The Ware Tetralogy by Rudy Rucker (most important books of all time .txt) đ
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âIt did,â said Randy. âBig-time. People and moldies are gettinâ along better all the taahm. Itâs just the men fighting each other thatâs ruining things. As for me personallyâI got such a good thing goinâ with Babs I canât hardly remember what I used to see in beinâ a cheeseball. Leave Cobb alone, Willa Jean, run on inside.â Randy pushed Willa Jean away from Cobb and toward the warehouse door. âEveryoneâs grateful to you, Cobb. But whatâs this about you beinâ tired? We was expectinâ you to run for mayor.â
âNo,â said Cobb. âIâm ready to move further on. Politics should die. Politics used to be about dividing up scarce resourcesâand nothingâs scarce anymore. With the allas here, politics is just about hatred and war. Want to know why Iâm so bummed all of a sudden? Guess what I heard on my uvvy just as I touched down? People have started throwing kiloton bombs.â
âNukes?â asked Randy. âI thoughtââ
âConventional explosives,â said Cobb. âIf you ask it to, an alla can make you a thousand ton cube of TNT. Some people just realized. Most of downtown Jerusalemâs gone. And now Iâm hearingââCobb sighed. âBaghdad too.â
âWe should block the allas from making weapons,â said Randy.
âBut whatâs a weapon?â said Cobb. âGasoline is a weapon. Oxygen and hydrogen. Acid. Even a rock is a weapon if you drop it from high in the sky. I think we should tell the Metamartians to tell Om to take away the allas.â
âI saw their saucer in the sky over Oakland earlier today,â said Randy. âAnd then they darted away. I bet they were going to the Mideast. Jerusalem and Baghdad got flattened?â
âYes,â said Cobb.
âWhat should I do?â
âLive your life, however much of itâs left for you. Marry Babs.â
Yoke, June 1
âHold still,â said Joke, leaning forward to touch up Yokeâs eye makeup. The twin sisters had always preferred using each other to using mirrors.
âThere,â said Joke. âPerfect.â She leaned back and smiled. The two of them were in a bridal dressing room off the Fairmont Hotelâs top-floor ballroom. It was almost time for the wedding. Yoke could hear music; Saint and some of his friends were brain-playing ancient flute motets on sheets of imipolex-with hints of heavy metal. âIâm glad weâre doing this on Earth,â said Joke. âItâs so pretty down here. If only things donât keep getting worse. The heavy gravity is good for a ceremony. It makes everything seem solemn.â Joke moved her arms in slow, marching motions. âAre you stoked?â
âYou like Phil, donât you, Joke?â
âHeâs great. That blond hair and dark chinâyummy. And he looks at you like heâs so in love. Emul and Berenice approve too.â Thanks to some unfortunate wetware meddling, Joke had been born with two pushy robotsâ minds coded into the right hemisphere of her brain. It made her very knowledgeable, but her spatial perception was lousy. âThey, um, did some research on him.â
âDo I want to know?â asked Yoke.
âItâs all good,â said Joke. âEmul says Phil has a clean criminal record and heâs exactly who he says he is. And Berenice says Philâs genome is not only mutation-free, but a very good fit for ours. I mean yours. So I wanted to tell you. Sorry.â
âOh, it doesnât matter,â said Yoke. âIâve abandoned any hope of privacyâat least for today. What a circus.â
âAnd here comes the clown!â said Yoke. A hard-looking man was peeking in the dressing room door. Their father, Whitey Mydol. He had a Mohawk strip of hair that went down the back of his head and continued on into his shirt collar. And over the shirt he was wearing a tuxedo. âIâll go check on Ma,â said Joke, and moved out of the way; the tiny dressing room was only big enough for two people.
âClown is right,â said Whitey, his rough face splitting in a surprisingly pleasant smile. âIâm walking funny. How many days did it take you to get used to this gravity, Yoke?â
âThree, four weeks. Hi, Pop. How do I look?â
âYou lookâoh, Yoke, you look like an angel. You remind me of Darlaâback when. She says our twenty-fifth anniversary is coming up this month.â
âAre you being nice to her, Pop?â
âWhat a question!â Whitey shifted uneasily, looking too big for the tiny, white-upholstered brideâs room. âDonât worry about us, Yoke, things are better. I was bad, but Iâm being good again. Anyway, itâs me who should be asking you things. Like are you totally sure you want to marry Phil? I can get you out of it if you want.â He cracked his scarred knuckles as if thinking about a fight.
âIâm doing this,â said Yoke firmly. âAre you with me or not?â
âFor sure.â Whitey ran his hand back and forth over his head, fluffing his Mohawk. This was the first time Yoke had ever seen him wearing a shirt and suit coat, let alone a tuxedo. âI just thought itâs the kind of thing a fatherâs supposed to ask. Philâs a good man. And weâve already paid for the room.â He gave a grim chuckle. âMight as well do it, then, before some dook sets off a bomb. How do we know when to march up the aisle?â
âWhen the music changes.â And then it did.
âHere Comes the Bride,â said Whitey, holding out his arm.
In the little hallway, they found Babs and Stahn, coming out of their own dressing room. While Yokeâs dress was a sleek sheath of silk with a tulle veil, Babs had gone âsmart artâ; her dress and hair were alive with slowly moving pearl DIM heads.
