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

tacked-up paper Clearlight poster showing a huge sunflower with a smiling face. Out the window was the palm tree and the garage and the October afternoon and the soft piping of Dolf and the loud, laughing voice of Duck—tears filled Terri’s eyes.

“Terri,” came Starshine’s voice presently. “It’s all over, sweet thing. You can stop crying. And, brah Tre, it’s time to wake up.” Starshine changed a setting on her squeezie and pulsed a different aerosol into Tre’s nostrils. He twitched and opened his eyes. “You’re all better, Tre!” said Starshine. “And for recuperation, I’d advise right living and being good to your wife.”

“Wavy,” said Tre, sitting up uncertainly. “The dreams—I was seeing flashes of light from the Nth dimension. Yaar! I’m healed?” He rubbed his shoulder. “How much do we owe you?”

“Oh, how about a free room in your motel for maybe a week, ten days? My Aunt Tempest is coming out to visit from Florida, but I can’t stand to have her in my house. Tempest raised me, you know. My parents died in the Second Human-Bopper War on the Moon back in 2031.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Terri. “Were they heroes?”

“Not hardly,” said Starshine. “They were working for the boppers. They were called Rainbow and Berdoo, just a cracker skank and her bad-ass man—like me and Aarbie Kidd used to be. Rainbow and Berdoo ran a toy shop on the Moon that was a front for a tunnel into the boppers’ Nest.”

“Wow,” said Tre. “They were helping the boppers turn people into meaties? Putting those robot rats inside their skulls?”

“I think Rainbow and Berdoo were probably meaties themselves by the end,” said Starshine. “After they died, a guy called Whitey Mydol took care of me for a while. Him and his old lady Darla; they’re friends of Stahn Mooney’s. Stahn got in touch with my Aunt Tempest, and she had me flown right down to Florida.”

“Senator Stahn’s gotten kind of strung out lately,” remarked Tre. “But he’s still a good man. So when’s your aunt coming? What are the dates?”

“Too soon till too long,” sighed Starshine. “You don’t have to give her a really good room.”

“We can fit her in up by the parking lot,” said Terri. “Those rooms are usually empty this time of year.”

“Aunt Tempest couldn’t be any worse of a guest than the guy I checked in last night,” said Tre, cautiously flexing his newly healed body. “Randy Karl Tucker.”

“Randy Karl Tucker!” exclaimed Starshine. “That’s the name of the guy I saw down at the Boardwalk with Aarbie Kidd.”

“Oh yeah?” said Tre. “Well, he’s the one who sabotaged my DIM tires, and it looks like he stole Monique. Maybe you can help me find him?”

“I wouldn’t advise you to try,” said Starshine, shaking her head. “Not if he’s friends with Aarbie. Terri, I’ll let you know about Aunt Tempest. Now go on home and get Tre to rest.”

When they stepped out into the yard, Dolf heard them and came running. “Daddy!”

Tre hugged him. “I’m all fixed. Starshine glued me. What have you been up to?”

“Duck’s shoes can walk by themselves,” said Dolf. “Show them, Duck!”

Duck grinned and held his hands up in the air. Slowly and smoothly, he slid out of the garage toward Terri and Tre.

“They’re DIM shoes,” said Duck. “The soles are imipolex. They adjust to your foot. And if you press your toes a certain way, they ripple along on the ground by themselves. Loose as a moose.” Duck made dancing gestures with his arms and gave his wild laugh.

“Do you have to feed your shoes?” asked Dolf.

“No,” said Duck. “They’re like moldies; they eat light.” He struck a new pose and his shoes began dollying him back into the garage. “I gotta finish this piece by tomorrow. How’s the sore wing, Tre?”

“It’s solid,” said Tre, gingerly patting his collarbone. “Good as new.”

“Beautiful. Later, guys.”

Back at the motel, three of Monique’s nestmates were waiting for them: Xlotl, Ouish, and Xanana. While Xlotl was shaped like a chessman, Ouish and Xanana looked like sharks walking around erect on their tail fins—sharks with drifting, eddying fractals moving across their skins in shades of blue and deep gray. They each had a silvery patch that sketched a resemblance to a face.

“What’s the story with Monique?” Xlotl demanded of Terri and Tre. “What the hell happened?”

“It looks like Monique ran off with a scuzzy cheeseball guest,” said Terri, smiling at Tre. She’d started believing him again. “He sabotaged Tre’s DIM tires, and poor Tre broke his collarbone trying to catch them.”

Tre smiled back at Terri, then focused on Monique’s excited nestmates.

“How do you know something happened to Monique anyway?” asked Tre. “Did she uvvy you?”

“She didn’t,” said Xlotl. “And she was supposed to. So I grepped for her vibe and managed to get a feed from her virtual address, but—” Xlotl shook his head helplessly.

“What?” demanded Tre. “Can you tell me, Ouish? Xanana?”

“Yes, I can tell you,” said Ouish. She had a rich, womanly voice that she generated by vibrating her silvery face patch. “Xanana and I have just been channeling her. Monique seems to be dreaming about the ocean. We think maybe she’s undersea. Come here, Tre. Let me uvvy it to you.”

“Wavy,” said Tre, and Ouish laid one of her fins across the back of Tre’s neck to feed him a realtime uvvification of Monique’s current mental essence.

