by Rudy Rucker
“Well, I shouldn’t really talk about this, but, um, Willy moved out of Einstein and into the moldies’ Nest. I wouldn’t know how you could reach him. I suppose you could uvvy Rhizome for info, but he’s a big old grouch. Corey’s an artist, and he doesn’t like strangers one bit!”
“But I thought I heard my dad talkin’ to me yesterday after I chopped up Parvati,” wailed Randy. “I thought I heard a man’s voice.”
“Yes yes, I arranged that for you,” smirked Jenny. “It was pretty obvious that you needed it—slashing up your mommy and crying like a baby. What a sight! But that wasn’t Willy talking to you. It was a simulation of Cobb Anderson—your great-grandfather. You know how the Vatican used to have the world’s biggest library of porno? Well, the Heritagists have the Earth’s biggest archive of bopper memorabilia. And it just so happens that their Salt Lake City Archives own the only existing copy of Cobb’s S-cube. I snuck in and booted it up so Cobb could talk to you and make you happy. Now, listen, Randy, you need to get out of Bangalore before Parvati turns you in. I’m going to buy you a plane ticket. Get your suitcase packed, and I’ll call right back.”
Randy’s thoughts were in a whirl. “You’re doing fine, son. I’m proud of you. You’re doing just fine.” So that had been Cobb Anderson. The man who invented the boppers; the first man to have his personality coded up as software. Randy’s great-grandfather! It would be nice to have some long talks with him. And Randy’s dad—Randy’s dad was Willy Taze, the glamorous rebel and genius inventor! Maybe Randy could find Willy in the Nest. Maybe Randy would turn out to be a big somebody like Willy and Cobb!
He moved quickly around his apartment, tossing clothes and mementos into his bag. Willa Jean raced around with him. When the uvvy sounded again, Randy ran to the bedroom and slapped the uvvy onto his neck.
“Yes,” said Jenny. “The ticket’s all set. You’re on a direct flight to San Francisco, leaving at 1 p.m.”
“You think that’s early enough, Jenny? Parvati said she’s gonna uvvy Emperor Staghorn in the afternoon. Did you catch what she said to me about dacoits? When Emperor Staghorn gets the word, they gonna send a gang of thugs after me, girl. Get me an earlier ticket!”
“Randy, before you leave, you have to go in to Emperor Staghorn and make me a complete viddy of how Ramanujan makes a superleech. We’ve found you a smart micro-cam that’ll perch on a hair in your eyebrows. It’s no bigger than a dust mite. You make the viddy and at noon you tell Ramanujan you’re eating lunch in town and go right to Gate 13 at the airport. They’ll have a first-class ticket for you. No sweat!”
“I don’t wanna go to no Emperor Staghorn today, Jenny. It’s too risky.”
“Randy, unless you can get the complete recipe for the superleech, you’re not going to be of all that much use to us.”
“This is still for the Heritagists?”
“Yes, it’s for the Heritagists, but believe it or not, it’s for the loonie moldies too.”
“Bull shit.”
“Is too!” giggled Jenny, crinkling her nose and nodding vigorously. “Mmm-hmmm! You’ll see, Randy Karl Tucker. It’ll be fun in California. You’ll work in Santa Cruz. It’s this funky little beach town an hour south of San Francisco. And you can talk to Cobb Anderson as much as you like. Come on, Randy, don’t be a party pooper. At least let us get you to San Francisco.”
“Oh man. I dunno.”
“I’ve already called a moldie rickshaw for you. He’ll be there in a minute; he’s picking up the micro-cam right now. Let him take you to Emperor Staghorn. He’ll wait there with your suitcase, and you’ll be able to leave the instant you’re ready. Come on, Randy. Pretty please.”
“What all you got lined up for me in Santa Cruz?”
“Well, I really wasn’t supposed to tell you yet, but since we’re such good pals and everything—oh, why not. You’ll be kidnapping moldies and sending them to the Nest. Liberating them, the way the loonie moldies look at it. Moldie repatriation is something the Nest works on with the Heritagists. You’ll be working with a man named Aarbie Kidd.”
“Kidnappin’ moldies’d be easy with superleeches,” mused Randy Karl. “For the Nest? I wouldn’t mind checkin’ out some o’ them moldie California girls. And get in tight with the loonie moldies? I wouldn’t mind that a bit. Hell, oncet I get to know ’em , I could go to the Nest and see my dad, couldn’t I!”
