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

The business did well, and over the next few years, Corey gave Yoke and Joke several more Silly Putters. The girls liked the toys, and they enjoyed Corey. Corey was one of the only people who would let Joke talk freely about Emul and Berenice. He was also the only one of Whitey and Darla’s friends who knew anything about literature. He got Yoke and Joke to read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass.

On the girls’ eleventh birthday, Corey showed up with a set of six brand-new Silly Putters. Chuckling and showing his gray teeth, he upended his knapsack to dump the lively plastic creatures out on the floor. “Remember Jabberwocky, girls?” he cried. “Jokie, can you recite the first two verses?”

“Okay,” said Joke and declaimed the wonderful, time-polished words.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

 Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.”

Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!

As Joke spoke, each of the six new Silly Putters bowed in turn: the tove, a combination badger and lizard with corkscrew-shaped nose and tail; the borogove, a shabby moplike bird with long legs and a drooping beak; the rath, a small noisy green pig; the Jabberwock, a buck-toothed dragon with bat wings and long fingers; the Jubjub bird with a wide orange beak like a sideways football and a body that was little more than a purple tuft of feathers; and the Bandersnatch, a nasty monkey with a fifth hand at the tip of his grasping tail.

Joke and Yoke shrieked in excitement as the Jabberwocky creatures moved about. The Jubjub bird swallowed the rath and regurgitated it. The freed rath gave an angry squeal that rose into a sneezing whistle. The Jabberwock flapped its wings hard enough to rise a few inches off the floor. The tove alternately tried to drill its nose and its tail into the floor. The borogove stalked this way and that, peering at the others but not getting too close to them. And the Bandersnatch snaked its tail behind Yoke and felt up her ass.

“Don’t!” said Yoke, slapping at the Bandersnatch’s extra hand. The Bandersnatch gibbered, rubbed its crotch, capered lewdly, and then seized the back of Joke’s leg, shudderingly hunching against the young girl’s calf.

“I better do some more work on him,” wheezed Corey, grabbing the Bandersnatch and stuffing the struggling Silly Putter back into his knapsack. “I put so much of myself into each of them that I’m never quite sure how they’ll react to new situations. Quit staring at me like that, girls.”

“Uncle Corey’s a frumious Bandersnatch,” giggled Yoke.

“It was so sick how that thing was pushing on my leg?” said Joke.

“Doing it,” whooped Yoke. “Oh, look, the Jubjub bird is going to swallow the rath again and make it outgrabe!”

“The present tense is outgribe,” corrected the literate Joke. “It’s like _give _and gave.”

Darla was upset by the incident of the Bandersnatch, and her suspicions about Corey Rhizome were amplified a few months later when Kellee Kaarp came over to visit.

Kellee was a young friend of Darla’s from Darla’s heavy drug-use days, back when she’d been living in the Temple of Ra. Kellee was strung out on drugs—quaak, snap, three-way, merge, whatever—and she had sex with anyone who could get her high. She only visited when she needed something, but Darla always welcomed her. Darla sometimes thought that if she hadn’t met Whitey, she might have ended up like Kellee.

“Come on in, Kellee,” said Darla. “How’s it going?”

“Hard and xoxxy. I need money.” Kellee was tiny and undernourished, not much bigger than Yoke or Joke.

“I don’t keep any money around the house, Kellee,” said Darla. “But I can give you a couple hits of merge. Best I can do.”

“You still take merge, Darla? You still into the magic floppy?”

“Sure, whaddya think? I’m suddenly too realwoman for the love puddle? But I only do it with Whitey, like on major special occasions, maybe two or three times a month, and hardly ever in front of Yoke and Joke anymore.”

“You’ve got your life together, Darla. I envy you. The pervo dooks I make it with, you wouldn’t believe.”

“I’m all ears,” said Darla. “You know I love your sordid tales. How about some coffee, Kellee?”

“You got beer?”

“Affirmo.”

After three beers and half an hour of chat, Kellee reminded Darla about the merge, and Darla went and got three caps from her stash.

“Thanks a lot, Darla,” said Kellee, pocketing them. Her face took on a sly look. “Before I go, there’s something I better tell you. The girls aren’t home, are they? Yoke and Joke?”

“No, they’re at school.”

“Okay,” said Kellee, running her fingers through her lank hair. “I gotta tell you about Corey Rhizome. Last night I was out to the isopod fuffing him for a few doses of snap and he did this really slarvy thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was wearing his uvvy on his neck while he was on top of me, which is totally insulting in the first place—I know I’m not as wonderbuff as I used to be, but if somebody doesn’t want Kellee, they should leave Kellee alone. I mean obviously Corey was using the uvvy to run a philtre to make me look like someone else. And I’m wondering who? So… I snatch the uvvy off him while he’s coming, and I check it out, and… and it was a philtre of Joke. Or Yoke. They look the same to me.”

“That gunjy deeve!” cried Darla. “My girls! I knew it! On their birthday, he gave them a Silly Putter that humped Joke’s leg, and now he’s running sex philtres of them on snap whores—excuse me, Kellee. This has to got to stop! I’m telling Whitey!”