Monique seemed to be underwater, but it was not a realistic scene. The bottom had a white orthogonal mesh painted on it, for one thing, and the things swimming about in the water looked more like goblins than like fish. Instead of seaweed, the bottom was overgrown with rusty machinery. Yet the play of the shiny surface overhead was just as the ocean should be. The uvvy transmitted a nonvisual sensation that there was someone with Monique—inside her?—someone that Monique was frightened of, someone kinky, someone like Randy Karl Tucker.

It was too strange, too intense, and Tre felt faint. He pushed Xanana’s flipper off his neck.

“That’s my nestmate,” said Ouish. “That’s her right now. And I don’t know how she got that way or where she is. Tell me about the guest who took her.”

“At first Tre thought he was just a weird redneck limpware salesman,” said Terri.

“His name is Randy Karl Tucker,” added Tre. “He’s from Kentucky. He was real interested in Monique last night, and this morning he got her to rickshaw him out of here. I almost caught up with them near the wharf, but Tucker put some kind of DIM patches on my tires that made them jump off my wheels and try to choke me and turn into seagulls and fly away. Does… does that any make sense to you guys?”

“It could be done,” said Xanana. “Have you heard of superleeches? No? You poor fleshers can be so out of it. There’s a new kind of leech-DIM called superleeches; they just started showing up in August. Nobody’s told you? A superleech lets a human take control of a moldie or, for that matter, take control of a simple DIM device like an imipolex tire. It’s made of some new kind of imipolex. None of us knows where the superleeches are coming from. They’re very bad. Very very bad. Very very very bad. Very very very very bad—” Xanana repeated this loop phrase maybe twenty or a hundred times, saying it faster and with more verys each time, so that the last repetitions merged into a single chirp. Xanana liked infinite regresses.

“And you say Tucker’s a cheeseball?” interrupted Ouish.

“I don’t really know for sure,” said Terri. “It’s a guess.”

“Yeah Monique was gonna fuck him,” said Xlotl. “We was talkin’ about it during our break. Just ball him to make money, ya know.”

“Oh wow, that’s classy,” exclaimed Terri. “Monique turning tricks in our motel. If that’s the case, we don’t want her working here, do we, Tre? With the children? We don’t want the Clearlight to end up like that horrible place where my father died!” The moldies shifted about uneasily at this remark, but Terri seemed not to notice. “Answer me, Tre!”

“No, we don’t want that,” said Tre slowly. He’d been deep in thought ever since hearing what Xanana said. “I need to find out more about these superleeches. I’ve got this feeling they’re based on my four-dimensional Perplexing Poultry. How come Apex Images never tells me anything?”

“Let’s stick to the point,” said Xlotl. “How do we save Monique? Is it for real that she’s underwater?”

“She might be,” said Ouish. “Or she might just be dreaming.”

“Maybe she and Tucker turned right at the wharf and headed up toward Steamer Lane,” suggested Tre. “Can you guys uvvy any moldies there?”

“Let me try,” said Xanana. “Everooze and Ike might be surfing Steamers today.”

In a minute, he’d made contact. Everooze, father of Monique and Xanana, was indeed surfing Steamer Lane, a point break at the Santa Cruz lighthouse. Xanana spoke aloud so that Tre and Terri could follow the conversation.

“Yaar, Pop, have you seen Monique? Or has anyone else there seen her? Yeah, I’ll hold on while you check. What’s that? Zilly the liveboard did? Monique turned herself into a diving suit for a tourist and jumped into the ocean? But you didn’t notice it yourself. You were shredding the curl. Wavy. Yeah. We think Monique’s been abducted. Her signal’s really weird; you can check it out. You’re going after her? Hold on, Ouish and me want to come too.”

“I’m in,” said Xlotl.

“And me too,” said Terri. “If I can wear you underwater, Xanana?”

“Sure thing. Is Tre coming? He could ride inside Ouish.”

“I should rest,” said Tre. “I’m still a little shaky from the accident. And I’ve got to find out about this superleech stuff. I’ll make some uvvy calls.”

“Okay,” said Terri. “And take it easy. Ouish, can you rickshaw me out to Steamers?”

“I don’t do that,” said Ouish coldly. “I’m a diver, not a rickshaw.”

“You can say that again,” said Xanana. “You can say, ‘You can say that again’ again. You can say, ‘You can say, ‘You can say, “You can say that again” again’ again. You can say, “You can say, ‘You can say that again’ again” again’ again.” And he was off to the races with another regress.

“La-di-da,” said Xlotl. “This ain’t no tea dance. Get the hell on me, Terri.” Xlotl formed a saddle shape on his back, and Terri got aboard. The three moldies and Terri went bouncing down the hill.

Tre watched them go, checked on Molly and the kids, sat down in a comfortable chair, donned the uvvy, planning to put in a call to Stahn Mooney. But just then the uvvy signaled for him.

“Hello?”

“Hi there!” Tre saw the image of a teenage girl hick with a colorless lank ponytail. “My name is, um, Jenny? I bet you’re wondering about Randy Karl Tucker’s superleeches, aren’t you?” Jenny gave a shrill giggle. “I could tell you all about them if I wanted to.”

“Are you working with Randy for the Heritagists or something?” asked Tre. “I want Monique back right now. Are you a blackmailer?”

“Those are silly questions,” said Jenny. “Me, a Heritagist? A blackmailer? Think bigger, Tre. I want to talk to you about smart stuff ! I can tell you exactly how Sri Ramanujan at Emperor Staghorn used your 4D Poultry to design imipolex-4 and the superleech. I have a viddy