The Ware Tetralogy

by Rudy Rucker

  It didn’t seem to bother the driver that Cobb was watching. They were all in this together. Sta-Hi2 leaned in, reaching for that cone.

  There was a flash of light, four flashes, one from each corner of the door. The skinny arm snagged the cone, and the figure turned around utterly expressionless.

  “Yes no no no yes no no no yes yes yes no no no yes no no yes yes yes no yes yes yes yes no no . . . ” it muttered, dropping the cone. It turned and shuffled towards Cobb’s house. The feet stayed on the ground at all times, and left two plowed-up grooves in the crushed shell driveway. “ . . . no yes no no no.”

  The driver looked upset. “Whath with him? Heth thuppothed to . . . ”

  He hurried into the truck’s cab and talked for a minute over what seemed to be a CB radio. Then he came back out, looking relieved.

  “I didn’t wealize. Mithter Fwostee jutht bwoke contact with him. The weal Thta-Hi ith coming back . . . he got away. Tho the wemote’ll need a new cover. Jutht lay him on your bed for now. We’ll pick him up tonight.”

  The half-faced driver jumped back into the truck and drove off with a cheery wave. Somehow he had brought Cobb back to life, but he’d turned Sta-Hi off instead. They hadn’t had a brain-tape to put into the robot. And with the real Sta-Hi coming back intact they’d decided to shut the robot down.

  Cobb took the Sta-Hi thing’s arm, trying to help it towards his house. The features on the tortured face were distorted almost beyond recognition. The mouth worked, tongue humping up like an epileptic’s.

  “Yes no no yes yes yes no no no no yes yes . . . ”

  Machine language. It raised one of its clawed hands, trying to block the bright sunlight.

  Cobb led it to the front steps, and it stumbled heavily. It didn’t seem to have the concept of lifting its feet. He held the door open, and the Sta-Hi thing came in on all fours, hands and knees shuffling along.

  “What’s the matter?” Annie asked, coming into the kitchen from the back porch. “Is he tripping?” She was in the mood for some excitement. It would be really neat to show up stoned at the Prom. “You got any more, Sta-Hi?”

  The anguished figure fell over onto its side now, thick tongue protruding, lips drawn back in rictus death-grin. Its arms were wrapped around its chest, and the legs were frantically bicycling up some steep and heartless grade. The leg-motions slowly pulled the body around and around in circles on the kitchen floor.

  Annie backed off, changing her mind about taking this trip.

  “Cobb! He’s having a fit!”

  Cobb could almost understand it now. There was some machinery in that Mr. Frostee truck, machinery which had brought his own consciousness back to him. Machinery which had done something else to Sta-Hi2. Turned it off.

  The twitching on the floor damped down, oscillation by oscillation. Then the Sta-Hi thing was still, utterly still.

  “Call a doctor, Cobb!”

  Annie was all the way back on the porch, peering into the kitchen with both hands over her mouth.

  “A doctor can’t help him, Annie. I don’t think he was even . . . ” He couldn’t say it.

  Cobb bent over and picked the limp form up as easily as a rag-doll. Amazing the strength they’d built in. He carried the body down the short hall and laid it on his bed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Mooney Senior lit a cigarette and stepped into the patch of shade under the space-shuttle’s stubby wing. Starting with this shipment, every crate shipped from Disky had to be opened and inspected, right out here on the goddamn field. The superheated air hanging over the expanse of concrete shimmered in the afternoon sun. Not a ghost of a breeze.

  “Here’s the last bunch, Mr. Mooney.” Tommy looked down at him from the hatch. Six tight plastic containers glided down on the power-lift. “Interferon and a couple of crates of organs.”

  Mooney turned and gave a high-sign to the platoon of armed men standing in the sun fifteen meters off. Almost quitting time. Still puffing his cigarette, he turned back to eye the last set of crates. It was going to be a bitch getting those things open.

  “Who was the asshole who had the bright idea of searching crates for stowaway robots?” Tommy asked, sliding down the lift.