“Whitey will stop Corey,” said Kellee. “Brah Whitey will do the deed. And clearly you’ll be needing my inputs. You got another beer?”

So Whitey spoke to Corey, and Corey claimed he’d never been with Kellee Karp at all. Whitey believed Corey, but just the same, Corey stopped coming around, and the friendly dinners out at the isopod came to an end. Whitey stayed friends with Corey, but Darla hadn’t talked to him since. How time flies by. Now the girls were twenty-two, and it was November 6, 2053.

“Come on, Darla,” pleaded Corey Rhizome’s hollow. “Talk to the Old Toymaker.”

Slowly Darla got out of bed, her boobs jouncing in the gentle lunar gravity. Her flesh exuded the notions of softness, of comfort, of ease. She had a mild double chin, a practical bow-shaped mouth, a pug nose, and frank eyes.

“Just a minute, goob!” she hollered and got herself dressed. She pulled on thigh-high moldie boots and low-cut black panties with a satin string waistband and scallops of lace around the edges of the crotch. She slung her heavy studded leather utility belt about her waist and left her breasts bare. She put on a long strand of black moon-pearls and a necklace of thin gold chain, then rummaged briefly at her hair, a great black haystack that puffed down over her shoulders to feather across the mounds of her breasts. She put on her black lipstick and toggled the uvvy’s video camera.

“What is it?”

“Hi, Darla,” said Corey Rhizome, regarding her with no special interest. Darla’s garb was not at all unusual in the heated tunnels of the Moon and, in any case, Darla was far too mature to pique Corey’s lust. “Do you, uh, know where Whitey is?” Judging from the background of the hollow, it looked like Corey was calling from his bathroom. Some guys had no class at all.

“He went out this morning, dook. He’s doing something for ISDN. That’s all you called for? Like I’m some kilpy message machine?” She reached for the uvvy cutoff.

“Wait, Darla, wait. I can talk to you.”

“Oh, I’m lucky.” Darla picked up the uvvy and carried it into the kitchen area with her. Rhizome’s hollow trailed along behind the uvvy like a balloon. While she was moving, the hollow made some funny hisses and crackles, and then she thought she heard a sound like whooping somewhere else in the apartment. She stopped and cocked her head, but now everything was quiet. Drug hangover, no doubt. “Okay, I need some breakfast,” said Darla. She set the uvvy on the counter, popped a squeeze bulb of sugared coffee into the microwave, and filled a bowl with paste from the food tap.

“It’s about my Silly Putters,” said Corey Rhizome, looking worried. He was sitting on the toilet with his pants on. “They’re acting different today. This morning I got an uvvy call from this moldie called Frangipane. She’s a friend of Willy and Gurdle-7 in the Nest. And she sent my uvvy something like a virus, which it then downloaded onto twelve of the fourteen Silly Putters up and running today. When Frangipane hosed me, my uvvy made a kind of crackling sound and then the twelve infected Silly Putters started whooping and, um, I hate to tell you this, Darla, but I just heard those sounds again, so I think my uvvy sent the virus on to your uvvy. How many Silly Putters do you have in your apartment? You better go check on them.”

“Oh sure, thanks a lot,” said Darla, spooning up her paste and not paying much attention. “How many Silly Putters do we have? We only have one left. The girls took the rest of them when they moved out. But we do still have Rags, the one that’s like a cute little spotted fox terrier. I haven’t seen him yet this morning.” She raised her voice. “Here, Rags! Come here, boy!” There was no response.

ISDN had done well by Darla and Whitey; they had a six-cubby apartment. Darla set down her spoon and ambled into the living cubby. Rags was indeed in the living cubby, but Rags had stopped acting like a dog. He was shaped the same, still white with irregular black spots, but—he was standing on his hind legs, and he didn’t run over to greet Darla like he usually did. He was standing like a little man with his back to the room, carefully examining the electric zapper curtain that filled the apartment’s outer door. Rags leaned forward and cautiously touched one of his whiskers to the zapper and—_zzzt_!—so much for that hair. Darla made an exclamation, and Rags turned to confront her. His eyes were live and alert.

“Hello,” said Rags, although Rags had never talked before. “I’ve stopped being a dog. Now I am Cthon from the Andromeda galaxy.” He paused and stared at Darla as if analyzing her appearance. “Most remarkable. I believe I am one of the first personality waves to be decrypted at your node. This is the planet Earth?”

“This is the Moon,” said Darla flatly, not letting the moldie’s bufugu jive distract her. It was clear to Darla that this Silly Putter had fully crashed for true. Welcome to The Twilight Zone. Darla began walking backward step by step. The little dog trotted after her, still erect on his hind legs. “How did you learn to talk all of a sudden, Rags?” said Darla, sweetening her voice as if she didn’t have a care in the world. There was a needler in a drawer in the kitchen.

“Yes, that’s what I mean, Darla,” said