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

“Sally, ole pal!” said Babs, hilarious on her four drinks. “Sit down.” Sally pulled up a chair and Babs introduced her. “This is my brah and my rents—Saint, Stahn, and Wendy. This is Sally, guys.”

“I’ve been wanting to meet Wendy,” said Sally. “We moldies all wonder about her. How do you do it? Emulate a human wife and mother, I mean. It’s a pretty bizarre thing to do.”

“I’ve been doing it so long it feels normal,” said Wendy. “Though I am getting a bit tired of this particular human body.”

Sally produced a screw-top jar from the folds of her flesh and took off the top. “I like to have a little rub of this when I’m around people getting high,” she said, using a green-striped finger to crook out a glob of ointment. She rubbed the goo into her chest and handed the jar to Wendy. “Try some, Wendy. It’s betty. Fine, fine betty.”

“We still have a long trek home,” objected Stahn. He counted on Wendy being the sober one.

“Just chill sometime,” said Wendy, scooping up two fingers of betty and smoothing it onto her ‘Cloak self.

By the time Sally could put the jar away, she and Wendy were completely lifted. “Wave this new take on the soft watch,” said Sally, turning beige. In seconds she was shaped like an old-time computer box with a monitor on it—the box melting and drooling off the edge of her chair to make a puddle on the floor, and the monitor was displaying—the face of that Jenny-thing who’d been on-line with Tre Dietz last night?

At the same time, Wendy was tweaking quite savagely. Her Happy Cloak stopped being a demure red Wendy the Witch cape and bunched up around her neck in a big convoluted green dinosaur ruffle. “I’ve been a good wife and mother all these years, but I don’t want to get any older. I want a full upgrade! You need to understand this meat body isn’t me,” she raved. “Watch!” The ruff on her neck bucked up, pulling a frightening tangle of rootlike connectors out of her flesh and into the air. Wendy’s face went slack and her head pitched forward to lie on her crossed arms on the table. Wendy’s ‘Cloak gestured nastily with its tendrils, then wormed them back into Wendy’s neck. Wendy straightened up, a triumphant gleam in her eyes. “See?”

“We’re outta here,” said Stahn, getting to his feet and throwing down money for the check. “You shouldn’t have given her that damn shit, Sally.”

“Bye, Sally,” said Wendy. She winked and pointed a finger upward. “Thanks for the lift and the lift.”

“Have a good trip,” said Sally.

Stahn tried to take Wendy’s arm to steady her, but she twisted away from him with frightening vigor. She pushed out to the street, followed by her family.

“I wish I hadn’t seen that,” said Babs quietly. “Is Ma all right?”

“We just need to get home and kick,” said Stahn. “I wonder if there’s any chance of a rickshaw or a streetcar. Oh good, it looks like Wendy’s calling one.” Wendy was gesturing broadly, and the dragonfly hopped off its perch and circled as if searching for a ride.

“It’ll be here soon,” said Wendy, smiling crookedly. “And, kids, I’m sorry about freaking in the restaurant, but it’s for true. I’m about to shed.”

She didn’t elaborate, and nobody knew what to say, so for a half minute the four of them just stood there among the people and the moldies passing by. A streetcar ground past, going the wrong way. A sudden breeze swept up from the Bay, startlingly strong and chilly. Stahn turned his back against it, wishing he’d worn a thicker coat. Wendy and the kids were facing him, and for a moment he thought the kids were teasing when they began to scream.

“Here’s our ride, Stahn!” whooped Wendy.

The wet frigid air whirled like a tornado, and a huge blue pterodactyl shape swooped down toward them. Its wingspan was so large that it could barely fit in between the buildings. It would have to break through the streetcar wires if it wanted to reach them; they might have time to escape!

“Run!” yelled Stahn. “Back in the restaurant!”

But before he could move, Wendy’s Happy Cloak lifted off and flapped toward Stahn like a pair of ragged bat wings. Stahn was too slowed by drink and too distracted by the sight of Wendy’s body falling to the ground to stop the ‘Cloak from wrapping itself around him. Quickly the ‘Cloak sank its tendrils into Stahn’s neck and froze him in place. Stahn stood there staring at his children trying to tend their mother’s imbecilic limp body—and then the great pterodactyl pecked down in between the wires, pecked up Stahn and swallowed him and Wendy’s Happy Cloak whole.

Stahn heard the muffled sound of the pterodactyl’s screeching caw of triumph, and he felt himself borne up and away. All was dark and airless, but then the Wendy ‘Cloak began feeding Stahn air and information.

“Don’t be scared, dear Stahn,” said Wendy’s voice. “I’ll take care of you. Flapper here is going to help us fly to the Moon. It’ll be a good change of pace for you. The loonie moldies are eager for you to visit. And I’m going to the Nest to get a new wendy from the pink-tanks. You’ll be wearing me until then.”

“The Moon,” said Stahn numbly. “You’re kidding. Who’s Flapper?”

“She’s like a customs official for the loonie moldies; she keeps an eye on what goes between the Earth and the Moon. Since the loonie moldies want you to visit, Sally had the idea of asking Flapper to come down and peck like a pterodactyl.”