  A rivulet of sweat ran into Mooney’s eye. Slowly he drew out his handkerchief and mopped his face again. “Me,” he said. “I’m the asshole. There’s been two recent break-ins at Warehouse Three. At least we thought they were break-ins. Both times there were some empty crates and a hole in the wall. Routine organ theft, right? Well . . . the second time I noticed that the debris from the holes was on the outside of the building. I figure what we had here was a break-out. And it happened about a year ago, I’m guessing that the boppers have snuck at least three robots down on us, by now.”

  Tommy looked dubious. “Has anyone ever seen one of these robots?”

  “I almost had one of them myself. But I didn’t realize it till it was too late.” Mooney had been back at Cobb’s twice . . . hoping to find the old man’s robot double. But there had just been the old man there, drunk as usual. No way to know where the robot was now . . . hell, it could probably even change its face. If it even existed. He’d searched almost this whole shipment now, and still hadn’t found anything.

  Mooney ground out his cigarette. “It could be I’m wrong, though.” He stepped into the sun and began examining the fastenings on the next crate. “I hope I’m wrong.”

  What, after all, did he really have to go on? Just some scraps of wall-board lying outside the warehouse instead of inside. And a faint glimpse of a running figure that had reminded him of old Cobb Anderson. And seeing a guy who had looked like Cobb’s twin at the Gray Area last week. But he hoped he was wrong, and that nothing bad would happen, now that his life was settling into a comfortable groove.

  Young Stanny was living at home again. That was the main thing. His narrow escape from those brain-eaters seemed to have sobered him. Ever since the police had brought him back he’d been a model son. And with Stanny back in the house, Bea had straightened out a little, too.

  Mooney had gotten his son a job as a night watchman at the spaceport . . . and the kid was taking his work seriously! He hadn’t fucked-up yet! At this rate he’d be handling the whole watch-system for the warehouses inside of six months.

  Daytimes Stanny wasn’t home much. Incredible how little sleep that boy needed. He’d catch a catnap after work and then he’d be off for the day. Mooney worried a little about what Stanny might be up to all day, but it couldn’t be too bad. Whatever it was it couldn’t be too bad.

  Every evening, regular as clockwork, Stanny would show up for supper, usually a little tranked-out, but never roaring stoned like he used to get. It was just amazing how he’d straightened out . . .

  “I’ve cracked the seal,” Tommy repeated.

  Mooney’s attention snapped back to the task at hand. Six more crates and they’d be through for the day. This one was supposed to be full of interferon ampules. The gene-spliced bacteria that produced the anti-cancer drug grew best in the sterile, low-temperature lunar environment. Mooney helped Tommy lift the lid off, and they peered in.

  No problem. It was full of individual vacuum-sealed syringes, loaded and ready to go. Halfheartedly, Mooney dug down into the crate, making sure that nothing else was in there. Passed. Tommy switched on the conveyor-belt, and the crate glided across the field, past the armed men, and into Warehouse Three.

  The next three crates were the same. But the last two . . . there was something funny about the last two. For one thing they were stuck together to make a double-size crate. And the label read “HUMAN ORGANS: MIXED.” Usually a crate was all livers or all kidneys . . . always all one thing. He’d never seen a mixed crate yet.

  The box was vacuum-tight, and it took a few minutes work with the pry-bars to break the seals. Mooney wondered what would be in there . . . a Whitman’s sampler assortment? Glazed eyeballs on paper doilies, a big liver like a brazil-nut, crunchy marrow-filled femurs, a row
of bean-shaped kidneys, a king-size penis coyly curled against its testicles, chewy ropes of muscles, big squares of skin rolled up like apricot leather?

  The lid splintered suddenly. Something was coming out!

  Mooney sprang back, screaming a “READY!” to the soldiers. Their weapons were instantly at their shoulders.

  The whole lid flew off now, and a shining silvery head poked out. A figure stood up, humanoid, glittering silver in the sun. Tubes connected it to further machinery in the box . . .

  “AIM!” Mooney cried, backing well out of the line of fire.

  The silver figure seemed to hear him, and began tearing at its head. A detachable bomb? Tommy cut and ran, straight towards the troops. The fool! He was right in the line of fire! Mooney backed off, glancing desperately back and forth, waiting to give the FIRE command.

  Suddenly the bubble-top came off the silvery figure’s suit. There was a face underneath, the face of . . .

  “Wait, Dad! It’s me!”

