The Ware Tetralogy, Rudy Rucker [inspirational books TXT] 📗

domes diametrically opposite. The region of the Nest floor directly below them held a light-bathed circle with moldies in it, and between this lightpool’s central plaza and the Nest’s walls were winding little streets lined with buildings and shops.

“I don’t feel very good,” Terri told the Jennies. “Is there someplace I can rest and walk around in normal air? Take a shower and lie down?”

“Yes indeedy,” said Jenny-1. “And I’m taking you right there. Um-hmmm! Don’t you worry one tiny bit.”

“But where?” asked Terri anxiously.

“See those pink domes over there? Most of those are the pink-tanks where we grow nice healthy human organs to sell. But that little round one right at the end is a pink-house where humans can live. That’s where I’m taking you, Terri. Willy Taze lives there.”

Terri recognized the name. Willy Taze was the eccentric computer genius who’d invented the uvvy some twenty years ago. She recalled hearing a news story last year about Willy moving into the boppers’ Nest.

The Jennies angled out of the great column of light and headed toward the pink domes by the Nest wall. The flowery Frangipane and the gilded Ormolu accompanied them, each of them bearing a new copy of themselves. Two orchids, two cupids, and two carrots, with Terri inside one of the carrots. They touched down lightly outside the air lock of a dome that resembled half of a giant peach.

“We put the woman into the air lock and then we go to the lab, yes?” uvvied Frangipane.

“Push in through that pucker in the air lock, Jenny-2,” added Ormolu. “Ditch the flesher and then let’s tweak our new clones. Wasn’t that great how we chopped up Quuz, Frangipane? And free new bodies for all of us. Was that an easy score or what?”

“Oui oui, to chop up Quuz was very easy,” said Frangipane. “But it is no cause to be joyful. Quuz was formed from the bodies of honest moldies like you and me. All of them were murdered by the Gurdle decryption process that we have helped to bring about. I hardly know what will come next.”

“Stahn Mooney is coming next—inside the little Quuz that used to be Wendy,” said Jenny-1. “Twenty-four hours from now.”

“We have to find a way to halt him!” cried Frangipane. “We must discuss with Gurdle-7. You three new clones—go away instead of following us and being always under the foot. Later we can enjoy to talk with you. And as for you, Terri—Jenny’s clone will help you into Willy’s dome, and we will see more of you very soon. Gurdle-7’s lab is sharing a wall with Willy.”

The original Frangipane, Jenny, and Ormolu hurried off around the side of the pink dome and into a hole in the cliff, leaving the three new clones to fend for themselves.

“So what is it we are doing?” asked Frangipane-2, fluttering one of her petals.

“I say we go over to the lightpool at the center of the Nest and make some friends,” said Ormolu-2, pointing with a shiny chubby arm. “We’ve got all this Know from our parents, but now we can find things out on our own.”

“That is such a good idea,” said Jenny-2. “Wait just a sec for me while I get Terri to where she’s going.”

Jenny-2 wormed pointy-end-first through the sphincter in the outer door of the dome’s air lock. “You look out for that Willy Taze, Terri. I know he’s a real horn-dog!” There was a hiss as air filled the lock. Jenny-2 gave a wild giggle and hatched Terri out onto the air lock’s stone floor like a pea shelled from the pod. The carrot-shaped moldie gave an abrupt bow and squeezed back out through the pucker in the outer door. Then the three clone moldies bounded off toward the Nest’s center.

Terri stood alone in the pink-house’s air lock, feeling the air nice and warm and humid around her, and then the inner door opened, and a gray-bearded man was standing there, grinning like a mad, lonely hermit. For a second Terri thought she saw some things darting across the floor behind him, but then they were gone. Maybe just a trick of the eyes.

The man was wearing ragged shorts and a T-shirt. He looked about fifty. He had bare feet and a yellow uvvy on his neck. The floor of the large round room behind him was covered with oriental carpets. Hundreds of potted plants lined the walls and hung from the ceiling.

“Hello, Terri Percesepe! I’m Willy Taze. You’re naked!”

“Duh!” said anxious Terri, walking in and letting the inner door close behind her.

“I’ll get you some of my clothes,” said Willy, bustling across the dome’s single big room, talking all the while. “I don’t want to be staring at you too hard.” He glanced back and grinned the wider. “Boy, it’s good to see a human. I’ve been in here for over a year. Me, myself, and I and I.” He bent over a trunk and rummaged briefly. “Here we go, a fresh outfit. The moldies bring me whatever I need. I’m very rich, you know.” He walked quickly back, his feet silent on the thick rugs, and handed Terri some elastic-waisted shorts and a new plastic-wrapped T shirt with an ISDN logo. “You don’t think it smells bad in here, do you?” He wrinkled his nose and sniffed at the air. “It’s hard for me to tell anymore. I don’t let the big moldies in here at all, even though I do uvvy with them a lot a lot a lot every day. Gurdle-7 has his lab right through there.” Willy pointed to a flat transparent window where the dome wall touched the cliff.

