The Ware Tetralogy Read online

  So, spindly Burchee’s threat had a certain force, even directed at the city-block-sized GAX. Another heavy disk of glass came angling out from that flap, but Burchee dodged it easily.

  “Tomorrow, GAX! We’re going to take you apaaaaart!” Burchee’s angry green glow dimmed a little, and he came stalking back to Ralph’s side. Across the street the other boppers picked over the two corpses, pocketing the usable chips.

  “He’s due to be wiped at 1300 hours tomorrow,” Burchee said, throwing a light arm across Ralph’s shoulders. “You ought to come by for the fun.”

  “I’ll try,” Ralph said, and meaning it. The big boppers really were going too far. They were a threat to anarchy! He’d help them tape Anderson . . . that was in the old man’s own interest, really . . . but then . . .

  “I’ll try to be here,” Ralph said again. “And be careful, Burchee. Even when GAX is down, his robot-remotes will be running on stored programs. You should expect a tough fight.”

  Burchee flashed a warm yellow good-bye, and Ralph went on down Sparks Street, heading for the bus-stop. He didn’t want to have to walk the five kays to the spaceport.

  There was a saloon just before the bus-stop, and as Ralph passed it, the door flew open and two truckers tumbled out, snaky arms linked in camaraderie. They looked like rolling beer kegs with bunches of purple tentacles set in the ends. Each of them had a rented scrambler plugged into his squat head-bump. They took up half the street. Ralph gave them a wide berth, wondering a bit nervously what kind of delusions they were picking up on.

  “Box the red socket basher are,” one chortled.

  “Sphere a blue plug stroker is,” the other replied, bumping gently against his fellow.

  Peering over them into the saloon, Ralph could see five or six heavily-built boppers lurching around a big electromagnet in the center of the room. Even from here he could feel the confusing eddy currents. Places like that frightened Ralph. Conscious of the limited time left before BEX landed, he sped around the corner, craning to see if the bus was coming.

  He was pleased to see a long low flat-car moving down the street towards him. Ralph stepped out and flagged it down. The bus quoted the daily fare and Ralph paid it off. Up ten units from yesterday. The constant inflation served as an additional environmental force to eliminate the weak.

  Ralph found an empty space and anchored himself. The bus was open all around, and one had to be careful when it rounded corners . . . sometimes traveling as fast as thirty kph.

  Boppers got on and off, here and there, but most of them, like Ralph, were headed for the spaceport. Some already had business contacts on Earth, while others hoped to make contacts or to find work as guides. One of the latter had built himself a more-or-less human-looking Imipolex head, and wore a large button saying, “BOPPERS IS DA CWAAAZIEST PEOPLE!”

  Ralph looked away in disgust. Thanks to his own efforts, the boppers had long since discarded the ugly, human-chauvinist priorities of Asimov: To protect humans, To obey humans, To protect robots . . . in that order. These days any protection or obedience the humans got from boppers was strictly on a pay-as-you-go basis.

  The humans still failed to understand that the different races needed each other not as masters or slaves, but as equals. For all their limitations, human minds were fascinating things . . . things unlike any bopper program. TEX and MEX, Ralph knew, had started a project to collect as many human softwares as they could. And now they wanted Cobb Anderson’s.

  The process of separating a human’s software from his or her hardware, the process, that is, of getting the thought patterns out of the brain, was destructive and non-reversible. For boppers it was much easier. Simply by plugging a co-ax in at the right place, one could read out and tape the entire information content of a bopper’s brain. But to decode a human brain was a complex task. There were the electrical patterns to record, the neuron link-ups to be mapped, the memory RNA to be fractioned out and analyzed. To do all this one had to chop and mince. Wagstaff felt this was evil. But Cobb would . . .

  “You must be Ralph Numbers,” the bopper next to him beamed suddenly. Ralph’s neighbor looked like a beauty-shop hair-dryer, complete with chair. She had gold flickercladding, and fizzy little patterns spiraled around her pointy head. She twined a metallic tentacle around one of Ralph’s manipulators.

  “We better talk DC,” came the voice. “It’s more private. Everyone in this part of the bus has been picking up on your thoughts, Ralph.”

