by Rudy Rucker
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Yukawa. Man.” As Stahn got to his feet, Yukawa leaned across the desk and handed him a wad of bills, and the silver flask of dope.
“Here’s money for you, Mooney, and merge. Sta-Hi. Didn’t they used to call you Sta-Hi?”
“That was a long time ago. Now I’m all grown up.”
“I gave Della blocker, just in case, but if you find her sick, just show her the flask.”
Before getting a slot over to Della’s place, Stahn went back to his office to do some computer searching. Maybe Della had taken Yukawa’s blocker and checked into an endorphin clinic. The blocker would gene-tailor out the specific enzymes that made merge necessary for her body, but sometimes it took a clinic to keep you from going back to what your mind still wanted. Or maybe Della was dead and in the organ banks, the cannibal mart, or worse. Everyone on the Moon—loonies and boppers alike—had lots of uses for fresh meat. Or, on the other hand, maybe Della had caught a ship to Earth.
Yukawa hadn’t called anyone at all; he was too paranoid. Stahn worked his vizzy through all the info banks—and drew a blank. Could she have been picked up by the Gimmie? Better not to ask. Or maybe the boppers had zombie-boxed her off to the ratsurgeon? He leaned back in his chair, trying not to think about the flask of merge. Focus.
If Della was still strung on merge, she’d be puddling at least once a day. That meant she might be holed up with some other local users. So it would make sense to check out the local merge scene, which centered, Stahn recalled, in the catacombs around the old dustbaths. How good was merge, anyway? Stahn opened Yukawa’s silver flask and . . . uh . . . took a sniff. Nice: red wine and roast turkey, nice-smelling stuff. He couldn’t stop wondering what it would feel like to use a little. Yukawa shouldn’t have given it to him. But, Stahn realized, Yukawa had known what he was doing. Don’t start, Stahn, he told himself. Don’t start all that again. Why not? he answered himself. Who are you to tell me what to do? I’ll do what I like! Remember, Stahn, responded the first voice, you didn’t quit drugs for other people. You didn’t quit for society, or for Wendy’s ghost. You quit for yourself. If you go back on the stuff you’re going to die.
Just then someone started pounding on the door. Stahn twitched and a fat drop of merge splashed out onto his left hand. His stomach clenched in horror, but a part of him—the bad part—was very glad. He put his hands and the flask under his desk and told the door to open.
It was the blond ridgeback who’d given him the Or-My pamphlet before. Stahn got the cap back on Yukawa’s flask and tried to flex his left hand. It felt like it was melting. This stuff was for real.
“Stahn Mooney,” said the ridgeback, closing the door behind him. “Sta-Hi.” His face had junk-hunger. “My name’s Whitey Mydol. I heard you were over at Yukawa’s. I was wondering if . . . ” He paused to sniff the air. The room reeked of merge. “Can I have some?”
“Some what?”
The melting feeling had moved up into Stahn’s forearm. His shabby office walls looked prettier than the twist-box had ever made them. All right. Eighteen months since he’d felt this good. He forced his attention back to Mydol’s hard young face. “How do you know who Yukawa is?”
“Oh . . . we know.” The kid smiled in a conspiratorial way. “I’ll give you two hundred dollars for a hit. Just between the two of us.”
Stahn took his flare-ray in his right hand and leveled it at Mydol. He wanted Mydol out of here before he melted all over. “I’m going to count to three. One.” Mydol stopped moving and glared. “Two.” Mydol snarled a curse and stepped back towards the door. He was jangling up Stahn’s first rush in almost two years, and Stahn wanted to kill him.
“AO, Junk-Hog Sta-Hi Rent-Pig Mooney. What’s the shudder, scared to merge with a man? Tubedook.”
“Three,” Stahn clicked off the safety and burned a shot across Mydol’s left shoulder. The ridgeback winced in pain, opened the door and left.
Stahn slumped back. God, this was fast dope. His left arm looked like candle wax, and he was having trouble staying in his chair. He let himself slide down onto the floor and stared up at the ceiling. Oh, this did feel so good. His bone joints loosened, and his skeleton sagged beneath the puddle of his flesh. It took almost an hour to ride the trip out. Towards the middle Stahn saw God. God was about the same as usual—a little more burnt, maybe. He wanted love as bad as Stahn did. This life was taking its toll on everyone.
