The Sex Sphere by Rudy Rucker Read Free Book Online Page B

robot, and then smiled at me in a friendly sort of way.
    “ Stavvi Minòs orribilimente, e ringhia: essamina le colpe ne l’intrata; giudica e manda secondo ch’avvinghia .” Apparently he spoke no English…strange for a physicist, but not impossible, especially in Italy.
    “I’m sorry.” I threw out my hands. “I can’t understand you at all. I only know about twenty words of Italian. Non capisce .”
    But that didn’t stop him. He wanted to talk. He had something on his mind. “ Luna ,” he said, molding an ass-shape in the air. “ Baciare e entrare .” He made the traditional hand-gesture for coitus, the erect right index finger bustling about in the loop of left thumb and forefinger. Apparently he was asking if I liked sex.
    “Sure. Molto bello . Me and my wife every night.” Smilingly I pumped the air with both fists, as if lifting myself up and down on a bed.
    Lafcadio went to the door of our stone room and peered out. Was he going to set me free? Tell me a secret? Sexually assault me?
    “ Ecco ,” he said, laying his gun down on the sofa and stepping close to me. He fumbled for something in his pants pocket and then brought it out. A tiny bean or seed it looked like, lying in the center of his dirty palm.
    Looking lovingly down at the little lump, Lafcadio began…blowing kisses at it. Pursing his lips and making coaxing noises.
    “ Smeep smeep. Smeep smeep smeep .”
    The little sphere seemed to twitch, to grow a bit.
    “ Smeep smeep ,” went Lafcadio, pausing to grin and nod encouragingly at me. I was supposed to help.
    “Smeep,” I went, dry lips puckered. “Smeep smeep smeep.”
    “ Smeep smeepy .”
    “Smeepity smeep smeep.”
    The little ball grew, its surface flowing. In a way, I felt like I was being hypnotized, or having a hallucination. But yet the… presence growing and taking shape in crazy Lafcadio’s cupped palms seemed real enough. Another order of reality, I thought, when suddenly…
    There was the crash of footsteps, an explosion of gunfire, and Lafcadio pitched toward me, his chest gushing blood. With what must have been his last act of volition, he passed the magic sphere to me. It shrank back to the size of an orange-pip. I pocketed it as I stepped back from the intruders.
    They were two very short men with guns, burr haircuts and big jaws. They looked like a couple of the “snoids” R. Crumb used to draw, amoral little goblin-men who live in sewers and assholes. They wore matching gray mechanic’s overalls with nametags. Orali and Rectelli . One had a machine gun and one had a sawed-off shotgun. They didn’t look like police.
    Or act like them. The snoid with the machine gun rapidly emptied out Lafcadio’s pockets, making a growing mound of newspaper clippings, pages ripped out of books, drawings of circles, pornographic photos, dead flashlight batteries, orange rinds, squeezed-out tubes of ointment, and balls, balls, balls. There must have been fifteen or twenty little balls, some wood, some metal, some rubber. Ball bearings, Ping-Pong balls, bocce balls, gumballs, and even a tiny Earth-globe pencil sharpener. But none of them seemed to be alive like the one I’d pocketed.
    The snoid with the sawed-off shotgun stepped over and blasted the chain connecting me to the wall. Pieces of metal and concrete flew up, catching me on my good cheek. It stung viciously. I could feel the wet of blood. I was scared to touch my face, scared that some of it was gone.
    They began hustling me out of the room, not noticing that my ankles were still manacled together. I stumbled and fell forward. Somewhere outside, the shrill do-so, do-so, do-so-do-so-do-so of an approaching police car sounded. The shotgun fired off a blast between my legs…OH!…and then my ankles were free. There was blood and smoke everywhere. I was half-deaf from the gun-blasts.
    The snoids got me upstairs, and before I knew it, we were in a purple Maserati convertible, doing 120 kph through Rome traffic, the