“All of that, Randy Karl, and more. Is it a deal? The rickshaw’s downstairs.”
“Wait. First I wanna talk to Cobb again.”
“Can do! I’ll patch him right in.”
The uvvy image wavered, and then there was Cobb Anderson. He had a strong wide face with high cheekbones. His hair was sandy and he had a short-cropped white beard. He was imaged in much better resolution than Jenny; he looked almost real, floating there in Randy’s visual cortex. The rich Cobb simulation even included scents and air currents. Cobb smelled comfortable—he smelled like freckles.
“So you’re Willy’s son,” said Cobb. “I’m a little out of sync. I just came back from heaven. All is One in the SUN. I don’t like being run on this asimov machine; I need my own personal hardware.” Cobb paused to channel Randy’s vibe. “So you’re my great-grandson. Yes. I can tell you’ve been hurt. Poor Randy. We can help each other.”
“Cobb, what’s my dad like?”
“Willy’s smart as a whip. A wizard with the cephscope. He saved me and a woman from some racial puritans one time, and he freed a bunch of machines from their asimovs. And I hear that then he—” The old man’s face clouded over. “Stop talking in my head, Jenny, and don’t rush me. Randy, let’s see if you can’t get me off this pathetically inadequate pig machine. Take me to the moldies on the Moon. We’ll make a plan, huh, squirt?”
“Was that you talking to me last night?”
“Yes, Randy. Do you want to hear it again?”
“I surely do.”
“You’re doing fine, son. I’m proud of you. You’re doing just fine. I love you.” Cobb’s pale eyes were kind and wise.
“Thanks, Cobb. Thanks a lot.”
Cobb and Jenny signed off and Randy switched his uvvy attention to Willa Jean. He looked through her eyes and suddenly realized she was usable as a telerobot. He drove her quickly around the nooks and crannies of the kitchen/dining area, pecking up stray crumbs of imipolex and loose nuggets of camote.
“Now, you be ready to hatch that camote back out for me when I ask for it,” Randy told Willa Jean. “Don’t mash it.” Not that he wanted any camote right now, but you never knew.
Randy got Willa Jean to hop into his suitcase and then he closed it up. So now Bangalore was over. Randy gave a heavy sigh. He wandered around the apartment for another minute, taking a last look at the familiar view of the bazaar and the distant hills. How happy he’d been here. If only Parvati had loved him. He walked down the stone steps of the Tipu Bharat, his eyes wet with tears. The waiting rickshaw was shaped like an orange oxcart.
At Emperor Staghorn, Randy found Ramanujan animatedly drinking a large mug of saffron-spiced chai. He’d been working in his office all night.
“How did the superleech work on your girlfriend, Mr. Tucker? Feeling a bit wrung-out today, are we?” Ramanujan rubbed his dirty shiny hands and beamed, not waiting for an answer. “Good, good, good. As it happens, I’ve found a devilishly clever algorithm which rather radically simplifies the superleech manufacturing process. Yes, a rather radical simplification indeed. Look at this beautiful equation!”
Ramanujan indicated some scribbles on a piece of paper on his desk, and Randy leaned over to make sure that his micro-cam got a good view.
“Is that Sanskrit, Sri?”
“I assume it pleases you to jest. The symbols on the left are, of course, integral signs and infinite series, representing a four-dimensional quasicrystal geometry. And the right side of the equation is seventeen divided by the cube root of pi. There’s glory for you. I call it the Tessellation Equation. Beautiful mathematics makes
beautiful technology. Let’s go into the clean room so I can show you the tech. But—ah ah!” Ramanujan shook his finger. “First, as always, we scan your reckless head.”
Randy was ready for this. He touched his brow and the micro-cam hopped onto his finger until the brainscan was over. Easy as pie. They suited up and entered the clean room.
“So do we make up some more superleeches today?” asked Randy, sitting down at the nanomanipulator. “I’m rarin’ to go. I’d kind of like you to go through the whole process once again to make sure I got it straight.”
“Do tell,” said Ramanujan, suddenly suspicious. “So how did you pass the night, Mr. Tucker? I find your matitudinal diligence rather conspicuously atypical.”