What is merge like? Baby, if you don’t know by now . . . Wonderful. Horrible. After Stahn hit the floor and puddled, he wasn’t really there. The space of the room became part of his consciousness. He was the room, the chipped beige plas, the dingy black floor, the old-fashioned windows, the desk and chair and computer; he was the room and the building and Einstein and the Earth. Standard ecstatic mystical vision, really. But fast. He was everywhere, he was nowhere, he was the same as God. And then there were no thoughts at all. Stuzzy, sis, all right.
It wore off ***WHAM*** as quickly as it had come on. There was a tingling in Stahn’s flesh, a kind of jelling feeling, and then he was lying there shaking, heart going a mile a minute. Too fast. This dope was giga too fast. Death practice, right: hit, melt, space, blank. Final blank. He wished his dead wife Wendy were still alive. Sweet, blonde, wide-hipped Wendy. Times like this—in the old days—she’d hug him and pat his head real soft . . . and smile . . . And you killed her, Stahn. Oh God, oh no, oh put that away. You blew a hole in her head and sold her corpse to the organleggers and used the money to come to the Moon.
Stahn alone on the office floor, shuddering. Bum kicks. Think about anything but Wendy. Flash of an old song: Coming down again, all my time’s been spent, coming down again. Old. Gettin old. Coming down gets too old. Does that even mean anything? Language with a flat tire. Talk broken, but keep talking. Regroup.
His clothes were awkwardly bunched around him. When he sat up, the headache started. Bummer bummer bummer bummer bummer. He took Yukawa’s silver flask and shook it. There was quite a bit in there, a few months’ worth if you only took it once a day. If he got back on drugs he was dead. He should be dead. He wished he was dead. Lot of slow death in that flask.
If one drop was a dose, and a dose was worth . . . uh . . . two hundred dollars, then this flask was something that certain elements—certain criminal elements—would . . . uh . . . kkkkkillll for. And that ridgeback cultie knew he was holding, oh my brethren. Can I get some head? “Hello, Mrs. Beller, you don’t know me, but I . . . uh . . . ” Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. WHAT TYPE OF SEX, BABY, WHAT TYPE?
The thing to do right now was to not go back out the office building’s front door. Focus. Rent a maggie. Garage on top of the building.
He picked out a black saucer-shaped maggie, fed it some money, and told it where to go. The maggies were like hovercars; they counteracted the Moon’s weak gravity with fans, and with an intense magnetic field keyed to a big field generated by wires set into the dome. They were expensive. It was funny that a junkie lab assistant like Della Taze would have had her own maggie. Stahn could hardly wait to see her apartment. Maybe she was actually there, just not answering the vizzy, but there and like waiting for a guy with merge. He had lock-picking wares in case she wouldn’t open.
The entry system at Della’s building was no problem. Stahn used a standard nihilist transposition on the door down from the roof, and a tone-scrambler on her apartment door. The apartment was Wigglesville. Creative Brain Damage, Vol. XIII. As follows.
The walls weren’t painted one uniform color. It was all bursts and streaks, as if the painter had just thrown random buckets around the apartment till everything was covered: walls, floors, and ceilings all splattered and dripped beyond scuzz.
The furniture was pink, and all in shapes of people. The chairs were big stuffed women with laps to sit in, and the tables were plas men on all fours. He kept jerking, seeing that furniture out of the corner of his eye, and thinking someone was there. Twist and shout. The whole place had the merge win
e-turkey fragrance, but there was another smell under it . . . a bad smell.
Which, as it turned out, came from the bedroom. Della had her love-puddle in there—a big square tub like a giant wading pool. And next to it was . . . sort of a corpse. It had been a black guy.
Gross—you want to hear gross? A merged person is like Jell-O over some bones, right. And you can . . . uh . . . splatter Jell-O. Splatter a merged person into a bunch of pieces, and the drug wears off—the cells firm up—and there is this . . . uh . . . guy in a whole lot of pieces.
The skin had covered on up around each of the pieces—here was a foot with a rounded-off stump at the ankle, here was his head all smoothed off at the neck. He looked like a nice enough guy. Plump, easygoing. Here was an arm with his torso—and over there a leg hooked onto his bare ass . . . and all of it sagging and starting to rot . . .
Zzuzzzzzzz.
