Ribofunk by Di Filippo,  Paul  
New York :  Four Walls Eight Windows,  1996 
ISBN: 1568580622

 Table Of Contents  

 One Night in Television City   1  

 Little Worker  		21  

 Cockfight  			43  

 Big Eater  			69  

 The Boot  			97  

 Blankie  			119  

 The Bad Splice  		143  

 McGregor  			171  

 Brain Wars  			191  

 Streetlife  			211  

 Afterschool Special  		231  

 Up the Lazy River  		255  

 Distributed Mind  		275  
 
 One Night in Television City  


 I'm frictionless, molars, so don't point those flashlights at me. I ain't going
 nowhere,  you can  see that  clear as  hubble. Just  like superwire,  I got  no
 resistance, so why doncha all just gimme some slack?  


 What'd you  say, molar?  Your lifter's  got a  noisy fan—it's interferring with
 your signal. How'd I get up here? That's an easy one. I just climbed. But I got
 a better one for you.  


 Now that I ain't no Dudley Dendrite anymore, how the fuck am I gonna get down?  


 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  


 Just a few  short hours ago  it was six  o'clock on a  Saturday night like  any
 other, and I was sitting in a metamilk bar called the Slak Shak, feeling  sorry
 for myself for a number of good and sufficient reasons. I was down so low there
 wasn't an angstrom's worth of difference  between me and a microbe. You  see, I
 had no sleeve, I had no set, I had no eft. Chances were I wasn't gonna get  any
 of 'em anytime soon, either. The prospect was enough to make me wanna float  

 
 away on whatever latest toxic corewipe the Shak was offering.  


 I  asked  the  table  for  the barlist.  It  was  all  the  usual bugjuice  and
 horsesweat, except for a new item called Needlestrength-Nine. I ordered a dose,
 and it came in a cup of  cold frothy milk sprinkled with cinnamon. I  downed it
 all  in  two  gulps,  the   whole  nasty  mess  of  transporter   proteins  and
 neurotropins, a stew  of long-chain molecules  that were some  konky biobrujo's
 idea of blister-packed heaven.  


 All it did  was make me  feel like I  had a cavity  behind my eyes  filled with
 shuttle-fuel. My personal sitspecs still looked as lousy as a rat's shaved ass.  


 That's the trouble  with the tropes  and strobers you  can buy in  the metamilk
 bars: they're  all kid's  stuff, G-rated  holobytes. If  you want  a real slick
 kick, some black meds, then you got  to belong to a set, preferably one  with a
 smash watson boasting a  clean labkit. A Fermenta,  or Wellcome, or Cetus  rig,
 say. Even an Ortho'll do.  


 But as I said, I  had no set, nor any  prospect of being invited into  one. Not
 that I'd leap at  an invite to just  any old one, you  latch. Some of the  sets
 were too toxic for me.  


 So there  I sat  with a  skull full  of liquid  oxygen, feeling  just like  the
 Challenger before liftoff, more bummed  than before I had zero-balanced  my eft
 on the useless drink. I was licking the cinammon off the rim of the glass  when
 who should slope in but my one buddy, Casio.  


 Casio was a little  younger 'n me, about  fifteen. He was skinny  and white and
 had more acne than a worker in a dioxin factory. He coulda had skin as clear as
 anyone else's,  

 
 but he  was always  forgetting to  use his  epicream. He  wore a few strands of
 grafted fiberoptics in his brown hair, an imipolex vest that bubbled constantly
 like  some kinda  slime mold,  a pair  of parchment  pants, and  a dozen  jelly
 bracelets on his left forearm.  


 "Hey, Dez," said Casio, rapping knuckles with me, "how's it climbing?"  


 Casio didn't  have no  set neither,  but it  didn't seem  to bother him like it
 bothered me. He  was always up,  always smiling and  happy. Maybe it  had to do
 with his music, which  was his whole life.  It seemed to give  him something he
 could always fall back on. I had never seen him really down. Sometimes it  made
 me wanna choke the shit outa him.  


 "Not so good, molar.  Life looks emptier'n the  belly of a Taiwanese  baby with
 the z-virus craps."  


 Casio pulled up a seat. "Ain't things working out with Chuckie?"  