“Huh? All right, Sri, I’ll tell you the sorry-ass truth. I put the superleech on Parvati and fucked her and asked her to make dinner. She poisoned me with camote, and then she got me to chop her up. The pieces that weren’t attached to the superleech crawled back together, and there was Parvati again. She ran away to Coorg Castle. She don’t love me no more. I just want to work hard and forget about her.” A thought occurred to Randy. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Parvati didn’t try and make me lose my job, she hates me so much.”
“Where’s the superleech, Randy?”
“It’s stuck to a leftover piece of Parvati that’s shaped itself into a cute little hen. I call her Willa Jean. She’s a telerobot for me now. Like those flyin’ dragonfly cameras? I left Willa Jean home.”
“Telerobotics!” exclaimed Ramanujan, his coppery face splitting in a grin. “That’s a wonderful app for superleech technology!” He leaned over and warmly patted Randy’s shoulder. “You’re invaluable, my boy. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
“You’re happy because a slice off Parvati’s ass turned into a chicken?”
“I am happy to realize that there is an immediate peaceful use for superleeches. Rather than being solely a bellicose means of moldie enslavement, the superleech can be an interface patch which cheaply turns a sausage of imipolex into a telerobot. Jolly good. But I haven’t fully explained my big news yet, Mr. Tucker. That equation I showed you? When interpreted as a method of phase modulation, my equation provides an effective way to convert ordinary leech-DIMs into superleeches simply by sending them a certain signal. It’s easy as seventeen divided by the cube root of pi.”
“Show me how,” said Randy Karl.
Ramanujan picked up a small parabolic piece of silvered plastic and walked over to the aquarium where the old leech-DIMs swam. “Observe, Mr. Tucker! This is a pocket radio transmitter that I programmed last night.” He aimed the silvered plastic dish at one of the leech-DIMs. “Now I chirp this leech with a signal based on my equation.” He pushed a button on the transmitter and suddenly the targeted leech-DIM began shaking all over. “You see? The program sets off a piezoplastic jittering which forces the quasicrystals into the imipolex-4 state.” The leech’s vibrating skin puckered up into the rough surface of a superleech; it turned tan and purple all over. Ramanujan plucked it out and held it up for Randy’s inspection. “Behold!”
Ramanujan set the damp superleech onto an uvvy, and the uvvy speaker announced, “I am superleech type 4, series 2, ID #4. Do you wish to register as my owner?”
“No,” said Ramanujan. “Please crawl off the uvvy and go to sleep now.” The superleech obliged.
“That’s really somethin’, Sri,” said Randy, fingering the dormant superleech’s rough surface. “Can you show me how you programmed that little radio antenna?”
“You’d never understand the program.”
“Try me. How am I gonna learn if you don’t let me try?”
“You won’t understand it, but I wouldn’t mind going over it in detail just for myself.” Ramanujan called up a mathematics screen above the lab uvvy and delivered a forty-minute lecture on the Tessellation Equation which, as predicted, Randy completely failed to understand. But his micro-cam was making a viddy of it and, even better, Ramanujan was so into his batshit math rap that he didn’t notice when Randy slid the silvery little antenna into the top of his fab bootie. When an incoming uvvy call interrupted Ramanujan, Randy quickly excused himself.
“I gotta run to the bathroom, Sri. I’m not feelin’ too peak. Reckon I’ve got the squirts.”
“Spare me the details,” said Ramanujan, looking away in distaste. “I wonder who can be calling me at this number?”
As Randy hastened through the air shower, he glanced back to see just who was talking to Ramanujan—and of course it was Parvati. Randy darted out of Ramanujan’s office and ran off down the Emperor Staghorn hallway, ripping off the bunny suit and pocketing the radio antenna. He had just exited Emperor Staghorn’s outer gates when the fab’s alarms went off. Randy’s moldie rickshaw was waiting there, big and stolid. Randy jumped in.
“Go to the airport! Fast!”
The moldie began springing along like a giant rabbit, covering twenty or thirty feet at a bound. Randy held on for dear life. He fumbled his uvvy out of his bag and put it on. Jenny was waiting.
“Things are happening fast, Randy,” she said, brushing a lank strand of loose hair back from her eyes. “Congratulations for bagging that radio transmitter! Emperor Staghorn already has a group of four dacoits looking for you at the airport. I’ll tap into the airport’s cameras so we can locate them.”