The vizzy in the living room was buzzing. Stahn ran in, covered up the lens, and thumbed the set on.
It was a hard-faced Gimmie officer. He wore hair spikes, and he had gold studs set into his cheeks. Colonel Hasci. Stahn knew the “cat.” Muy macho. Trés douche.
“Miss Della Taze? We’re down in the lobby. Can we come up and ask you some questions about Buddy Yeskin?”
Stahn split fast. It was a little hard to judge, but Buddy looked to have been dead two days. Why would anyone splatter good old Bud? Death is so stupid; always the same old punch line. It reminded him of Wendy. Whenever he was coming down everything reminded him of Wendy. He’d been stoned on three-way, shooting horseflies with his needler and he’d hit her by accident. Some accident. Sold her body to the organleggers and moved up to the Moon before the mudder Gimmie could deport him. Her poor limp body.
Stahn’s black saucer circled aimlessly. He wondered where Della Taze had gotten to. Merge with the cosmos, sister. Can I get some, too? WHAT TYPE, baby, WHAT TYPE OF SEX? Shut up, Stahn. Be quiet, brother. Chill out.
CHAPTER TWO
CHRISTMAS IN LOUISVILLE
December 24, 2030
Merged. Gentle curves and sweet flow of energies—merged in the love-puddle, the soft plastic tub set into the floor of her bedroom. Exquisite ecstasy—Della melted and Buddy just sliding in; the two of them about to be together again, close as close can be, flesh to flesh, gene to gene, a marbled mass of pale and tan skin, with their four eyes up on top seeing nothing; but now, just as Buddy starts melting . . . suddenly . . .
Aeh!
Della Taze snapped out of her flashback and looked at the train car window. It was dusk outside, and the glass gave back a faint reflection of her face: blonde, straight-mouthed, her eyes hot and sunken. Her stomach hurt, and she’d thrown up three times today. Burnt-out and worldly wise . . . the look she’d longed for as a teenage girl. She tried a slight smile. Not bad, Della. But you’re wanted for murder. And the only place she could think of going was home.
The train was coasting along at a slow 20 mph now, click-clanking into Louisville, gliding closer to the long trip’s end: Einstein-Ledge-Florida-Louisville via spaceship-shuttle-train. Two days. Della hoped she was well ahead of the Einstein Gimmie—the police. Not that they’d be likely to chase her this far. Here in 2030, Moon and Earth were as far removed from each other as Australia and England had been in the 1800s.
Louisville in the winter: rain not even snow, lots of it, gray water, the funny big cars, and real sky—the smells, after two years of dome air, and the idle space! On the Moon, every nook and cranny had its purpose—like on a sailboat or in a tent—but here, gliding past the train, were vacant lots with nothing in them but weeds and dead tires; meaningless streets with marginal businesses; tumbledown houses with nobody home. Idle space. There were too many faces up in Einstein, too many bodies, too many needs.
Della was glad to be back here, with a real sky and real air; even though her body was filled with a dull ache. The weight. Old Mr. Gravity. In Florida she’d spent the last of her money on an Imipolex flexiskeleton with the brand name: Body by Oozer. She wore it like a body stocking, and the coded collagens pushed, stiffened, and pulled as needed. The ultimate support hosiery. Most returning loonies checked in for three days of muscle rehabilitation at the JFK Spaceport, but Della had known she’d have to keep running. Why? Because she’d jelled back from that last merge-trip to find her lover splattered into pieces, and before she’d had time to do anything, there’d been a flat-voiced twitch-faced man on the vizzy.
“I killed him, Della, and I can kill you. Or I can tell the Gimmie that you did it. I want to help you, Della. I love you. I want to help you escape. There’s a fake passport and a ticket to Earth for you at the spaceport . . . ”
Aeh!
Della’s parents, Jason and Amy Taze, were at the station, the same as ever—strungout and hungover, mouths set into smiles, and their self-centered eyes always asking, Do you love me?
Amy Taze was small and tidy. She wore bright, outdated makeup, and today she had her blonde hair marcelled into a tight, hard helmet. Jason was a big, shambling guy with short hair and messy prep clothes. He had a desk job at a bank, and Amy was a part-time saleswoman in a gift shop. They both hated their jobs and lived to party. Seeing them there, Della felt like getting back on the train.