 I groaned. Why  I had ever  fantasized aloud to  Casio about Chuckie  and me, I
 couldn't now say. I  musta really been in  microgravity that day. "Just  forget
 about Charlotte and me, will you do me that large fave? There's nothing between
 us, nothing, you latch?"  


 Casio looked puzzled. "Nothing? Whadda ya  mean? The way you talked, I  thought
 she was your best sleeve."  


 "No, you got it all wrong, molar, we was both wasted, remember? . . . "  


 Casio's vest  extruded a  long wavy  stalk that  bulged into  a ball at its tip
 before being resorbed. "Gee, Dez, I wish I had  

 
 known all  this before.  I been  talking you  two up  as a  hot item all around
 TeeVeeCee."  


 My heart swelled  up big as  the bicep on  a metasteroid freak  and whooshed up
 into my throat. "No, molar, say it ain't so. . . . "  


 "Gee, Dez, I'm sorry. . . . "  


 I  was in  deep gurry  now all  right. I  could see  it clear  as M31  in the
 hubblescope. Fish entrails up to the nose.  


 Chuckie was Turbo's  sleeve. Turbo was  headman of the  Body Artists. The  Body
 Artists were the prime set in Televison  City. I was as the dirt between  their
 perpetually bare toes.  


 I pushed back my seat. The Slak  Shak was too hot now. Everbody knew  I floated
 there.  


 "Casio, I feel like a walk. Wanna come?"  


 "Yeah, sure."  

 T Street—the big north-south boulevard wide as old Park Ave that was Television
 City's  main crawl  (it ran  from 59th  all the  way to  72nd)—was packed  with
 citizens and greenies, morphs and gullas, all looking for the heart of Saturday
 night, just like the  old song by that  growly chigger has it.  The sparkle and
 glitter was all turned up to eleven, but TeeVeeCee looked kinda old to me  that
 night, underneath its amber-red-green-blue neo-neon maquillage. The whole  mini
 city on the banks of the Hudson was thirty years old now, after all, and though
 that was nothing compared to the rest of Nuevo York, it was starting to get on.
 I tried to imagine being  nearly twice as old as  I was now and figured  I'd be
 kinda creaky myself by then.  

 All the scrawls  laid down by  the sets on  any and every  blank surface didn't
 help the city's looks any either. Fast as  
 
 the  cleanup crews  sprayed the  paint-eating bugs  on the  graffiti, the  sets
 nozzled more. These were just a few that Casio and I passed:  

 PUT A  CRICK IN  YOUR DICK.  STROBE YOUR  LOBES. BOOT  IT OR  SHOOT IT. HOLLOW?
 SWALLOW. FOLLOW. SIN, ASP! SAID THE SYNAPSE. MATCH IT, BATCH IT, LATCH IT. BEAT
 THE BARRIER! SNAP THE GAP! AXE YOUR AXONS. KEEP YOUR RECEPTORS FILLED.  

 "Where we going, Dez?" asked Casio, snapping off one of his jelly-bracelets for
 me to munch on.  

 "Oh, noplace special," I said around a mouthful of sweat-metabolizing  symbiote
 that tasted like strawberries. "We'll just wander around a bit and see what  we
 can see."  

 All the time I was wondering if I even dared to go home to my scat, if I'd find
 Turbo and his  set waiting there  for me, with  a word or  two to say  about me
 talking so big about his sleeve.  

 Well, we soon came  upon a guy with  his car pulled over  to the curb with  the
 hood up. He  was poking at  the ceramic fuel-cell  with a screwdriver,  like he
 hoped to fix it that way.  

 "That's  a  hundred-thirty-two  horsepower Malaysian  model,  ain't  it?" asked
 Casio.  
 
 "Yeah," the guy said morosely.  

 "I heard they're all worth bugshit."  

 The guy got mad  then and started waving  the screwdriver at us.  "Get the hell
 out of here, you nosey punks!"  

 Casio slid a gold jelly-bracelet off his  arm, tossed it at the guy, and  said,
 "Run!"  

 We ran.  

 Around a corner, we stopped, panting.  

 "What was it?" I said.  

 "Nothing too nasty. Just rotten eggs and superstik."  

 We fell down laughing.  