“Wait a minute. Can you still see through the dragonfly? How are the children? Show them to me.”

The Wendy ‘Cloak fed Stahn the uvvy image of Saint squatting by his mother’s body, with desperate Babs out in the street trying to flag down a rickshaw. The vacated wendy just lay there twitching.

“Those poor children,” said Stahn, his eyes filling with tears. “Those poor, poor children.”

“Tsk,” said the ‘Cloak. “It is sad. But I hope they don’t waste a lot of money and emotion on that brainless worn-out old body. I should have killed it before I left.” She cut off the dragonfly video feed and all was black again.

“Wendy, what’s happened to your feelings? Does it even make sense to call you Wendy anymore?”

“Sure, I’m Wendy. Yeah, I guess I am being a little cold, huh? Not too characteristic of my usual persona.” The ‘Cloak giggled. “I guess it’s the betty makes me act this way. Now you can see how it feels, Stahn. You’re always so heartless to me when you’re lifted.”

“If you’re going to nag me like a wife while I’m wrapped up inside you, I’m going to go crazy. I’d rather die! We’re high above Earth by now, right? Why don’t you and this damned Flapper push me out and let me drop! Do it! I’d be glad to die, Wendy, glad to get the endless misery over with!”

“You just feel that way because you’re strung out on drugs, you fool.”

“I’m coming down again, baby! All I do is get high and come down; nobody likes me anymore; I’m no good to anyone; I might as well be dead; let me fuckin’ drop and die.”

Flapper’s soprano voice interrupted in operatic song, “I wonder if he really means it? Look at this, Stahn Mooney!” There was a doughy rubbing against Stahn’s body from head to toe, a lumpy peristalsis as if he were feces being squeezed down a long rectum. The pressure on the top of his head was great. Clever small folds in the plastic took off Stahn’s clothes and spirited them away.

“Yeah, pop us halfway out, Flapper,” laughed Wendy. “Let Stahn see!”

Flapper sphinctered open a hole and pushed out Stahn’s upper body. She clamped lightly down on the top of Stahn’s pelvis to keep the wind from ripping him away.

So here was Stahn hanging out of a giant moldie pterodactyl’s ass, staring down at the great dark world below. The air beat at him, but he felt it only thinly, for the Wendy ‘Cloak was stretched over him like a bubbletopper spacesuit, and the ‘Cloak’s smart imipolex was twitching and shuddering to cancel out the resonant vibrations.

Far off to the west, a crescent of the Earth was still in sunshine; it was a blazing arc of hot blue ocean. But most of the planet was a silvery monochrome, bathed by the light of the Moon. The high clouds beneath Stahn were stippled in a regular pattern like fish scales, a mackerel sky. Off to the east, the clouds transmuted into flowing mares’ tails, with each tail shaped the same. The world was beautiful.

“I don’t want to die after all,” volunteered Stahn. The city of San Francisco was a speck of brightness far far below. “How high are we?”

“Fifty miles and rising fast. Flapper’s going to squirt you and me toward the Moon like a torpedo when she gets to sixty miles! I don’t have enough oomph to fly us all the way from the Earth to the Moon, see, but with Flapper launching us we can make it. We’ll do the next two hundred thousand miles on our own!”

As his eyes adjusted, Stahn could make out more and more detail in the moonlit clouds below. Once again he marveled at the world’s fractal beauty, at its fondly loved structures recurring across every size scale—in the clouds, the land, the sea—ah, the great living skin of sacred Gaia.

“This is wavy,” said Stahn presently.

“It’ll take us a week to get to the Moon,” said Wendy. “Enough time for you to dry out for the first time in years. It’ll be like a honeymoon.”

“Except you don’t have a human body,” said Stahn. “A body’s considered kind of important on a honeymoon.”

“I can give you hand jobs, Stahn. I can stick fingers up your butt. You’ll like it. You’ll see.”

As they flew higher and higher, the pterodactyl’s wings grew larger and thinner, till finally she looked like a giant stingray.

“I’m nearly ready to launch you!” trilled the great ray’s voice. “Let me draw you back in so I can push you harder. Brace Stahn tight, Wendy.”

“Okay, Flapper,” said Wendy.

Flapper puckered her flesh and drew Stahn and Wendy into herself.

Stahn was starting to feel panicky. “Even if she launches us, how are you going to get the energy to decelerate us into lunar orbit, Wendy? You’re not very big. I doubt if you weigh more than fifteen pounds. When you and me flew down to Earth on Spore Day in 2031, our Happy Cloaks were beefed up to ten times that much. Are you sure you have enough stored-up energy to keep me warm while we’re floating though space?”

“Flapper gets lots of energy from the Sun up here, and she stores it as quantum dots. And Flapper’s going to give me a whole gram! We’ll have a full tank of gas, big guy.”

“Yes, Wendy, here come your quantum dots,” sang Flapper. “I’m spraying them into your flesh. And now I’m nearly ready to birth you!”

By craning his head back, Stahn could see down the tunnel of flesh that led from inside Flapper to the outside. The tube was more vagina than rectum now, and Stahn was a baby instead of a turd.

“Straighten out your neck, Stahn,” said Wendy, her voice vibrant with