  Sta-Hi tore the air-hoses loose and tried to jump behind the box before anyone could shoot. His legs were cramped from thirty hours in the crates. He moved awkwardly. His foot caught on the edge of the crate, and he sprawled onto the concrete apron.

  Mooney ran forward, putting his body between the crate and the troops.

  “AT EASE!” he hollered, leaning over his son. But if this was his son . . . who had been living at his house all week?

  “Is it really you, Stanny? How did you get in the box?”

  Sta-Hi just lay there for a minute, grinning and stroking the rough concrete. “I’ve been to the Moon. And call me Sta-Hi, dammit, how many times do I have to tell you?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Cobb spent the afternoon trying to get drunk. Somehow Annie had gotten him to promise they’d go to the Golden Prom together, but he was damned if he wanted to be anything other than blacked-out by the time he got there.

  It was funny the way she had convinced him. They’d closed the door on . . . on Sta-Hi2 . . . and gone out to the porch together. And then, sitting there looking at Annie, wondering what to say, it was as if Cobb had fallen through her eyes, into her mind, feeling her body sensations even, and her desperate longing for a bit more fun, a little gaiety at the end of what had been a long, hard life. Before she’d even said a word he’d been convinced.

  And now she was dressing or washing her hair or something and he was sitting on the stretch of beach behind his little pink cottage. Annie had stocked his cupboard with sherry earlier this week, hoping to get some kind of rise out of him, but, except when Mooney had come snooping around, it had sat there untouched, along with the food. Thinking back, he couldn’t recall this new body of his having drunk or eaten much of anything during the last week. Of course he’d had to chew down some of the fish he and Sta-Hi2 had caught. Annie always insisted on frying it up for them. And when old Mooney had come, Cobb had sipped some sherry and pretended to be drunk. But other than that . . .

  Cobb opened a second bottle of sherry and pulled deeply at it. The first bottle had done nothing but make him belch a few times, incredibly foul-smelling belches, methane and hydrogen-sulfide, death and corruption going on somewhere deep inside him. His mind was clear as a bell, and he was tired of it.

  Suddenly exasperated, Cobb tilted up the second bottle of sherry, and, leaving an airspace above his upper lip, chugged the whole fucking thing down in one long, drink-crazed gurgle.

  As he swallowed the last of it he felt a sudden and acute distress. But it wasn’t the buzz, the flush, the confusion he had expected. It was, rather, an incredible urgency, a need to . . .

  Without even consciously controlling what he did, Cobb knelt down on the sand and clawed at the vertical scar on his chest. He was too full. Finally he pushed the right spot and the little door in his chest popped open. He tried not to breathe as the rotten fish and lukewarm sherry plopped down onto the sand in front of him. Yyeeeeeeaaaaauuughhhh.

  He stood up, still moving automatically, and went inside to rinse the food cavity out with water. And it wasn’t till he was wiping it out with paper towels that he thought to notice anything strange about what he was doing.

  He stopped then, a wad of paper towels in his hand, and stared down. The little door was metal on the inside and plastic flickercladding on the out. After he pushed it shut, the skin dove-tailed so well that he couldn’t find the top edge. He found the pressure switch again . . . just under his left nipple . . . and popped the little door back open. There were scratches on the metal . . . writing? It looked backwards, but he couldn’t bend close enough to be sure.

  Door flapping, Cobb went into the bathroom and examined himself in the mirror. Except for the hole in his chest he looked the same as ever. He felt the same as ever. But now he was a robot.

  He pushed the little door all the way open, so that the metal inside was reflected in the mirror. There was a letter there, scratched in backwards.

  Dear Dr. Anderson!

  Welcome to your new hardware! Use it in good repair as a token of gratitude from the entire bopper race! User’s Guide:

  1) Your body’s skeleton, muscles, processors, etc. are synthetic and self-repairing. Be sure, however, to recharge the power-cells twice a year. Plug is located in left heel.

  2) Your brain-functions are partially contained in a remote super-cooled processor. Avoid electromagnetic shielding or noise-sources, as this may degrade the body-brain link. Travel should be undertaken only after consultation.

  3) Every effort has been made to transfer your software without distortion. In addition we have built in a library of useful subroutines. Access under password BEBOPALULA.

