Transreal Cyberpunk (21 page)

“No, no,” said Janna, stashing the vials in her purse. “We don’t load the rings yet. We have to dose the guys at the exact same time. Otherwise, the one will know when the other one gets it. They’ve been hanging together for a long time. They’re like symbiotes. How soon are you and Pullen coming back from Texas anyway?”

“He says two weeks,” said Veruschka, pulling a face. “I hope is less time.”

And then Hoss Jenks was there with a limo to take Veruschka to the airport. Janna cleaned up the lab and stashed the vials of nanoPumptis in her office. Before she could lie down to sleep there, Tug Mesoglea arrived for his first day at Magic Pumpkin.

To Janna’s surprise, Tug turned out to be a pleasant man to work for. Not only did he have excellent taste in office carpeting and window treatments, but he was a whiz at industrial R&D. Under his leadership, the science of the Pumptis made great strides: improvements in the mechanism of the Universal Ribosome, in the curious sets of proteins encoded by the junk DNA, even in the looping strangeness of Ruben Gutierrez’s genomic OpenAnimator graphics library. And then Tug stumbled onto the fact that the Pumptis could send and receive a certain gigahertz radio frequency. Digital I/O.

“The ascended master of R&D does not shoehorn new science into yesterday’s apps,” the serenely triumphant Tug told Janna. “The product is showing us what it wants to do. Forget the benighted demands of the brutish consumers: we’re called to lead them to the sunlit uplands of improved design!”

So Janna pushed ahead, and under Tug’s Socratic questioning, she had her breakthrough: Why stop at toys? Once they’d managed to tweak and evolve a new family of forms and functions for the Pumptis, they would no longer be mere amusements, but
personal tools.
Not like Pokemons, not like Goob dolls, but truly
high-end devices
: soft uvvy phones, health monitors, skin-interfaced VR patches, holistic gene maintenance kits, cosmetic body-modifiers! Every gadget would be utterly trustworthy, being made of nothing but you!

As before, they would all but give away the pretty new Pumptis, but this time they’d have serious weight for the aftermarket: “Pumpti Productivity Philtres” containing the molecular codes for the colors, shapes, and functionalities of a half dozen killer apps. Get ‘em all! While they last! New Philtres coming soon!

Veruschka’s stay in Texas lasted six weeks. She phoned daily to chat with Janna. The laid-back Texan lifestyle on the legendary Pullen spread was having its own kind of seduction. Vero gave up her vodka for blue agave tequila. She surrendered her high heels for snakeskin boots. Her phone conversations became laced with native terms such as “darlin” and “sugar” as she smugly recounted giant barbeques for politicians, distributors, the Ctenophore management, and the Pullen Drilling Company sales force.

By the time Revel and Veruschka came back to San Francisco, Magic Pumpkin had the burn-rate under firm control and was poised for true market success. But, as wage slaves, Janna and Veruschka would share not one whit of the profit. So far as Janna knew, they were still scheduled to poison their bosses.

“Do we really want to give them the Pumpti Therapy?” Janna murmured to Veruschka. They were in Janna’s new living quarters, wonderfully carpentered into the space beneath the bank’s high dome. It had proved easier to build-in an apartment than to rent one. And Tug had been very good about the expenses.

Veruschka had a new suitcase, a classy Texas item clad in dappled calfskin with the hair still on. As usual, her bag had disgorged itself all over the room. “Mesoglea must certainly be liquidated,” she said, cocking her head. Tug’s voice was drifting up from the lab below, where he was showing Revel around. “He is fatuous, old, careless. He has lost all his creative fire.”

“But I like Tug now,” said Janna. “He taught me amazing things in the lab. He’s smart.”

“I hate him,” said Veruschka stubbornly. “Tonight he meets the consequences of his junk DNA.”

“Well, your Revel Pullen needs Pumpti Therapy even more,” said Janna crossly. “He’s a corrupt, lunatic bully—cram-full of huckster double-talk he doesn’t even listen to himself.”

“Revel and I are in harmony on many issues,” allowed Veruschka. “I begin almost to like his style.”

“Should—should we let them off the hook?” pleaded Janna.

Veruschka gave her a level stare. “Don’t weaken. These men stole our company. We must bend them to our will. It is beyond personalities.”