 When we were  walking again, we  tried following a  couple of gullas.  We could
 tell by their  government-issue suits that  they were fresh  out of one  of the
 floating miclocean relocation camps, and we were hoping to diddle them for some
 eft. But they talked so funny that we didn't even know how to seam them.  

 "We go jeepney now up favela way?"  

 "No, mon, first me wan' some ramen."  

 "How fix?"  

 "We loop."  

 "And be zeks? Don' vex me, dumgulla. You talkin' like a manga now, mon."  

 After that we tailed a fattie for a while. We couldn't make up our minds if  it
 was a male or female or what. It was dressed in enough billowing silk to outfit
 a parachute  club and  walked with  an asexual  waddle. It  went into the fancy
 helmsley at 65th, to meet its client no doubt.  

 "I hate those fatties," said Casio.  "Why would anyone want to weigh  more than
 what's healthy, if they don't have to?"  
 
 ''Why would anyone keep his stupid zits if he didn't have to?"  

 Casio looked hurt.  "That's different, Dez.  You know I  just forget my  cream.
 It's not like I wanna."  

 I felt  bad for  hurtin' Casio  then. Here  he was,  my only  proxy, keeping me
 company while I tried to  straighten out in my head  how I was gonna get  trump
 with Turbo and his set, and I had to go and insult him.  

 I put an arm around his shoulders.  "Sorry, molar. Listen, just wipe it like  I
 never said it, and let's have us a good time. You got any eft?"  

 "A little . . . "  

 "Well, let's spend it! The fluid eft gathers no taxes, es verdad? Should we hit
 Club GaAs?"  

 Casio brightened. "Yeah! The Nerveless are playing tonight. Maybe Ginko'll  let
 me sit in."  

 "Sounds trump. Let's go."  

 Overhead the wetworkers—both private and government dirty-harrys—cruised by  on
 their lifters,  the jetfans  blowing hot  on our  necks, even  from their  high
 altitude. Standing in the center  of their flying cages, gloved  mitts gripping
 their joystix, with their owleyes on, they roved TeeVeeCee, alert for signs  of
 rumble, bumble, or stumble, whereupon they would swoop down and chill the  heat
 with tingly shockers or even flashlights, should the sitspecs dictate.  

 Club GaAs occupied a fraction of the million square feet of empty building that
 had once housed one of the old television networks that had given TeeVeeCee its
 name. Ever since the free networks had been absorbed into the metamed-  
 
 ium, the building  had gone begging  for tenants. Technically  speaking, it was
 still tenantless, since Club GaAs was squatting there illegally.  

 At the door we paid the cover to a surly anabolic hulkster and went inside.  

 Club GaAs had imipolex  walls that writhed just  like Casio's vest, dancing  in
 random biomorphic ripples  and tendrils. On  the stage the  Nerveless were just
 setting up, it being still early, only around eight. I had only met Ginko once,
 but I recognized him from his green skin and leafy hair. Casio went onstage  to
 talk to him, and I sat down at a table near one wall and ordered a cheer-beer.  

 Casio rejoined me. "Ginko says I can handle the megabops."  

 The cheer-beer had me relaxing so  I had almost forgotten my problems.  "That's
 trump, proxy. Listen, have a cheer-beer—it's your eft."  

 Casio sat and  we talked a  while about the  good old days,  when we were still
 kids in highschool, taking our  daily rations of mnemotropins like  good little
 drudges.  

 "You remember at graduation, when  somebody spiked the refreshments with  funky
 monkey?"  

 "Yeah.  I never  seen so  many adults  acting like  apes before  or since.  Miz
 Spencer up on the girders—! "  

 "Boy, we were so young then."  

 "I was even younger  than you, Dez. I  was eleven and you  were already twelve,
 remember?"  

 "Yeah, but them days are wiped now, Casio. We're adults ourselves now, with big
 adult probs." All my troubles  
 
 flooded back to me like ocean waves on the Big-One-revised California shoreline
 as I said this konky bit of wisdom.  

 Casio was sympathetic, I could fax that much, but he didn't have the answers to
 my probs any more than I did. So  he just stood and said, "Well, Dez, I  got to
 go play now." He took a few steps away from the table and then was snapped back
 to his seat like he had a rubber band strung to his ass.  