  He glanced around. How can you tell if a bopper’s watching you? One way, of course, is if he has his head turned around and has his vision sensors pointed at you. Most of the boppers around Ralph were still staring at him. There was going to be chaos at the spaceport when Cobb Anderson got off the ship.

  “What does he look like?” came the silky signal from Ralph’s neighbor.

  “By now, who knows?” Ralph pulsed back quietly. “The hollow in the museum is twenty-five years out of date. And humans all look alike anyway.”

  “Not to me,” Ralph’s neighbor purred. “I design automated cosmetic kits for them.”

  “That’s nice,” Ralph said. “Now could you take your hand off me? I’ve got some private projections to run.”

  “OK. But why don’t you look me up tomorrow afternoon? I’ve got enough parts for two scions. And I’d like to conjugate with you. My name is Cindy-Lou. Cubette 3412.”

  “Maybe,” Ralph said, a little flattered at the offer. Anyone who had set up business contacts on Earth had to have something on the ball. The red plastic flickercladding that Vulcan had sold him must not look bad. Must not look bad at all. “I’ll try to come by after the riot.”

  “What riot?”

  “They’re going to tear down GAX. Or try to. He locked the workers out.”

  “I’ll come, too! There should be lots of good pickings. And next week they’re going to wreck MEX, too, did you know?”

  Ralph started in surprise. Wreck MEX, the museum? And what of all the brain-tapes MEX had so painstakingly acquired?

  “They shouldn’t do that,” Ralph said. “This is getting out of hand!”

  “Wreck them all!” Cindy-Lou said merrily. “Do you mind if I bring some friends tomorrow?”

  “Go ahead. But leave me alone. I’ve got to think.”

  The bus had drawn clear of Disky and had started across the empty lunar plain leading to the spaceport. Away from the buildings, the sun was bright, and everyone’s flickercladding became more mirror-like. Ralph mulled over the news about MEX. In a way it wouldn’t really affect Anderson. The main thing was to get his brain taped and to send the tape back down to Earth. Send it to Mr. Frostee. Then the Cobb software could take over his robot-remote double. It would be the best thing for the old man. From what Ralph heard, Anderson’s present hardware was about to give out.

  The busload of boppers pulled up to the human’s dome at the edge of the spaceport. Signaling from high above, BEX announced that he would be landing in half an hour. Right on time. The whole trip, from Earth to space-station Ledge via shuttle, and from Ledge to the Moon via BEX, took just a shade over twenty-four hours.

  An air-filled passenger tunnel came probing out from the dome, ready to cup the deep-space ship’s air-lock as soon as it landed. The cold vacuum of the Moon, so comfortable for the boppers, was deadly for humans. Conversely, the warm air inside the dome was lethal to the boppers.

  No bopper could enter the humans’ dome without renting an auxiliary refrigeration unit to wheel around with him. The boppers kept the air in the dome as dry as possible to protect them from corrosion, but in order for the humans to survive, one did have to put up with an ambient temperature in excess of 290° K. And the humans called that “room temperature”! Without an extra refrigeration unit, a bopper’s super-conducting circuits would break down instantly in there.

  Ralph shelled out the rental fee . . . tripled since last time . . . and entered the humans’ dome, wheeling his refrigerator in front of him. It was p
retty crowded. He stationed himself close enough to the visa-checker to be able to hear the names of the passengers.

  There were diggers scattered all around the waiting area . . . too many. They were all watching him. Ralph realized he should have let Vulcan disguise him more seriously. All he had done was to put on a flashing red coat. Some disguise!

  CHAPTER NINE

  The faces in the moon kept changing. An old woman with a bundle of sticks, a lady in a feather hat, the round face of a dreamy girl at the edge of life.

  “Slowly, silently, now the Moon / Walks the night in her silver shoon,” Cobb quoted sententiously. “Some things never change, Sta-Hi.”

  Sta-Hi leaned across Cobb to stare out the tiny quartz port-hole. As they drew closer the pockmarks grew, and the stubble of mountains along the Moon’s vast cheek became unmistakable. A syphilitic fop in pancake make-up. Sta-Hi fell back into his seat, lit a last joint. He was feeling paranoid.