“Oh, all right,” sighed Janna, feeling doomed. “You poison Tug and I’ll poison Revel. It’ll be easier for us that way.”

The four of them were scheduled to go out for a celebratory dinner, this time to Popo’s, a chi-chi high-end gourmet establishment of Tug’s choosing. Pullen’s voice could now be heard echoing up from the lab, loudly wondering what was “keeping the heifers.” Janna swept downstairs to distract the men while Veruschka loaded her ring. Then Veruschka held the floor while Janna went back up to her room to ready her own ring.

The two little vials of nanoPumpti sat in plain sight amidst the clutter of the women’s cosmetics. They could have been perfume bottles, one red, one blue.

As Janna prepared to fill her Borgia ring, she was struck by a wild inspiration. She’d treat Revel Pullen with Tug’s Pumptized DNA. Yes! This would civilize the semihuman Pullen, making him be more like Tug—instead of, horrors, even more like himself! There might be certain allergic effects—but the result for the Magic Pumpkin company would be hugely positive. To hell with the risk. No doubt the wretched Pullen would be happy with the change.

It went almost too easily. The old men guzzled enough wine with dinner to become loose and reckless. When the cappuccinos arrived, Janna and Veruschka each found a reason to reach out toward their prey. Janna adjusted Pullen’s string-tie. Veruschka dabbed a stain of prawn sauce from Tug’s salmon-colored lapel. And each woman gently misted the contents of her ring onto the chocolate-dusted foam of her victim’s coffee. The old men, heavy-lidded with booze and digestion, took their medicines without a peep.

Soon after, Pullen retired to his hotel room, Tug caught a cab back to his house in the Haight, and the two women walked the few blocks back to the Magic Pumpkin headquarters, giggling with relief. Janna didn’t tell Veruschka about having given Pullen the red Tug Treatment. Better to wait and see how things worked out. Better to sleep on it.

But sleep was slow in coming. Suppose Pullen swelled up horribly and died from toxic Tug effects? The Feds would find the alien DNA in him, and the law would be on Janna right away. And what if the Therapies really did improve the two old men? Risen to some cold, inhuman level of intelligence, they’d think nothing of wiping out Janna and Veruschka like ants.

Janna rubbed her cell phone nervously. Maybe she could give poor old Tug some kind of anonymous warning. But she sensed that Veruschka was also awake, over on the other side of Janna’s California King bed.

Suddenly the phone rang. It was Kelso.

“Yo babe,” he said airily. “I’m fresh back from sunny Mexico. The heat’s off. I bought myself a new identity and an honest-to-God law degree. I’m right outside, Janna. Saw you and Vero go jammin’ by on Market Street just now, but I didn’t want to come pushing up at you like some desperado tweaker. Let me in. Nice new logo you got on the Magic Pumpkin digs, by the way, good font choice too.”

“You’re a lawyer now? Well, don’t think we’ve forgotten about that box of petty cash, you sleaze.”

Kelso chuckled. “I didn’t forget you either,
mi vida
! As for that money—hey, my new papers cost as much as what I took. Paradoxical, no? Here’s another mind bender: even though we’re hot for each other, you and me have never done the deed.”

“I’m not alone,” said Janna. “Veruschka’s staying with me.”

“For God’s sake will you two at last get it over,” said Veruschka, sleepily burying her head under her pillow. “Wake me up when you’re done and maybe the three of us can talk business. We’ll need a lawyer tomorrow.”

§

The next morning Tug Mesoglea arrived at Magic Pumpkin and started acting—like Revel Pullen.

“Git along little doggies,” he crooned, leaning over the incubator where they were keeping their dozen or so new-model Pumptis. And then he reached over and fondled Janna’s butt.

Janna raced out of the lab and cornered Veruschka, who was noodling around at her desk trying to look innocent. “You gave Tug the Pullen potion, didn’t you? Bitch!”

Before Veruschka could answer, the front door swung open, and in sashayed Pullen. He was dressed, unbelievably, in a caftan and striped Capri pants. “I picked these up in the hotel shop,” he said, looking down at one of his spindly shanks. “Do you think it works on me, Janna? I’ve always admired your fashion sense.”

“Double bitch!” cried Veruschka, and yanked at Janna’s hair. Janna grabbed back, knocking off the red cowboy hat that Vero was sporting today.