When Randy got to the airport, Jenny showed him an image siphoned off one of the airport’s security cams. It showed four stocky men, impeccably dressed in Western business suits. Two wore sunglasses, one wore a turban, one was picking his teeth. All had hard unforgiving faces. They were studying some recent photographs of Randy Karl Tucker.
“Where are they standing?” asked Randy. “I better not get near them.”
“Well, ummm, they’re waiting right next to the gate for your plane to San Francisco. Gate 13. You can see it with your bare eyes from here.”
Sure enough, Gate 13 was fifty yards down the hallway, surrounded by milling passengers and with the figures of the four dacoits dark and clear to one side. Through the hall windows Randy could see the airliner: a giant moldie-enhanced machine in the shape of a flying wing.
“Isn’t there some other gate I can use?” asked Randy. “Like for first-class or for the handicapped?”
“Yes, Gate 14 is the VIP gate,” said Jenny. “But it’s only twenty yards past Gate 13 and the dacoits can see it too. We have to distract them. I notice they’re all wearing uvvies. I can blast them with noise, but that’s only good for a few seconds before they think of removing their uvvies. We need something more. Any ideas?”
“I’ll use Willa Jean!” Randy switched his attention to Willa Jean and got her to hop out of the bag and trot along ahead of him. Randy watched through Willa Jean’s eyes until she was near the dacoits, and then he launched her toward them like a flying boxing glove. At the same moment, Jenny sent a mind-numbing current of noise into the dacoits’ uvvies. Willa Jean bounced among the stunned dacoits, knocking them over like bowling pins. Moving just short of a run, Randy breezed past the dacoits and in through the first-class Gate 14. As he headed down the tunnel to the aircraft, Willa Jean ran to join him. The turbanned dacoit tried to follow her, but Jenny sent some message to the airline personnel that caused them to drag the dacoit out of the boarding area. The plane left on time.
Randy had a comfortable window seat. He stared down at India for a while, thinking about all the things he’d seen here. California would be good too and maybe then the Moon. It would be a long time before he returned to Kentucky. He smiled, leaned back in his seat, and fell asleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
TERRI
June 2043 - October 30, 2035
Although Dom and Alice Percesepe were loyal to their children, they were only fitfully attentive. Terri and Ike had to do most of the housework while they were growing up. Often as not, big sister Terri made supper for Ike, with Dom off at the restaurant and Alice somewhere with her friends. A typical su
pper would be tuna or peanut butter sandwiches. Ike would always ask for dessert, and Terri would tell him, “There’s lemonade for dessert.”
“Why doesn’t Mother shop?” complained Ike one day in June 2043. It was the last day of school. “We can afford food. Dad owns a restaurant and a motel.”
“When Mother shops, it’s just for clothes,” said Terri. “The only time she buys food is to put on a special dinner for Dom.” She said her father’s name with vicious emphasis.
“Did you get your final grades today?” asked Ike.
“Yeah. I got all A’s. How about you?”
“C’s and—finally—a B. In History. I’m stoked.”
“Dad is gonna be excited about that,” said Terri sourly. “Not that he’d ever notice my A’s. I’d like to do something to really shake him up.”
“Well, he’s not too happy about the boys you’ve been going out with,” said Ike. “Kurtis Goole and those other stoner surf rats.”
“I know,” smiled Terri. “For Kurtis and his friends, adults are bowling pins you knock over. Like inflatable clown dolls with weights on the bottom so you can hit them again and again and they keep bouncing back up.”
“Poor Dad,” said Ike. “What a way to talk.”
“Yeah, poor Dad and his Sons of Adam Heritagist hate group,” said Terri. “You know what I ought to do? I ought to start hanging around with moldies. Maybe that would make him notice that I’m alive.”
“What is your problem today, sis? Did something bad happen to you?”
“Yes,” said Terri, “something did. About a half hour ago, while I was cleaning the house and emptying the trash cans as usual, I saw some papers on Dad’s desk. You know what I saw there? His will.”
“Oh God, is he sick?”
“Just because you have a will, it doesn’t mean you’re about to die, idiot,” said Terri. “It’s just something that grown-ups do. Like taxes. So anyhow, the will says that you inherit the restaurant, I get ten thousand dollars, and Alice gets the motel, the house, and everything else.”