The Fairmont owners had alla-remodeled the top-floor hall-room with a gorgeous parquet wood floor and white silk-covered walls winking with little diamonds. There were dozens of floor-to-ceiling windows, all flung wide-open to let in the gentle June breeze. The sweetness of it caught in Yokeâs throat. If only the world could stop its downward spiral. Five more cities had been blown up in the past four weeks.
The chairs were arranged so that the ballroomâs aisle was double wide; that way Yoke, Whitey, Babs, and Stahn could walk up side by side, with nobody first and nobody second. Waiting up in front by the windows were Randy and Phil, standing on either side ofâCobb Anderson.
It had developed that none of the four betrothed had a close enough church affiliation to know of a particular minister to use. So Cobb had quickly picked up a Gimmie justice-of-the-peace license and offered to perform the ceremony himself. The old man moldie claimed he was tired, but he still loved to put himself at the center of things. Randy was thrilled to be getting married by his great-grandfather, and Babs didnât mind. As for Yoke and Phil, they too were glad to have Cobb supervise this religious ceremony-for had not each of the three seen the same Divine SUN?
Though it was a beautiful service, the time seemed to pass in funny spurts. Everything was crawling while they were walking up the aisle. This was the part Yoke had always visualized as a little girl thinking about weddings. Walking up the aisle in your bridal gown. It was almost as if she could feel her own eyes watching her. The man at the end of the aisle had always been vague, but now, today, he was clear. Dear Phil. Then things speeded up, and suddenly Yoke and Phil were saying âI willâ and âI do.â Time all but stopped for the ring part and the kiss. Phil had a brand-new ring for Yoke, which was good. Babs and Randyâs vows happened in fast-forward; Yoke didnât hear a word of them. And then they were walking out in slow motion and it felt to Yoke like something she had done a hundred times before.
The waiters cleared the chairs away and set out big tables that they filled with alla-made food; Phil and Babs had made up the designs for the wedding feast. Darla was one of the first to hug Yoke, and then Whitey and Joke. And then Yoke hugged Randy and Babs.
âWeâre married,â laughed Babs. âItâs going to be so fun.â But there was a shrill edge to her gaiety. Disaster was stalking them all.
Everyone was there. Yokeâs bridesmaid was Joke, of course, and Babsâs was her art-gallery friend Kundry Asiz. Saint was Philâs best man, and Corey Rhizome served as Randyâs.
Randy and Corey had taken quite a liking to each other over the last couple of weeks. One thing they had in common was that they were both really into garage-style limpware engineering. Corey even helped Yoke to finally get her imipolex coral working. Yokeâs new thing this week was growing her reefs in air instead of water; sheâd started using DIM gnats for the polyps. In fact yesterday sheâd grown a fabulous organic-looking headboard for her and Philâs bed. It was a struggle to keep on doing things, with the murders and battles and bombing getting worse every day. But love and art still mattered; yes, they mattered more than hate and war.
The older generation at the wedding party included Darla and Whitey, Stahn and Wendy, Randyâs father Willy Taze, Philâs mother Eve, and even Philâs stepmother Willow. Philâs Uncle Rex was there too, as well as his grandmother Isolde and his great-aunt Hildegarde, who had the most astonishing face. They all thought Yoke was wonderful, and said theyâd known she was perfect for Phil when theyâd seen him talking to her at poor Kurtâs funeral. Oh, and Randyâs newfound aunt Della Taze had turned up from San Diego, mainly to see Willy. Della had brought her aunt along, seventy-nine-year-old Isle, a bit wobbly and sour, but Cobb Andersonâs daughter nonetheless. Cobb was overwhelmed to see her.
Among the younger guests, Terri and Tre Dietz had come up from Santa Cruz with their kids Dolf and Wren, who were loving it. In honor of the happy dayâand who knew how many more happy days there would be?âRandy and the Dietzes even made friends, with apologies and forgiveness all around. In fact little Wren was on the floor playing with Randyâs plastic chicken Willa Jean. Aarbie Kidd hadnât been invited, but Theodore was there with a leather biker as his date. Derek and his dog Umberto had come with Kundry. There were plenty of others as well; in fact at the last minute, Yokeâs friends Kandie and Cocole had even turned up from the Moon, they said theyâd been wanting to visit Earth anyway, so why not now, before it was all blown up.
There were even a few moldies among the guests. Phil had asked Isis Snooks, whoâd been such a help with his blimps, and Isis had brought along the flashy Thutmosis as her date. Wendy and Cobb each had a few moldie friends, and they were there too. Thanks to the stinkeater bug, mixing with moldies wasnât much of a problem anymore, so long as you had an open mind.
People were drinking champagne like thereâd be no tomorrow, jabbering away like magpies, everyone jumping at every loud noise. In the last month, Dakar, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Belfast, Antwerp, and Paris had been hit by enormous bombs. Allas had repaired the buildings, but a lot of people had died. And just yesterday New York City had been bombed too. Everyone was on edge, waiting for the next thing to happen. And then it did.
âA flying saucer!â screamed Philâs mother, Eve. âLook out, Phil! Oh, what if theyâve come for you again!â
The saucer hanging outside the ballroom windows was a traditional metal disk with a dome
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