 "Hold on a millie," I said. "The wall has fused with your vest." I took out  my
 little utility flashlight  and lasered the  wall pseudopod that  had mated with
 Casio's clothing.  

 "Thanks, proxy," he said, and then was off.  

 I sat there nursing  the dregs of my  cheer-beer while the Nerveless  tuned up.
 When  the  rickracks were  spinning  fast and  the  megabops were  humming  and
 everyone had  their percussion  suits on,  they jumped  into an  original comp,
 "Efferent Ellie."  

 Forty-five minutes later, after  two more cheer-beers thoughtfully  provided by
 the management to the grateful friend of the band, I was really on the downlink
 with Casio and the Nerveless. I  felt their music surging through me  like some
 sonic trope. Tapping my foot, wangle-dangling my head like some myelin-stripped
 spaz, I was  so totally downloading  that I didn't  even see Turbo  and his set
 slope on into Club GaAs and surround me.  

 When the current song ended and I looked up, there they all were: Turbo and his
 main sleeve, Chuckie, who  had her arm around  his waist; Jeeter, Hake,  Pablo,
 Mona, Val, Ziggy, Pepper, Gates, Zane, and a bunch of others I didn't know.  
 
 "Hah-hah-hah-how's it climbing, molars?" I said.  

 They were all as quiet and stone-faced as the holo of a cheap Turing Level  One
 Al with its mimesis-circuits  out of whack. As  for me, I could  do nothing but
 stare.  

 The Body Artists were all naked save for spandex thongs, he's and she's  alike,
 the better to  insure proper extero-  and interoceptor input.  Their skins were
 maculated with a blotchy tan giraffe pattern. The definition of every muscle on
 their trim bods was like Gray's Anatomy come to life.  

 Now, to me, there were no two  ways about it: the Body Artists were  simply the
 most trump  set in  TeeVeeCee. The  swiftest; nastiest,  downloadingest pack of
 lobe-strobers ever  to walk  a wire  or scale  a pole.  Who else were you gonna
 compare 'em to?  The Vectors? A  bunch of wussies  dreaming their days  away in
 mathspace. (I didn't buy their  propaganda about being able to  disappear along
 the  fourth dimension  either.) The  Hardz 'n'  Wetz? Nothing  but crazy  meat
 grinders,  the negative  image of  their rivals,  the Eunuchs.  The Less'  Than
 Zeroes? I don't call pissing your pants satori, like they do. The Thumbsuckers?
 Who wants to be a baby forever?  The Boardmen? I can't see cutting yourself  up
 and headbanging just to prove you feel no pain. The Annies? A horde of  walking
 skeletons. The Naked Apes? After  seeing our whole faculty under  the influence
 of funky-monkey that day, I had never latched onto that trip. The Young  Jungs?
 Who wants to spend his whole life diving into the racemind?  

 No, the only ones who might just give the Body Artists a run for their eft were
 the Adonises or the  Sapphos, but they had  some obvious kinks that  blocked my
 receptors.  
 
 So you'll understand how I could  feel—even as the center of their  threatening
 stares—a kind of thrill at being in the presence of the assembled Body Artists.
 If only they had come to ask me  to join them, instead of, as was so  apparent,
 being here with the clear intention of wanting to cut my nuts off—  

 The  Nerveless  started  another song.  Casio  was  too busy  to  see  what was
 happening with me. Not that he coulda done much anyhow. Turbo sat liquidly down
 across from me, pulling Chuckie down onto his lap.  

 "So, Dez," he said, cool as superwire, "I hear you are Chuckie's secret mojoman
 now."  

 "No, no way,  Turbo, the parity  bits got switched  on that message  all right.
 There ain't not truth to it, no sir, no way."  

 "Oh, I see, molar," said Turbo, deliberately twisting things around tighter'n a
 double-helix.  "My sleeve  Chuckie ain't  trump enough  for a  molar who's  as
 needlestrength as you."  

 I raised my eyes  and caught Chuckie sizing  me up with high  indifference. Her
 looks made me feel like I was trying to swallow an avocado pit.  

 Charlotte  Thach  was a  supertrump  Cambodian-Hawaiian chica  whose  folks had
 emigrated to TeeVeeCee when the Japs  kicked everyone outa the ex-state in  the
 process of forming the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperative. Her eyes were  green
 as diskdrive lights, her sweet little tits had nipples the color of strong tea.  

