The Sex Sphere by Rudy Rucker Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Rudy Rucker
Alwin Bitter. Greetings, revolutionary comrades. We, as Americans, feel sympathy for your woe. But freedom is not anarchy. Nor anarchy freedom. Professor Bitter is a man of peace, an atomic scientist. To think that his long and intimate association with weapons projects enables him single-handedly to build a bomb is fantasy. To take his close ties with the US Embassy for military involvement is gross self-deception. Do not harm this innocent man, or the gravest consequences will ensue. We stand prepared to pay a ransom of one million US dollars.’”
“But that’s so misleading,” Sybil cried. “It makes him sound like an important bomb specialist! They’ll never give him up!”
“They’ll…have to give him up,” Membrane said with a faint smile. “Word spreads fast in Rome. No matter who has him now…the real terrorists will come and get him.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Orali and Rectelli
It was bad sleep, there on a pile of rags somewhere beneath the Colosseum. My body was immobile with exhaustion, but my brain was racing…trying to find a way out, trying to find a next move. There were lots of dreams. Here’s one of them:
***
I’m outside the Colosseum, running down endless streets with shuttered doors. Finally I find a café-bar which is open for the early workers. No one inside will talk to me or even look at me. In the back there is a billiard table, and arched doors leading down. On the green baize lies a dead man, crumpled like a bag of garbage. His legs are missing…not really missing, just stripped of meat. Butchered. The man behind the zinc bar is cooking a greasy cannibal stew. He passes out huge glass mugs of beer, bubbles a-tick. The mugs are so big and so clear you could almost go skin-diving in them. He won’t give me one, just shakes his head. Then into each of the mugs he ladles a chunk of fresh-cooked leg-meat. I recoil and rush out through those arched doors in back.
I’m running down a slope, down the radius of a series of concentric circles, heading deeper and deeper underground. It’s an invisible underground Colosseum. Demons peer at me from odd nooks and crannies. A rumble of voices all around. There are thousands of us drifting down toward the impossible center.
In the half-light I pause in front of an…exhibit, some kind of recess in the wall where a tasty bit of knowledge might be served, something about quarks and quantum chromodynamics…but instead there’s a gray-white demon with a swollen tick’s body. He scrambles about, then splits a vent and spews hot liquid on me. It’s foul, with lumps, stinking and stuck to my body, marking me for all to see. Somewhere below, Minos is waiting to judge me….
***
I woke with a start. I knew where I was. My back was killing me, and my hurt finger throbbed. I looked at my watch. Quarter of ten. Lafcadio still sat on the sofa, guarding me with the robot and the machine gun on his lap. He hadn’t noticed yet that I was awake, and I studied him through slitted eyes.
His dry black hair stuck out from his head in asymmetrical tufts and auras. There was a festering scab-crust along the outer curve of his left ear. His skin was a sallow yellow, blued along the jawline by sixteen-o’clock shadow. His mouth was a thin twisting line, never quite at ease, never quite unamused. It was as if he were constantly holding back both screams and laughter. He kept his eyes squeezed almost shut, possibly in an effort to valve down the boom and bustle of consensus reality.
He wore a plain black suit, shiny with wear, and a stained white shirt with no necktie. The suit pockets bulged with worthless objects. Now as I watched he fished out a sheet of paper with some sort of geometric diagram and studied it intently, turning it from side to side like a monkey would. His hands were off the machine gun…but this did me no good, as the chain fastening me to the wall was so short. Yawning loudly, I sat up.
Lafcadio put away his diagram, whispered to his
“But that’s so misleading,” Sybil cried. “It makes him sound like an important bomb specialist! They’ll never give him up!”
“They’ll…have to give him up,” Membrane said with a faint smile. “Word spreads fast in Rome. No matter who has him now…the real terrorists will come and get him.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Orali and Rectelli
It was bad sleep, there on a pile of rags somewhere beneath the Colosseum. My body was immobile with exhaustion, but my brain was racing…trying to find a way out, trying to find a next move. There were lots of dreams. Here’s one of them:
***
I’m outside the Colosseum, running down endless streets with shuttered doors. Finally I find a café-bar which is open for the early workers. No one inside will talk to me or even look at me. In the back there is a billiard table, and arched doors leading down. On the green baize lies a dead man, crumpled like a bag of garbage. His legs are missing…not really missing, just stripped of meat. Butchered. The man behind the zinc bar is cooking a greasy cannibal stew. He passes out huge glass mugs of beer, bubbles a-tick. The mugs are so big and so clear you could almost go skin-diving in them. He won’t give me one, just shakes his head. Then into each of the mugs he ladles a chunk of fresh-cooked leg-meat. I recoil and rush out through those arched doors in back.
I’m running down a slope, down the radius of a series of concentric circles, heading deeper and deeper underground. It’s an invisible underground Colosseum. Demons peer at me from odd nooks and crannies. A rumble of voices all around. There are thousands of us drifting down toward the impossible center.
In the half-light I pause in front of an…exhibit, some kind of recess in the wall where a tasty bit of knowledge might be served, something about quarks and quantum chromodynamics…but instead there’s a gray-white demon with a swollen tick’s body. He scrambles about, then splits a vent and spews hot liquid on me. It’s foul, with lumps, stinking and stuck to my body, marking me for all to see. Somewhere below, Minos is waiting to judge me….
***
I woke with a start. I knew where I was. My back was killing me, and my hurt finger throbbed. I looked at my watch. Quarter of ten. Lafcadio still sat on the sofa, guarding me with the robot and the machine gun on his lap. He hadn’t noticed yet that I was awake, and I studied him through slitted eyes.
His dry black hair stuck out from his head in asymmetrical tufts and auras. There was a festering scab-crust along the outer curve of his left ear. His skin was a sallow yellow, blued along the jawline by sixteen-o’clock shadow. His mouth was a thin twisting line, never quite at ease, never quite unamused. It was as if he were constantly holding back both screams and laughter. He kept his eyes squeezed almost shut, possibly in an effort to valve down the boom and bustle of consensus reality.
He wore a plain black suit, shiny with wear, and a stained white shirt with no necktie. The suit pockets bulged with worthless objects. Now as I watched he fished out a sheet of paper with some sort of geometric diagram and studied it intently, turning it from side to side like a monkey would. His hands were off the machine gun…but this did me no good, as the chain fastening me to the wall was so short. Yawning loudly, I sat up.
Lafcadio put away his diagram, whispered to his