  “Did you ever flash,” he asked through a cloud of exquisitely detailed smoke, “that maybe those copies of us could be permanent? That this is all just to get us out of the way so Anderson2 and Sta-Hi2 can pose as humans?”

  This was, at least in Sta-Hi’s case, a fairly correct assessment of the situation. But Cobb chose not to tell Sta-Hi this. Instead he blustered.

  “That’s just ridiculous. Why would . . . ”

  “You know more about the boppers than I do, old man. Unless that was shit you were spouting about having helped design them.”

  “Didn’t you learn about me in high-school, Sta-Hi?” Cobb asked sorrowfully. “Cobb Anderson who taught the robots how to bop? Don’t they teach that?”

  “I was out a lot,” Sta-Hi said with a shrug. “But what if the boppers wanted two agents on Earth? They send down copies of us, and talk us into coming up here. As soon as we’re gone the copies start standing in for us and gathering information. Right?”

  “Information about what?” Cobb snapped. “We weren’t leading real high security-clearance lives down there, Sta-Hi.”

  “What I’m worried about is whether they’ll let us go back.” Sta-Hi went on, flicking invisible drops of tension off the tips of his fingers. “Maybe they want to do something with our bodies up here. Use them for hideous and inhuman experiments.” On the last phrase his voice tripped and broke into nervous laughter.

  Cobb shook his head. “Dennis DeMentis. That’s what it says on your visa. And I’m . . . ?”

  Sta-Hi fished out the papers from his pocket and handed them over. Cobb looked through them, sipping at his coffee. He’d been drunk at Ledge, but the stewardess had fixed him up with a shot of stimulants and B-vitamins. He hadn’t felt so clear-headed in months.

  There was his visa. Smiling bearded face, born March 22, 1950, Graham DeMentis signed in his looping hand down at the bottom of the document.

  “That’s the green stuff,” Sta-Hi remarked, looking over his shoulder.

  “What is?”

  Sta-Hi’s only answer was to press his lips together like a monkey and smack a few times. The stewardess moved down the aisle, her Velcro foot-coverings schnicking loose from the Velcro carpet at each step. Longish blonde hair free-falling around her face. “Please fasten your safety belts. We will be landing at spaceport Disky in six-oh-niner seconds.”

  The rockets cut in and the ship trembled at the huge forces beneath it. The stewardess took Cobb’s empty cup and snapped up his table. “Please extinguish your smoking materials, sir.” This to Sta-Hi.

  He handed her the roach, smiling and letting smoke trickle through his teeth and up at her.

  “Get wiggly, baby.”

  Her eyes flickered . . . Yes? No? . . . and then she flicked the roach into Cobb’s coffee cup and moved on.

  “Now remember,” Cobb cautioned. “We play it like tourists at the spaceport. I gather that some of the boppers, the diggers, are out to stop us.”

  The ship’s engines roared to a fever pitch. Little chunks of rock flew up from the landing field and there was silence. Cobb stared out the lens-like little port-hole. The Sea of Tranquility.

  Blinding gray, it undulated off to the too-close horizon. A big crater back there . . . five kilometers, fifty? . . . the Maskelyne Crater. Unnaturally sharp mountains in the distance. They reminded Cobb of something he wanted to forget: teeth, ragged clouds . . . the Mountains of Madness. Surely some civilization, somewhere, had believed that the dead go to the Moon.

  There was a soft but final-sounding thop from the other side of the ship. The air tunnel. The stewardess cranked open the lock, her sweet ass bobbing with the wheel’s rhythm. On the way out, Sta-Hi asked her for a date.

  “Me and Gramps’ll be at the Hilton, baby. Dennis DeMentis. I’ll go insane if I don’t get some drain. Fall on by?”

  Her smile was as unreadable as a Halloween mask. “Perhaps you’ll run into me at the lounge.”

  “Which . . . ” he began.

  She cut him off. “There’s only one.” Shaking Cobb’s hand now. “Thank you for traveling with us, sir. Enjoy your stay.”

  The space terminal was crowded with boppers. Sta-Hi had seen models of a few of the basic types before, but no two of them waiting out there looked quite alike. It was like stepping into Bosch’s Hell. Faces and . . . “faces” . . . crowding the picture plane top to bottom, front to back.