 After she  was done  sizing me  up, she  held out  one beautiful  hand as if to
 admire her nails or something. Then,  
 
 without moving a single muscle that I could see, she audibly popped each  joint
 in her fingers in sequence. I could hear it clear above the music.  

 I gulped  down that  slimy pit  and spoke.  "No, Turbo,  she's trump enough for
 anyone."  

 Turbo leaned closer  across Chuckie. "Ah,  but that's the  prob, molar, Chuckie
 don't do it with just anyone. In fact, none of the Artists do. Why, if you were
 to try to ride her,  she'd likely snap your cock  off. It's Body to Body  only,
 you latch?"  

 "Yeah, sure, I latch."  

 Turbo straightened up.  "Now, the question  is, what we  gonna do with  someone
 whose head got so  big he thought he  could tell everyone he  was bumpin' pubes
 With a Body Artist?"  

 "No disinfo, Turbo, I didn't mean nothin' by it."  

 "Shut up, I got to think."  

 While he was thinking, Turbo made all the muscles in his torso move around like
 snakes under his skin.  

 After letting  me sweat  toxins for  a while,  Turbo said,  "I suppose it would
 satisfy the set's honor  if we were to  bring you up to  the top of the  George
 Washington Bridge and toss you off—"  

 "Oh, holy  radwaste, Turbo,  my molar,  my proxy,  I really  don't think that's
 necessary—"  

 Turbo held up his hand. "But the ecoharrys might arrest us for dumping shit  in
 the river!"  

 All the Body Artists had a good laugh at that. I tried to join in, but all that
 came out was a sound like "ekk-ekk-ekk."  
 
 "On the other hand," said Turbo, rotating his upraised hand and forearm  around
 a full two-seventy degrees, "if you were to become a Body Artist, then we could
 let it be known that you were under consideration all along, even when you were
 making your konky boasts."  

 "Oh, Turbo, yeah, yeah, you don't know how much—"  

 Turbo shot to  his feet then,  launching Chuckie into  a series of  spontaneous
 cartwheels all the way across the club.  

 "Jeeter, Hake!  You're in  charge of  escorting the  pledge. Everyone!  Back to
 nets!"  

 We blew out of Club GaAs like  atmosphere out of a split-open o'neill. My  head
 was spinning around like  a Polish space station.  I was running with  the Body
 Artists! It was something I could hardly believe. Even though I had no hint  of
 where  they  were taking  me;  even though  they  might be  setting  me up  for
 something that  would wipe  me out  flatter than  my eft-balance—I felt totally
 frictionless. The whole city looked like a place out of a fantasy or  stiffener
 holo to  me, Middle  Earth or  Debbie Does  Mars. The  air was  cool as an AI's
 paraneurons on my bare arms.  

 We headed  west, toward  the riverside  park. After  a while  I started  to lag
 behind the rest. Without a word, Jeeter and Hake picked me up under my arms and
 continued running with me.  

 We entered among the trees and  continued down empty paths, under dirty  sodium
 lights. I  could smell  the Hudson  off to  my right.  A dirty-harry  buzzed by
 overhead but didn't stop to bother us.  
 
 Under a busted light we halted in darkness. Nobody was breathing heavy but  me,
 and I had been carried the last half mile. Hake and Jeeter placed me down on my
 own feet.  

 Someone bent down and  tugged open a metal  hatch with a snapped  hasp set into
 the walk. The Body  Artists descended one by  one. Nervous as a  kid taking his
 first trope, I went down too, sandwiched between Hake and Jeeter.  

 Televison City  occupied a  hundred acres  of land  which had originally sloped
 down to the Hudson.  The eastern half of  TeeVeeCee was built on  solid ground;
 the western half  stood on a  huge platform elevated  above the Conrail  maglev
 trains.  

 Fifteen rungs down, I was staring up at the underside of TeeVeeCee by the light
 of a few caged safety bulbs, a  rusty constellation of rivets in a flaky  steel
 sky.  

 The ladder terminated at an I-beam wide as my palm. I stepped gingerly off, but
 still held onto the ladder. I looked down.  

 A hundred feet below, a lit-up  train shot silently by at a  hundred-and-eighty
 mph.  