“Don’t think we haven’t already seen clear through your little game,” said the altered Pullen with a toss of his head. “You and your nanoPumptis. Tug and I had a long heart-to-heart talk on the phone this morning. Except we didn’t use no phone. We can hear each other in our heads.”

“Shit howdy!” called Tug from the lab. “Brother Revel’s here. Ready to take it to the next level?”

“Lemme clear out the help,” said Revel, sounding Texan again. He leaned into the guard room and sent Hoss Jenks and his mirrorshades assistants out for a long walk. To Jenks’s credit, he didn’t bat an eye at Revel’s new look.

“Let’s not even worry about that Kelso boy up in Janna’s room,” said Tug, reverting to his old accent as well. “He’s still asleep.” Tug gave Janna an arch look. “Don’t look so surprised, we know everything. Thanks to the Pumpti Therapy you gave us. We’ve got, oh, a couple of million years of evolution on you now. The future of the race, that’s us. Telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, and shape-shifting too.”

“You’re—you’re not mad at us?” said Janna.

“We only gave the Therapy to make you better,” babbled Veruschka. “Don’t punish us.”

“I dunno about that,” said Revel. “But I do know I got a powerful hankerin’ for some Pumpti meat. Can you smell that stuff?”

“Sure can,” sang Tug. “Intoxicating, isn’t it? What a seductive perfume!”

Without another word, the two men headed for the lab’s vats and incubators. Peeping warily through the open lab doors, Janna and Veruschka saw a blur of activity. The two old men were methodically devouring the stock, gobbling every Pumpti in sight.

There was no way that merely human stomachs could contain all that mass, but that wasn’t slowing them down much. Their bodies were puffing up and—just as Veruschka had predicted, the eyeballs were bulging forward out of their heads. Their clothes split and dropped away from their expanding girths. When all the existing Pumptis were gone, the two giants set eagerly to work on the raw materials. And when Tug found the frozen kilograms of their own personal Pumptis, the fireworks really began.

The two great mouths chewed up the red and blue Pumpti meat, spitting, drooling, and passing the globs back and forth. Odd ripples began moving up and down along their bodies like ghost images of ancient flesh.

“What’s that a-comin’ out of your rib cage, Tuggie?” crowed Revel.

“Cootchy-coo,” laughed Tug, twiddling the tendrils protruding from his side. “I’m expressing a jellyfish. My personal best. Feel around in your genome, Revel. It’s all there, every species, evolved from our junk DNA right along with our super-duper futuristic new bodies.” He paused, watching. “Now you’re keyin’ it, bro. I say—are those hooves on your shoulder?”

Revel palpated the twitching growth with professional care. “I’d be reckoning that’s a quagga. A prehistoric zebra-type thing. And, whoah Nellie, see this over on my other shoulder? It’s an eohippus. Ancestor of the horse. The cowboys of the Pullen clan got a long relationship with horseflesh. I reckon there was some genetic bleedover when we was punchin’ cattle up the Goodnight-Loving Trail; that’s why growin’ these ponies comes so natural to me.”

“How do you like it now, ladies?” asked Tug, glancing over toward Janna and Veruschka.

“Ask them,” hissed Veruschka in Janna’s ear.

“No, you,” whispered Janna.

Brave Vero spoke up. “My friend is wondering now if you will sign those Magic Pumpkin founders’ shares back over to us? And the patents as well if you please?”

“Groink,” said Revel, hunching himself over and deforming his mouth into a dinosaur-type jaw.

“Squonk,” said Tug, letting his head split into a floppy bouquet of be-suckered tentacles.

“You don’t need to own our business anymore,” cried Janna. “Please sign it back to us.”

The distorted old men whooped and embraced each other, their flesh fusing into one. The meaty mass seethed with possibilities, bubbled with the full repertoire of zoological forms—with feelers, claws, wings, antennae, snouts; with eyes of every shape and color winking on and off; with fleeting mouths that lingered only long enough to bleat, to hiss, to grumble, to whinny, screech, and roar. It wasn’t exactly a “no” answer.

“Kelso,” shouted Janna up the stairs. “Bring the papers!”

A high, singing sound filled the air. The Pullen-Mesoglea mass sank to the floor as if melting, forming itself into a broad, glistening plate. The middle of the plate swelled like yeasty bread to form a swollen dome. The fused organism was taking on the form of—a living UFO?