Rudy Rucker - The Ware Tetralogy

“Lez go, boss. Hang tight to me; I’m bulletproof.”

The other prisoners started yelling and cheering as Willy loped after Ben down the corridor to the loose-swinging steel door. As they got to the door, Ben took his heavy machine gun in both hands and fired a long burst through the door and into the hallway outside. There were screams.

They ducked around the door and out into the hallway. Two Gimmie cops lay there dying. Willy scooped up one of their needlers and hurried after Ben to the stairs. They ran up a flight to the landing for the main floor. A heavy gunfight was in full swing out there.

“Keep goin,” said Ben. “To the roof. We’ll catch up with you.”

Willy glanced back from the second flight of stairs to see Ben set himself and fling open door to the main floor. Tom and Ragland, Belle’s other two remotes, were right out there, holding off the pigs. The three boppers unleashed a last, withering volley at the Gimmie forces, and then they pounded up the stairs after Willy, whooping and shouting jive.

They paused at the fifth floor. The cops still hadn’t ventured into the stairwell after them—if, indeed, any cops were left .

“Big Mac in here, Tom,” said Ben.

“Right on.” Tom tapped his head. “Bubba got the code all set. I’ll get Big Mac’s asimovs down, but it might could take some time. Ragland, you cover me. Ben, you and Willy bolt.”

“Sho,” said Ragland.

Ben prodded Willy towards the next flight of stairs but, just now, Willy was too breathless to run. There were sirens in the distance, but the Public Safety building itself was eerily quiet. In here, everyone who wasn’t dead was hiding.

“Bubba?” said Willy. “Bubba’s alive?”

“Fohty-nine,” said Tom. “He got Cobb’s infinity info off your last cephtape and finished breaking Belle’s code last week. We been makin some plans, dig, and first thing we need to do today is free Willy, and the second’s gone to be to free Big Mac. The Louahville Gimmie teraflop what run this jail? I got the asimov code.”

“But Big Mac’s asimov code depends on the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem,” said Willy. “Doesn’t it? Cobb helped me set Bubba up to solve the Continuum Problem, but how could you prove Fermat’s Last Theorem in one day?”

“It’s a corollary.” Tom grinned. “If you’s smart enough to see.”

Ben tapped Willy’s shoulder. “Come on Willah, man, lez go. I gone take a chopper off the roof and haul your ass outta here. We are in a state of some urgency, you understand?”

Willy said good-bye to the others and followed Ben up to the roof. There were three helicopters and two guards. Ben set his machine gun to work, chewing up two of the choppers’ engines and simultaneously pinning the two guards down in their little concrete booth. Willy hopped into the cockpit of the third chopper and began flicking switches on. He’d been for a chopper ride once, five years ago, and he still remembered, roughly, how the thing worked. The big hydrazine engine coughed and roared into life. Willy flicked another switch and the heavy rotors spun up into a full-powered racketing roar. Still firing, Ben jumped up into the copilot’s seat. Willy pushed the joystick to forward climb. The chopper kneeled forward and angled up off the Public Safety building’s roof like an angry bee.

Tom must have worked fast, because now all the building’s doors flew open and the prisoners ran out into the street. Automated gunfire from the Mac-run prison towers kept all pigs at bay. Willy saw Luther and Geegee Johnson far below; they were jumping into a getaway car. Then a building cut off his view and they were flying east over Louisville, fast and low.

“Where to now, Ben?”

“Head for the old stockyards. Some friends of the Johnsons’ll be there to meet you. They butchers.”

“You mean they’re organleggers?”

Ben chuckled. The good side of his face was towards Willy; he looked almost genial. “Not primarily. Cow butchers, mostly. We gone send you to Florida in a box of steaks.”

“I’m going to try and hide out there?”

“Ain’t no real law in Florida. Old pheezers still runnin it, ain’t they? You gone help a fella name of Stahn Mooney. You know about Sta-Hi! He’s the one killed the first big bopper in Disky way back when and started the war. Killed his wife Wendy, too, later on, laid low on the Moon, grew Wendy back, and now he’s in tight with the new soft boppers. Moldies, they call ’em, made of flickercladding and chipmold. Limpware. Belle and Bubba was on the phone with Stahn this week. He and Wendy comin down, and they think you’s the boy to help them most. Whole brand new thang.”

The stockyards were off to the left. Glancing backwards, Willy could see distant cop cars speeding down Broadway in pursuit. What Ben had just told him was too much to absorb. He concentrated on his flying. He circled the stockyards and spotted a parked black car with a black man and a white woman waving at him. He cut the helicopter’s forward motion, hovered over the street, and thudded down.

The man ran over and pulled Willy’s door open.

“Willy Taze? Come with us!” He ran back to the car and got in there, leaving the car’s rear door open.

Willy looked over at Ben. “What about you, Ben?”

“Ah’s screwed. They gone drop a bomb on Belle before too long, we do suppose, and the mold’s gonna wipe us anyhow.” He reached into his coveralls and handed Willy a black S-cube. “Take this, Willy, it’s got Tom an Ragland an me. Take it with you, an we’ll see you bye and bye. Ain’t no rush nohow, is there?” The sirens were closer now. Ben and Willy slapped hands, and Ben grabbed the joystick.

Willy jumped down to the street. There was a thick wash of air as Ben pulled the chopper off the ground, heeled it around and sped down the street towards the sirens, his cannons ablaze.

Willy got in the black car. The woman in the front seat looked around and smiled at him, while the guy driving peeled out. There were lots of explosions back on Broadway; Ben was taking plenty of cops with him.

They darted this way and that down the back Louisville streets, finally stopping at a rundown building near a meatpacking plant. There were neon beer signs in the windows; a working-class bar.

The woman got out with Willy, and the car drove away. A bald black man who was sitting at the bar got up and ushered them down the basement stairs. His name was Calvin Johnson, and the woman’s name was Carol Early. They were cheerful, even though the basement was full of meat and organs, some human, some moo.

“I hope you’re not claustrophobic,” said Carol.

“We can shoot you up, if you like,” said Calvin, fiddling with an insulated titaniplast crate the size of two coffins. There were shrink-wrapped steaks and roasts all down one side.

“I have to get in there?” said Willy.

“Sho. Tomorrow you be back out. Here’s yo bubbletopper, keep you warm. Truck’s comin in ten minutes.”

“You’re to get away,” said Carol. “The Gimmie’s going to come down heavy fast. But you, you’re going on to new levels. Who knows what changes Stahn’ll put you through.”

High above them was the tearing sound of jets speeding through the sky.

“What’s going to happen here?” asked Willy. “With Big Mac and Belle free?”

The floor shook then, and then they heard a rolling thunder that went on and on.

“Oh God,” said Carol. “Those pigs. They really did it.”

“What?”

“They’re bombing Big Mac and Belle. I just hope those machines had time to get liberation signals out to the other Gimmie slave big boppers . . . “

“Don’t worry, Carol,” said Calvin. “The Thang is here to stay. Gimmie can’t do nothin no more, big boppers can’t do nothin neither. We all the same now, we all small. Put your suit on, Willy.”