 I started back up the ladder.  

 "Where to, molar?" asked Hake above me.  

 "Uh, straight ahead, I guess."  

 I  stepped  back onto  the  girder, took  two  wobbly Thumbsucker  steps,  then
 carefully lowered myself until I could wrap my arms and legs around the beam.  

 Hake and Jeeter  unpeeled me. Since  they had to  go single file,  they trotted
 along carrying me like a trussed pig. I kept my eyes closed and prayed.  
 
 I felt them stop. Then they were swinging me like a sack. At the extreme of one
 swing, they let me go.  

 Hurtling through the musty air, I wondered how long it would take me to hit the
 ground or a passing  train and what it  would feel like. I  wouldn'ta minded so
 much being a Boardman just then.  

 It  was only  a few  feet to  the net.  When I  hit, it  shot me  up a  bit. I
 oscillated a few times  until my recoil was  absorbed. Only then did  I open my
 eyes.  

 The Body Artists were standing or lounging around on the woven mesh of graphite
 cables  with  perfect  balance.  Turbo had  this  radwaste-eating  grin  on his
 handsome face.  

 "Welcome to the nets,  Mister Pledge. You didn't  do so bad. I  seen molars who
 fainted and fell off  the ladder when they  first come out below.  Maybe you'll
 make it through tonight after all. C'mon now, follow us."  

 The Body Artists set off along the nets. Somehow they managed to coordinate and
 compensate for all the dozens of different impulses traveling along the mesh so
 that they  knew just  how to  step and  not lose  their balance.  They rode the
 wavefronts of each other's motions like some kinda aerial surfers.  

 Me? I managed to crawl along, mostly on all fours.  

 We reached a platform scabbed onto  one of the immense pillars that  upheld the
 city. There the Body Artists had their lab, for batching their black meds.  

 I hadn't known that  Ziggy was the Artists'  watson. But once I  saw him moving
 among the chromo-cookers  and amino-linkers like  a fish in  soup, if you  know
 what I mean, it  
 
 was  clear as  hubble that  he was  the biobrujo  responsible for  stoking the
 Artists' neural fires.  

 While Ziggy worked  I had to  watch Turbo and  Chuckie making out.  I knew they
 were doing it just to blow grit through my scramjets, so I tried not to let  it
 bother me. Even when Chuckie—Well, never  mind exactly what she did, except  to
 say I never realized it was humanly possible to get into that position.  

 Ziggy finally came over with a cup full of uncut bugjuice.  

 "Latch  onto this,  my molar,"  he said  with crickly  craftsmanly pride,  "and
 you'll know a little more about what it means to call yourself a B-Artist."  

 I knew I didn't want to taste the undiluted juice, so I chugged it as fast as I
 could. Even the aftertaste nearly made me retch.  

 Half an hour later, I could feel the change.  

 I stood up and walked out onto the net. Turbo and the others started yanking it
 up and down.  

 I didn't lose my balance. Even when I went to one foot. Then I did a handstand.  

 "Okay, molar," said Turbo sarcastically,  "don't think you're so trump.  All we
 gave you  is heightened  'ception, extero,  intero, and  proprio. Plus a little
 myofibril booster and something to damp  your fatigue poisons. And it's all  as
 temporary as a whore's kisses. So, let's get' down to it."  

 Turbo set off back along the nets, and I followed.  

 "No one else?" I asked.  
 
 ''No, Dez, just us two good proxies."  

 We retraced  out way  to the  surface. Walking  along the  I-beam under  my own
 power, I felt like king of the world.  

 Once again we raced through the  streets of Televison City. This time  I easily
 kept pace with Turbo. But maybe, I  thought, he was letting me, trying to  lull
 me into a false sense of security. I  made up my mind to go a little  slower in
 all this—if I could.  

 At last we stood at the southern border of T-City. Before us reared the tallest
 building in all  of old Nuevo  York, what used  to be old  man Trump's very HQ,
 before he  was elected  president and  got sliced  and diced  like he  did. One
 hundred and  fifty stories  worth of  glass and  ferrocrete, full  of setbacks,
 crenellations, and ledges.  

 "Now we're going for a little climb," Turbo said.  

 "You got to be yanking my rods, molar. It's too smooth."  