  Hovering right by the door was a smiling sphere holding itself up with a whirling propeller. The smile all but split it in half. “See subterranean cities!” it urged, rolling fake eyeballs.

  Down at the end of the ramp waited the visa-checker, looking something like a tremendous stapler. You stuck your visa in there while it scanned your face and fingerprints. KAH-CHUNNNG! Passed.

  Standing right next to the visa-checker was a boxy red robot. Things like blue snakes or dragons writhed around his treads. Diggers. The red robot stuck a nervous microphone of a face near Sta-Hi and Cobb, then reeled his head back in.

  He reminded Cobb a little of good old Ralph Numbers. But with those diggers there it was better not to ask. It could wait until they met in the museum.

  In the lobby, dozens of garish, self-made machines wheeled, slithered, stalked and hovered. Every time Cobb and Sta-Hi would look one way, snaky metal tentacles would pluck at them from the other direction.

  “You buy uranium?”

  “Got mercury?”

  “Old fashion T.V. set?”

  “Fuck android girls?”

  “Sell your fingers?”

  “Moon King relics?”

  “Prosthetic talking penis?”

  “Chip-market tip-sheet?”

  “Home-cooked food?”

  “Set up factory?”

  “Same time fuck-suck?”

  “DNA death code?”

  “Dust bath enema?”

  “See vacuum bells?”

  “Brand-new voice-prints?”

  “No-risk brain-tape?”

  “You sell camera?”

  “Play my songs?”

  “Me be you?”

  “Hotel?”

  Cobb and Sta-Hi jumped into the lap of this last bopper, a husky black fellow contoured to seat two humans.

  “No baggage?” he asked.

  Cobb shook his head. The black bopper forced his way through the crowd, warding off the others with things like huge pinball flippers. Sta-Hi was silent, still thinking some of those offers over.

  The bopper carrying them kept a microphone and camera eye attentively focused on them. “Isn’t there any control?” Cobb asked querulously. “Over who can come in here and bother the arriving passengers?”

  “You are our honored guests,” the bopper said obliquely. “Aloha means hello and . . . good-bye. Here is your hotel. I will accept payment.” A little door opened between the two seats.

  Sta-Hi drew out his wallet. It was nice and full. “How much do . . . ” he began.

  “Money is so dull,” the bopper answered. “I would prefer a surprise gift. A complex information.�
��

  Cobb felt in the pockets of his white suit. There was still some scotch, a brochure from the space-liner, a few coins . . .

  Boppers were pressing up to them again, plucking at their clothes, possibly snipping out samples.

  “Dirt-side newspapers?”

  “ ‘Slow boat to China’ ?”

  “Execution sense tapes?”

  The black bopper had only carried them a hundred meters. Impatiently, Sta-Hi tossed his handkerchief into their carrier’s waiting bopper.

  “Aloha,” the bopper said, and rolled back towards the gate, grooving on the slubby weave.

  The hotel was a pyramid-like structure filling the center of the dome. Cobb and Sta-Hi were relieved to find only humans in the lobby. Tourists, businessmen, drifters.

  Sta-Hi looked around for a reception desk, but could spot none. Just as he was wondering who he might approach, a voice spoke in his ear.

  “Welcome to the Disky Hilton, Mr. DeMentis. I have a wonderful room for you and your grandfather on the fifth floor.”

  “Who was that?” Cobb demanded, turning his big shaggy head sharply.

  “I am DEX, the Disky Hilton.” The hotel itself was a single huge bopper. Somehow it could point-send its voice to any spot at all . . . indeed it could carry on a different conversation with every guest at once.

  The ethereal little voice led Cobb and Sta-Hi to an elevator and up to their room. There was no question of privacy. After heartily drinking a few glasses of water from the carafe, Cobb finally called to Sta-Hi, “Long trip, eh Dennis?”

  “Sure was, Gramps. What all do you think we should do tomorrow?”

  “Waaal, I think I’ll still be too tuckered out for them big dust-slides. Maybe we should mosey on over to that museum those robots built. Just to ease ourselves in slow like, you know.”

  The hotel cleared its throat before talking, so as not to startle them. “We have a bus leaving for the museum at oh-nine-hundred hours.”