ firing to enhance the amplitude of the desired frequency. It will eat their heads.” Yukawa threw his arms around his head, shuddered, and then slumped.

“Spastic robots, my friend,” said Ricardo.

“Be sure and spit a lot,” said Bei Ng, beaming across his desk. “Spread chipmold all around Nest. Cock leg here and there like dog.”

“Oxo wow,” said Stahn, more impressed than he cared to admit. Something else occurred to him. “Am I going to have fits?”

“Who cares, dip,” said reliable Whitey. “Where’s the map?”

“Don’t worry,” said Yukawa. “In your high-entropy system the stuff’s just like sore throat. And a low-grade bladder infection. It’s quite versatile; I’m not sure what it’ll do to the boppers’ flickercladding.”

“Come on, Stahn,” drawled Mrs. Beller. “Be a dear and tell us where you hid the map.”

This was his only chance. “It’s in my office desk. But I fixed it so only I can get it. It’s boobytrapped with a smart bomb.”

“Clear,” said Whitey disgustedly. “You have to say that, right? They teach you that line at cop school, right?”

“I don’t care what you think, punk, it’s true. It’s in my office desk with a smart bomb that only I can turn off . The bomb knows what I look like.”

“AO. Cardo and I’ll take you there. Right, Bei?”

Bei thought for a full two minutes, as if pondering a chess problem. “Yes,” he said finally. “Go up to roof, get maggie, fly to Mr. Mooney’s building, if he make trouble you can stun. You take Mrs. Beller, too. Very careful, very slow.”

“I’ve got a stunpatch all set,” said Mrs. Beller, reaching into her purse. She drew out a foil disk, stripped plastic off one side of it, and glued it to the back of Stahn’s neck. “Let him go, boys.”

Whitey and Ricardo let go each other’s hands and let Stahn stand up.

“Walk towards me, Stahn,” said Mrs. Beller. “Come here and give me a big kiss.” She pouted her big lips at him and showed the tip of her purple tongue. “Come to mamma.”

Stahn took a cautious step, and then Mrs. Beller pressed the button of the control she was holding. The stunpatch fired electricity into Stahn’s spine. It hurt more than anything he’d ever imagined possible. He fell twitching to the floor and lay there staring glassy-eyed at Mrs. Beller’s legs. It took a few minutes till he could get back up. One thought dominated his mind: he must not do anything that would make Mrs. Beller press the button again.

Mrs. Beller, Whitey, and Ricardo ushered Stahn out into the hall.