 "Nope, it's not.  That's the good  thing about these  old postmodern buildings.
 They got the flash and filigree that make for decent handholds."  

 Then he  shimmied up  a drainpipe  that led  to the  second floor faster than I
 could follow.  

 But follow I did, my molars, believe me. I kicked off my shoes and zipped right
 after him.  No disinfo,  I was  scared, but  I was  also mad  and ecstatic  and
 floating in my own microgravity.  

 The first fifty stories were frictionless.  I kept up with Turbo, matching  him
 hold for hold. When he smiled, I even smiled back.  
 
 Little did I know that he was teasing me.  

 A third of the way up we stopped  to rest on a wide ledge. I didn't  look down,
 since I knew  that even with  my new perfect  balance the sight  of where I was
 would be sure to put grit in my jets.  

 We peered in through the lighted window behind us and saw a cleaning robot busy
 vacuuming the rugs. We banged on the  glass, but couldn't get it to notice  us.
 Then we started up again.  

 At the halfway  mark Turbo started  showing off. While  I was slowing  down, he
 seemed to have more energy than ever.  In the time I took to ascend  one story,
 he squirreled all around me, making faces, and busting my chops.  

 "You're gonna fall  now, Dez. I  got you up  here right where  I want you.  You
 ain't never  gonna get  to lay  a finger  on Chuckle,  you latch? When you hit,
 there ain't gonna be anything left of you bigger'n a molecule."  

 And suchlike.  I succeeded  in ignoring  it until  he said,  "Gee, that Ziggy's
 getting kinda forgetful lately.  Ain't been taking his  mnemos. I wonder if  he
 remembered to make  sure your dose  had the right  duration? Be a  shame if you
 maxxed out right now."  

 "You wouldn't do  that—" I said  and instinctively looked  over my shoulder  to
 confront Turbo.  

 He was  beneath me,  hanging by  his toes  from a  ledge, head  directed at the
 ground.  

 I saw the ground.  

 Televison  City was  all spread  out, looking  like a  one-to-one-hundred-scale
 model in some holo studio somewhere.  
 
 I froze. I heard one of my fingernails crack right in half.  

 "Whatsamatter, Dez? You lost it yet, or what?"  

 It was the konky tone of Turbo's voice that unfroze me. I wasn't gonna fall and
 hear his toxic laugh all the long stories down.  

 "Race you the rest of the way," I said.  

 He changed a little then. "No need, proxy, just take it one hold at a time."  

 So I did.  

 For seventy-five more stories.  

 The top of the  building boasted a spire  surrounded on four sides  by a little
 railed off platform whose total area was 'bout as big as a bathroom carpet.  

 I climbed unsteadily over the railing  and sat down, dangling my legs  over the
 side. I could already  feel the changes inside  me, so I wasn't  surprised when
 Turbo said, "It's worn off for real now, Dez. I wouldn't try going down the way
 we came up, if I was you.  Anyway, the harrys should be here soon.  The stretch
 for something like this is only a year with good behavior. Look us up when  you
 get out."  

 Then he went down, headfirst, waggling his butt at me.  

 So, like I asked you before.  

 Now that I ain't no Dudley Dendrite anymore, how the fuck am I gonna get down?  
 
 Little Worker  

 Little Worker came awake  instantly. Lying curled on  the red-and-black-figured
 carpet before Mister  Michael's bedroom door,  she stretched her  limbs beneath
 her plain beige sleeveless shift, then stood on bare feet. Mister Michael,  she
 could sense,  was still  asleep. Mister  Michael deserved  to sleep, for Mister
 Michael worked hard. Little Worker worked hard too, but she never slept late in
 the mornings, for there was too much to be done. (If Mister Michael stayed  put
 in his office today, Little Worker would nap at his feet.) But in the mornings,
 Little Worker always awoke before Mister Michael. She always would. It was  her
 way.  

 Little  Worker  appeared unwontedly  reluctant  to leave  her  nightly station.
 Something, this  morning, did  not smell  right. She  sniffed the air intently,
 nostrils twitching. The troublesome odor was nothing she could identify. It was
 new. This was not  necessarily bad, but might  be. The new smell  emanated from
 behind Mister Michael's door.  It was not a  dangerous smell, so Little  Worker
 could not bring herself to knock or otherwise disturb Mister Michael. He  would
 be up and about soon enough, for Mister Michael had a busy  
 
 schedule. Perhaps then the source of  the new smell would be revealed.  Perhaps
 not.  In either  case, Mister  Michael would  instruct her  about anything  she
 needed to know.  