Behind the clear plastic of the window was a brightly lit cave filled with machinery, and indeed Terri could see the original Frangipane, Ormolu, and Jenny in there, along with a thick snake-like moldie with metallic purple skin—that would be Gurdle-7. Seeing her look at them, the moldies waved. Terri waved back, then focused her attention on Willy’s pink house.

There was a chair and table, a bed, a big sofa, and an easy chair. To the left was a freestanding food pantry with a microwave, and to the right was a toilet, an exercise treadmill, and a deep clear pool of constantly recirculating water. The air smelled okay—maybe a little like a man’s dirty laundry and maybe a little bit like moldies. The masses of hanging plants seemed to help. There were no papers, no keyboards, no books, no vizzy, and no hollowcaster—apparently Willy’s uvvy served for all that.

“I’d like to wash before I get dressed,” said Terri, walking over to the pool. “It’s been a week.”

“Go ahead. Here’s soap and a washcloth and the towel’s over there. Do you mind if I keep talking to you?”

“I want to talk. I have a lot of questions. But don’t stare at me that way.” Terri slid into the water and ran the cloth over her face. It felt wonderful. “I gather that you and your moldie friends sent out some kind of virus,” she said presently.

“A Tessellation Equation program,” said Willy, sitting down at the edge of the pool with his back to Terri. “We call it the Stairway To Heaven. It turns a moldie into a kind of antenna that can pick up alien personality waves—though you can equally well think of the signals as alien personality particles. Hilbert space prisms with gigaplex nontrivial axes. Anyhow, when the alien gets unpacked, that’s a Gurdle decryption. We sent the Stairway To Heaven to Wendy, and she did a Gurdle decryption of a personality wave from the Sun. Quuz. Then all of a sudden Wendy-Quuz sent the Stairway To Heaven and the Quuz code to Blaster. We should have realized that could happen. What a fiasco.” Willy sighed heavily. “The spaceport dome is totally destroyed? You were inside Blaster when his Gurdle decryption happened, Terri. What was it like?”

“There was a horrible kind of screeching hissing noise from the information coming in, and then there was a big whoop—I guess that was the Stairway To Heaven?”

“Right. The Stairway To Heaven is a limpware program that uses the Tessellation Equation to force the quasicrystalline structure of a moldie’s imipolex up and up through a series of higher and higher dimensionalities. Once you start the Stairway To Heaven running on a moldie, it happens over and over until sooner or later an alien personality wave gets Gurdle decrypted. It’s like whooop whooop whooop whooop—and then eventually Ffizzt the moldie acquires a new personality. You only heard the one whoop because Wendy-Quuz sent the Quuz personality wave right along with the Stairway To Heaven program. So Blaster’s body decrypted Quuz on the Stairway’s very first run-through.”

“I see,” said Terri. “Sort of. And then Blaster-Quuz sent the same message down to the spaceport over and over to make sure all the moldies down there got it—and then the spaceport moldies fused together and split open the spaceport dome and a lot of people got killed.” She rubbed herself hard with the washrag, trying to erase the memory of the blood-foamed corpses.

“What was Quuz like?” asked Willy.

“He seemed—stupid? You’d think something from a star would be more advanced than us. I think Quuz was only the soul of a sunspot—not of the whole Sun. He thought about patterns of fire and light. He was greedy. ‘Sun wants eat Earth.’ That’s how he talked. Like a baby who wants to grab things and put them in his mouth. Not so much evil as—” Just then Terri noticed three pairs of eyes staring at her over the back of the sofa. “What’s that! What do you have in here with us, Willy?”

“Oh, I have three Silly Putters—sort of like pet moldies. They’re a little smarter than animals. Come on out, guys. Terri won’t hurt you. Line up so she can take a look at you. Front and center! Now, Terri, I hope you’re not off ended by the way Elvira looks. I’m—I guess some people would say I’m—”

“Just hand me the towel, okay?”

Willy gave Terri the towel. She quickly dried herself and pulled on the T-shirt and the shorts, eyeing the Silly Putters all the while. From smallest to largest, they resembled a tiny voluptuous woman clad only in boots and gloves, a winged green dragon with a long scaly tail, and an apple-cheeked gnome with a full white beard cropped short and tidy.

“These are Elvira, Fafnir, and Doc,” said Willy. “They’re not able to talk, but they can obey lots of commands. Show Terri how you water the plants, Fafnir. Fafnir, water plants!”

Fafnir waddled forward and sucked a deep draught from the water of the pool—the constant refiltering had already removed the soap and dirt from Terri’s bath. Flapping his leathery wings in an awkward, comical blur, Fafnir rose up like a hummingbird and began spewing small dabs of water into each of the hanging plants.

“Do you have any injuries, Terri?” continued Willy. “Your knee looks kind of banged up. Doc’s got a complete set of healer tools, and he knows how to use them, right, Doc?” Willy pointed to Terri’s knee, which was indeed dark with a spreading bruise, and commanded, “Doc, heal!” The gnome stepped forward, grinning and nodding, and before Terri could slap him away, he’d laid his hands on her knee and done something tingly that made the pain go away.

“I guess I don’t have to ask what Elvira is for,” said Terri. Hearing her name, Elvira started up a spirited little dance, flinging her arms from side to side in a showy,