  Respectfully yours,

  The Big Boppers

  Cobb sat down on the toilet and locked the bathroom door. Then he got up and read the letter again. It was still sinking in. Intellectually he had always known it was possible. A robot, or a person, has two parts: hardware and software. The hardware is the actual physical material involved, and the software is the pattern in which the material is arranged. Your brain is hardware, but the information in the brain is software. The mind . . . memories, habits, opinions, skills . . . is all software. The boppers had extracted Cobb’s software and put it in control of this robot body. Everything was working perfectly, according to plan. For some reason this made Cobb angry.

  “Immortality, my ass,” he said, kicking the bathroom door. His foot went through it.

  “Goddamn stupid robot leg.”

  He unlocked the door and walked down the hall into the kitchen. Christ, he needed a drink. The thing that bothered Cobb the most was that even though he felt like he was all here, his brain was really inside a computer somewhere else. Where?

  Suddenly he knew. The Mr. Frostee truck, of course. A super-cooled bopper brain was in that truck, with Cobb’s software all coded up. It could simulate Cobb Anderson to perfection, and it monitored and controlled the robot’s actions at the speed of light.

  Cobb thought back to that interim time, before the simulation that was now him had hooked into a new body. There had been no distinctions, no nagging facts, only raw possibility . . . Thinking back to the experience opened up his consciousness in a strange way. As if he could let himself go, and ooze out into the rooms and houses around him. For an instant he saw Annie’s face staring out of a mirror, tweezers and tube of cream . . .

  He was standing in front of the kitchen sink. He’d left the water running. He leaned forward and splashed some of it on his face. Something bumped the sink, oh yes, the door in his chest, and he pushed it closed. What had been that code word?

  Cobb went back to the bathroom, opened the flap, and read the letter a third time. This time he got the little joke. The big boppers had put him in this body, and the code word for the library of subroutines was, of course . . .

  “Be-Bop-A-Lu-La, she’s mah baybee,” Cobb sang, his voice echoing off the tiles, “Be-Bop-A-Lu-La, Ah don’t mean maybee . . . ”He stopped then, cocking his hea
d to listen to an inner voice.

  “Library accessed,” it said.

  “List present subroutines,” Cobb commanded.

  “MISTER FROSTEE, TIME-LINE, ATLAS, CALCULATOR, SENSE ACUITY, SELF-DESTRUCT, REFERENCE LIBRARY, FACT-CHUNKING, SEX, HYPER ACTIVITY, DRUNKENNESS . . . ”

  “Hold it,” Cobb cried. “Hold it right there. What does DRUNKENNESS involve?”

  “Do you wish to call the subroutine?”

  “First tell me what it does.” Cobb opened the bathroom door and glanced out nervously. He thought he had heard something. It wouldn’t do for him to be found talking to himself. If people suspected he was a robot they might lynch . . .

  “ . . . now activated,” the voice in his head was saying in its calm, know-it-all tone. “Your senses and thought processes will be systematically distorted in a step-wise fashion. Close your right nostril and breathe in once through your left nostril for each step desired. Inhaling repeatedly through the right nostril will reverse these steps. There is, of course, an automatic override for your . . . ”

  “OK.” Cobb said. “Now stop talking. Log off. End it.”

  “The command you are searching for is OUT, Dr. Anderson.”

  “OUT, then.”

  The feeling of another presence in his mind winked out. He walked out onto the back porch and stared at the ocean for awhile. The bad smell from the rotten fish drifted in. Cobb found a piece of cardboard and took it out to scoop the mess up. Re-charge power-cells twice a year.

  He dumped the stinking fish down by the water’s edge and walked back to his cottage. Something was bothering him. How likely was it that this new body was a token of gratitude with no strings attached?

  Obviously the body had been sent to Earth with certain built-in programs . . . break out of the warehouse, tell Cobb Anderson to go to the Moon, stick your head in the first Mr. Frostee truck you see. The big question was: were there any more programs waiting to be carried out? Worse: were the boppers in a position to control him on a real-time basis? Would he notice the difference? Who, in short, was in charge now, Cobb . . . or a big bopper called Mr. Frostee?