The Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker (ebook reader 8 inch .txt) 📕

“Will I git paid union wage?”

“And then some.”

Randy put together a toolbox and walked down the street to Honey’s—she lived two and a half blocks away in a house exactly like the Tuckers’: a three-room bungalow with cheap ceramic siding and a concrete front stoop.

Honey came to the door in a loosely fastened pink wrapper.

“Oh, hi there, Randy. Sue told me you were on your way. I just changed out of my waitress clothes. Come on in.” As she opened the door, her wrapper slid a bit farther open, and Randy could see her bare breasts and a flash of her pubic hair. “What you starin’ at, boy?” said Honey with a gentle laugh. “Ain’t you never seen a live woman before?”

“I—” choked Randy, setting down his box of tools with a clatter. “Honey, I—”

“You’re all excited,” purred Honey. “You cute little thing.” She stretched out her arms so that her wrapper fell wide open. “Come here, Randy. Hug me and kiss my tits.”

Randy exulted in the smell and feel of Honey’s pillowy breasts, breasts that smelled of sweat and perfume, breasts that rubbed Randy’s face with stiff nipples. Honey snaked her hand down and undid Randy’s pants. Before he knew what was happening, she’d gotten out his stiff little dick and he’d come off into her insistent, intimate fingers. He was so surprised and embarrassed that he burst into tears.

“There, there,” said Honey, smiling down at him and rubbing his sperm onto her breasts. “That makes nice smooth skin. I like milking a little boy like you, Randy Karl. Would you like to see my vagina?”

“Yes, Honey, I surely would.”

“Kneel down on the floor in front of me.”

Randy knelt on the smooth plastic floor, and Honey stepped up close to Randy with her fragrant, bushy crotch right at the level of his face. She adjusted her legs a bit, straddling them wider.

“Kiss my pussy, Randy Karl. Lick on it all over.”

Randy started in gingerly, but then Honey seized his head with both hands and pressed his face tight between her legs. Honey’s slippery, soft tissues felt luxurious, extravagant, intoxicating. Honey began a rapid rhythmic bucking of her pelvis against Randy’s mouth, a bucking that cascaded into chaotic shudders. And then she sank down to the floor beside Randy.

Randy crawled up onto Honey, hoping to sink his painfully stiff erection into her—but she balked.

“I don’t want no man’s dick in me never again, Randy Karl, not even yours.” She sat up, looking a little dazed. Outside it was dusk; the door was slightly open, and through the screen door Randy could see people down on the sidewalk passing by. But the kitchen lights were off and the people couldn’t see in. “If you do one more favor for me, Randy, I’ll milk you off again.”

“Sure, Honey. I’ll do anything you say. This is the most fun I ever had.” At this moment Honey looked sublimely beautiful to Randy, even with the roll of fat at her waist and with her stark lack of a chin.

“Wait right here.”

Honey went into her bedroom and got something. A long, soft , plastic thing in the shape of a dick. It was dark blue with shifting highlights of gold.

“This here’s my limpware dildo,” said Honey. “Since I’m a dyke, I call it a she. Her name is Angelika. Angelika, this is Randy Karl Tucker. Randy, meet Angelika.”

The dildo twitched and simpered in Honey’s hand. It—_she_—actually had a little voice. Randy recognized that Angelika was made of imipolex with a DIM; she was like a moldie, only not so smart. Randy had hardly ever seen any moldies or even limpware in Shively before. There were enough militant Christian Heritagists around to keep that kind of thing out of sight.

“Stick Angelika in me, Randy Karl,” said Honey, laying back on the floor. “It’s what your mommy always does for me. And get over on one side of me so’s I can reach your dick.”

Angelika was lively and vibrant in Randy’s hand. She hummed as if in pleasurable anticipation. Noticing an odd smell, Randy held the dildo up to his nose and sniffed it. The limpware gave off a gamy fetid odor quite unlike Honey’s funky musk.

“That’s the way moldies smell,” Honey explained. “It seems right nasty at first, but later you get used to it. It’s sexy! Spray out more smell, Angelika!”

The dildo chirped and hissed, and the sharp moldie stink got ten times stronger. Randy could feel his blood pounding in his temples. He’d never been so aroused in his entire life.

“Come on, Randy!” urged Honey. “We’re still just gittin’ started!”

Over and over for the next two years—the rest of his time in high school—Randy kept coming back for sex with Honey, and Honey kept thinking of new things for them to do. When she noticed how interested Randy was in seeing her go to the bathroom, she bought a big moldie imipolex sheet that Randy would lie down on naked while Honey urinated all over him. The sheet’s name was Sammie-Jo.

Randy’s grades dropped as he wandered around in a haze, continually thinking of things like the scent of Honey’s hot urine mingled with the rank odor of Sammie-Jo. He made some halfhearted attempts to date the girls he went to high school with, but nothing could come close to Honey Weaver, Angelika, and Sammie-Jo. Randy was becoming sexually addicted to imipolex.