“My God, Della, you look fantastic. Is that a leotard you have on under your clothes?” Mom kept the chatter going all the way out to the car, as if to show how sober she was. Dad rolled his eyes and gave Della a wink, as if to show how much more together than Mom he was. The two of them were so busy putting on their little show that it was ten minutes before they noticed that Della was trembling. It was Dad who finally said something.
“You do look nice, Della, but you seem a little shaky. Was it a hard trip? And why such short notice?”
“Somebody framed me for a murder, Dad. That’s why I didn’t want you all to tell anyone else I’m back in town.” Her stomach turned again, and she retched into her handkerchief.
“Was it some kind of hard-drug deal? Something to do with that damn merge stuff that your Dr. Yukawa makes?” Dad fished nervously in his pocket for a reefer. He shot her a sharp glance. “Are you hooked?”
Della nodded, glad to upset them. Taste of their own medicine. No point telling them she’d taken gamendorph blocker to kick. Dr. Yukawa had always made sure that she had blocker around.
“That’s what we get for not being better people, Jason,” said Mom, her voice cracking in self-pity. “The only one of our children coming home for Christmas is a killer dope queen on the lam. And for the two years before this we’ve been all alone. Give me a hit off that number, I think I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.” She took a puff, smiled, and patted Della’s cheek. “You can help us trim the tree, Della honey. We still have the styrofoam star you decorated in kindergarten.”
Della wanted to say something cutting, but she knew it would feel bad. Instead she put on her good-girl face and said, “I’d like that, Mom. I haven’t seen a Christmas tree in three years. I . . . ” Her voice caught and the tears came. She loved her parents, but she hated to see them. Holidays were always the worst, with Jason and Amy stumbling around in a chemical haze. “I hope this won’t be like all the other Christmases, Mom.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Della. It will be lovely. Your Uncle Colin and Aunt Ilse are coming over for dinner tomorrow. They’ll bring Willy, he’s still living at home. Of course your two little sisters are both visiting with their husbands’ families again.”
Jason and Amy Taze lived in an eighty-year-old two-story tract home east of Louisville. The neighborhood had sidewalks and full-grown trees. The houses were small, but well-kept. Della found her tiny room to be more or less as it had always been: the clean, narrow bed; the little china animals on the shelf she’d nailed into the papery drywall; the hologram hoops hung in the two windows; and her disks and info-cubes all arranged in the alphabetical order she liked to keep them in. When she was in ninth grade, she’d programmed a cross-referenced c
atalog cube to keep track of them all. Della had always been a good student, a good girl, compulsively tidy as if to make up for her parents’ frequent sloppy scenes.
Someone let Bowser, the family dog, in the back door then, and he came charging up the narrow carpeted stairs to greet Della, shaking his head, and whining and squirming like a snake. He looked as mangy as ever, and as soon as Della patted him, he lay on his back spreading his legs, the same gross way he’d always done. She rubbed under his chin for a while, while he wriggled and yipped.
“Yes, Bowser. Good dog. Good, smart dog.” Now that she’d started crying, she couldn’t seem to stop. Mom and Dad were downstairs in the kitchen, talking in hushed tones. Della was too tired to unpack. She hurt all over, especially in her breasts and stomach. When she slipped out of her flexiskeleton, she felt like a fat, watery jellyfish. There was a nightgown on the bed—Mom must have laid it out. Della put it on, glad no one was here to see her, and then she fell into a long, deep sleep.
When Della woke up it was midmorning. Christmas! So what. Without her two sisters Ruby and Sude here, it didn’t mean a thing. Closing her eyes, Della could almost hear their excited yelling—and then she realized she was hearing the vizzy. Her parents were downstairs watching the vizzy on Christmas morning. God. She went to the bathroom and vomited, and then she put on her flexiskeleton and got dressed.
“Della!” cried her mother when Della appeared. “Now you see what we do on Christmas with no babies.” There was an empty glass by her chair. The vizzy screen showed an unfamiliar family opening presents around their tree. Mom touched the screen and a different family appeared, then another and another.
“We’ve gotten in the habit,” explained Dad with a little shrug. “Every year lots of people leave their sets on, and whoever wants to can share in. So no one’s lonely. We’re so glad to have a real child here.” He took her by the shoulders and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Little Della. Flesh of our flesh.”
