The smart bomb broke into four or five throbbing chunks that thudded to the floor and lay there twitching. The slow, full second ended.
Before anything else could happen, Stahn peeled the stunpatch off his neck and wadded it up, ruining its circuits.
“I’ve still got the drop on you, Mooney,” said Ricardo from his corner. “Nice move, though. Good thing there was three of us. You AO, Fern?”
“He’s broken my wrist,” said Mrs. Beller.
Stahn tossed the wadded stunpatch out his room’s open window. “Well, that SM was getting a little old, Fern. Why don’t you all promise me some money and I’ll go quietly? I really will. I’ll go to Happy Acres and I’ll infect the boppers with chipmold, but I want a square ISDN contract in writing and on the record. I want three things.” Stahn held up three fingers of his left hand, preparing to tick off his points.
Behind him on the floor, Whitey Mydol began to groan and wake up. Stahn talked faster. “First, in return for cooperating from here on out, I want to be given the status of an ISDN employee. I want a job. Second, in return for giving up my right brain, I want ISDN to clone me a new one should I so desire. If I kick being a meatie, I want my brain back. And number three, I get half a gigabuck payable to my account.”
“Listen to this load of crutches,” grumbled Whitey, who’d managed to lurch back to his feet. He was standing there with his arms crossed over his chest, trying to keep his balance.
“Here Whitey,” said Stahn, taking the S-cube out of the drawer and handing it over to the ridgeback. “This is Cobb’s map. You get the credit for bringing it in. If we’re going to be working on ISDN contracts together, you and I might as well be friends. I mean, wave it, Happy Acres could be a trip. You all weren’t kidding about that, were you? Nobody has to be sorry, do they, so we might as well—”
Whitey took the red plastic map cube and looked at it. “How does it work?”
“It’s a godseye map of Einstein and the Nest, shot December 26, which is when Cobb gave it to me. Any holocaster’ll play it, Cobb says. You can tune the image along four axes: size and the three space dimensions. Cobb wanted me to have it in case the boppers started getting out of hand. It shows all their tunnels and—” Stahn stopped and glanced around. “I debugged this room two days ago, but you never know. Wouldn’t we be better off making our plans at ISDN, where it’s fully shielded?”
“Let’s get moving!” said Ricardo. The four of them ran up to the roof, jumped into the maggie, and headed for the ISDN building. Now that it was all decided, Stahn felt excited and ready for the change. They wouldn’t take all that much of his brain out. Wendy, baby, I’m on my way!
11
When Bubba woke up
When Bubba woke up, Mamma and Uncle Cobb were downstairs talking with the groom. His name was Luther; he was nice. He worked downstairs in the stables all day. His wife Geegee picked him up when it got dark, after most everyone had gone home. Geegee laughed a lot, and she always brought Bubba a big bag of food. At night Bubba could eat and run around a little, but all day he had to be still. Mamma and Cobb said the bad men would kill Bubba if they found him.
Mamma was beautiful and soft. Cobb was strong and shiny. Their friends Luther and Geegee were beautiful and soft and shiny. And the horses were beautiful and soft and strong and shiny, but they couldn’t talk.
The place they lived was Churchill Downs in Louisville on Earth. They lived in a long thin building called the paddock. Lots of horses lived in the paddock; their stables were side by side. Above the stables, up under the long peaked roof, was the hayloft. Mamma and Cobb and Bubba had made themselves a cozy nest in the hay and straw. Straw was stiff and hollow and shiny; hay was dusty and light green. Horses ate hay and pooped on straw.
In the daytime, Bubba could peek through the cracks of the barn’s long hayloft and see the stands. They were big and empty, and in front of them there was a racetrack shaped like a rectangle with semicircular ends. The track was a place for the horses to run, although now it was too cold and there was frozen water snow all over everything. Cobb told Bubba that when Bubba was an old, old man, the snow would melt and flowers would come out.
Bubba knew what roses look like. He had a lot of Know because he was a meatbop. The boppers had built his father, and his father’s sperm had had two tails, one for the body, and one for the Know. Bubba’s sperm would have two tails, too, as soon as it started coming, which would be soon, since he was thirteen. Tomorrow he would be fourteen.
When Cobb was finished talking with Luther he climbed up the straight ladder to the hayloft. Bubba could hear him coming, and then he could see Cobb’s head sticking up through the square hole in the hayloft floor. Cobb was a bopper, though he’d been a flesher a long long time ago. He had white hair and shiny pink skin. His neck shook when he talked.
“Hi, squirt, how’s it going.” Cobb limped across the hay-strewn planks and sat down next to Bubba.
“Fine, Uncle Cobb. I’m thinking. What did Luther tell you?”
“Luther says you’re the only one of Manchile’s boys to have escaped. They killed the last of the others last night.”
Bubba never tired of hearing about his father. “What was Manchile like, Cobb? Tell me again.”
“He was cool. A saintly badass. I saw him give two speeches, you know. The first was for the vizzy, at Suesue Piggot’s apartment, and the second was at the State Fairgrounds. That’s when Mark Piggot shot him. Piggot’s men killed Berenice, too, and they wrecked my ion drive.” Cobb waggled his charred feet. “I don’t know how I’m going to get back to the Moon.”
“What did my father’s speeches say?”
“He said that people and boppers are the same. It’s really true, but some people don’t like hearing it. Some people even think that sex and skin color matter. The bottom line is that we’re all information processors, and God loves all of us just the same. It’s so obvious, I don’t see how anyone can disagree.” One of the horses downstairs nickered. Cobb smiled. “Yes, Red Chan, horses too. Even flies, even atoms. All is One, and the One is Everywhere.”
“Have you ever seen God, Uncle Cobb?”
Cobb gave one of his sad, faraway smiles. “Sure thing, squirt. I spent ten years with God. When I was dead. It was very restful. But Berenice brought me back to take care of you.” He reached out and rumpled Bubba’s brown hair. “And I’m hoping to get my grandson Willy out of jail while I’m at it. I bet you and Willy would really hit it off. He’s the one who drove me and Cisco here the night Manchile got shot, you know. Someone saw him taking us from the Fairgrounds, but he wouldn’t tell the Gimmie where. You owe Willy your life, Bubba.”
“Hi, boys.” Mamma’s pretty face appeared at the top of the ladder. Her breath steamed in the cold air.
“Hi, Cisco,” said Cobb. “Look how grownup Bubba is today.”
Mamma walked over and gave Bubba a big kiss. It gave him a tingly feeling in his balls.
“Mamma . . . can I make a baby with you?”
Cisco laughed and gave him a light shove. “You’re going to have to work harder than that, Bubba. First of all it wouldn’t be right, and second of all, I’m tired out from growing you. One pregnancy a month’s enough! You’ll find lots of nice women when you go off on your own, just wait and see.”
“Do you think . . . ” said Cobb raising his eyebrows.
“Tonight,” said Cisco. “One of the trainers just told Luther that the Gimmie’s planning to search the stables tomorrow.” She patted Bubba on the hand. “Tonight you go downtown and find a woman to take you in, Bubba. You can make a baby with her. Don’t worry, you’ll know what to do. The main thing is to smile a lot and not be scared to come right out and ask for sex. Find a nice young woman by herself in, oh, La Mirage Health Club. Introduce yourself, talk to her for a while and then say, ‘You’re beautiful and I’d like to go to bed with you.’ If she says no, thank her and say good-bye, and then try another girl. It’s much simpler than most men realize.”