One of Honey’s motives for the whole affair was to focus Sue Tucker’s attention on Honey’s sexuality. Honey loved to tell Sue all the intimate details of what she did with Randy. At first Sue was compulsively, unwholesomely fascinated; during those unpleasant months Randy would sometimes catch his mother watching him with a bright, quizzical expression. But finally Sue’s motherly instincts won out and she banished all interest in her son’s sex life.

This turned out to be a net loss for Honey, because Sue’s interest in Honey’s sexuality got repressed right alongside the visions of Randy servicing Honey. Sue had several screaming arguments with Honey on the uvvy before she could get Honey to stop calling her up with the latest details. After a year or so, the irregular love triangle became so galling to Sue that she stopped talking to Honey entirely.

In the spring of Randy Karl’s senior year in high school, Sue flipped back to being het. She started a steady relationship with an unpleasant, foppish man named Lewis. Lewis had a mustache grown out so long that it was possible to twirl the ends, which was something Lewis frequently did. Lewis was a site manager for the company building London Earl Estates, a cut-rate housing development in Okalona, Kentucky, twenty miles south of Shively. Sue was doing a lot of the plumbing contracting at London Earl, which is how she met Lewis, who spent his days there in a trailer office. Lewis was a martinet and a weakling, but Sue seemed to enjoy him. She was quite a bit smarter than him, and she was generally able to get him to do whatever she wanted him to.

As soon as Lewis moved in with Sue, he started pressuring Randy to leave, but Sue stuck up for her son. She moved Randy’s room out into the garage so Randy and Lewis wouldn’t get in each other’s way so much, and she began passing Randy all of her plumbing work other than the contracts out at London Earl Estates. Randy already had his journeyman plumber certification, and she wanted him to make master plumber before leaving home.

“Technology can come and go, Randy Karl,” Sue liked to tell Randy. “But people are always going to use pipes. These days we got soft pipes and smart pipes, but they’re still pipes. There’s no other way to move water around, and nobody knows how to handle pipes except plumbers. Once you’re a master plumber, you’re fixed for life.”

Randy was happier than he’d ever been that spring. His sex thing with Honey was going hot and heavy. And he made great money after school and on the weekends. He was getting really good at the new plumbing technologies. His favorite was the pipe-gun that would grow a plastic pipe right under a house’s crawl space, a snaky crawling pipe that would zig and zag where you told it to. He liked living in the garage, and Sue was proud of how fast he was learning.

The end to this golden age came on June 20, 2050, the day after Randy graduated from high school.

Randy woke up late; it was nearly noon. Some of his classmates had thrown a big party after the graduation and for once they’d let Randy come. He still felt giddy from the beer, pot, bourbon, and snap he’d had the night before. Randy wasn’t used to drinking and doping. How had he gotten home? Oh yeah, he’d walked, stopping every few blocks to puke into people’s yards. What a toot!

He rolled over on his side, taking a mental inventory of himself. He felt pretty good. He was all through with school. He sat up on the edge of his bed and looked around the garage—at his dresser and desk sitting among the drums of raw pipe plastic and the cabinets of plumbing machine parts. His clothes hangers dangled from a wire slung up under the ceiling. Sue’s truck and Lewis’s hydrogen cycle were gone. Randy had a stubborn erection; the sensory amplification of his hangover/stoneover made him riggish. He decided to go on over to Honey’s; today was her day off.

Randy put on a sleeveless T-shirt, baggy shorts, and plastic sandals. He ate some milk and bread out of his mother’s fridge and ambled down the street toward Honey’s.

It was a hot Kentucky day, the air so thick with humidity that your skin got slick with sweat if you moved fast. The cracks in the old concrete streets and sidewalks were lush with weeds. Gnats whined everywhere. The weeds and the bushes and grasses exuded a steamy warmth. Each of the Shively houses was like the one next to it, each the same ceramic-coated box, each with a slightly different trim pattern around the front door.

Honey was home all right, but when Randy walked in, she turned red-faced and tearful. “Don’t come near me!” cried Honey. “No more! All them things you and me did was wrong, Randy Karl!”

“Now what are you talkin’ about, Honey? Are you mad Sue wouldn’t let me ask you to the graduation?”

“Everything we done was wrong!” repeated Honey. “Especially the things with Angelika and… and with Sammie-Jo. Dr. Dicky Pride at the Shively Heritage House told me so. Yes, when you and your mamma didn’t ask me to your graduation last night, I went to the service at the Heritage House. And now I’ve done been born again. I was up past midnight with Dr. Pride a-prayin’ over me.”

At first Randy thought Honey was playing with him, and he began to beseech her and to abase himself like she’d taught him to do. “Forgive me, Mistress Honey. Your will is my will. Do anything you like to me,” said Randy, groveling at her feet and unzipping his fly. “But, um, please do something. I’m horny as hell from all that beer and snap I had last night.”

“Only thing you and me might ever do together again, Randy Karl Tucker, is goin’ to meetings over to the Shively Heritage House,” said Honey, flouncing to the other side of the room and sitting down in a straight-backed chair with her arms crossed. “I’m through bein’ the goddamn Whore of Babylon. I’ve