 Little Worker tucked  strands of her  moderate-length, stiff brown  hair behind
 her ears. She brushed the wrinkles  out of her shift. They disappeared  swiftly
 from the dull  utilitarian fabric. She  curried the short  fur on her  face and
 licked beneath her arms.  Her morning grooming completed,  she set out for  the
 kitchen.  

 First Little Worker  had to go  down a long  hall. The long  hall had a  veined
 marble floor, down the  center of which ran  the red and black  carpet with its
 oriental design. The long hall had large mullioned windows in its stone  walls.
 Some of these windows had panes  of stained glass. Through the eastern  windows
 came bright winter sunlight. When it passed through the colored panes, it  made
 lozenges of various  hues on the  carpet. Little Worker  admired these dapples,
 for they reminded her of dabs of  jelly on toast. Little Worker liked jelly  on
 toast. She would have  some this morning. She  usually had some every  morning,
 except when she took an egg to add glossiness to her coat. Little Worker,  with
 the aid of the  food-center, could cook whatever  she wanted for herself.  This
 was one of her privileges. Mister Michael himself had said, when first she came
 to live here, "Little Worker, you may order the food-center to prepare whatever
 you want for yourself."  This had made her  proud. In the Training  School, she
 had  had to  eat whatever  the trainers  set out  for her.  But Mister  Michael
 trusted her.  

 The next door down the long hall from Mister Michael's belonged to the  bedroom
 of Mister Michael's wife. Little  
 
 Worker lifted  her nose  as she  came abreast  of the  door, intent  on passing
 without  stopping. However,  noises from  beyond the  door made  her stop.  The
 noises were thrashings  and moanings and  grunts. Little Worker  suspected what
 the noises were, but curiosity impelled her to look anyway.  

 The handle  of the  door was  shaped like  a thick  curled gold leaf. Above the
 handle was a security keypad. Below was an old-fashioned keyhole. Little Worker
 put one big hazel eye to the hole.  

 It was as Little Worker had  suspected. Mister Michael's naked wife was  draped
 bellydown over a green plush hassock, being covered by her latest andromorph, a
 scion of the Bull line. Little  Worker could smell mixed male and  female sweat
 and a sexual musk.  

 The sight disturbed Little  Worker. Mister Michael's wife  was not the kind  of
 wife he deserved. Little Worker ceased  her spying and continued on toward  the
 kitchen.  

 At the end of the  long hall was a curving  flight of wide marble stairs.  Here
 the runner ended. The  marble was cold beneath  Little Worker's feet. She  went
 down the stairs quickly.  

 On the ground floor, Little Worker  first crossed a broad reception hall  along
 the walls of which were ranged busts on plinths, potted plants, and gold-framed
 paintings.  She passed  through a  huge salon  used for  formal affairs,  then
 through Mister Michael's study, with its  big walnut desk and shelves of  books
 and  wall-sized  plasma screen.  Several  more chambers  intervened  before the
 kitchen, but finally Little Worker reached that chrome and tile room.  
 
 Most mornings, as now,  the large kitchen was  empty. On the mornings  of those
 days when there were to be  state dinners, the kitchen was bustling  early with
 hired chefs,  who prepared  the more  complex dishes  the food-center could not
 handle.  Little  Worker disliked  such  interruptions of  her  normal schedule.
 However, this was not such a morning. The kitchen was empty.  

 Little Worker advanced to the food-center.  

 "Food-center, prepare me toast with jelly," she said.  

 "There is no more bread," replied the food-center.  

 No more bread.  Little Worker was  disconcerted. She had  had her heart  set on
 toast and jelly.  What could have  happened to the  supply of bread?  Yesterday
 there had been plenty.  

 "What has happened to the bread?" asked Little Worker.  

 "Last night Mister  Michael's wife fed  it all to  the Bull andromorph.  He ate
 three loaves. There were only three loaves. Thus there are no more."  

 Mister Michael's wife had fed all of Little Worker's toast to her Bull. It  was
 the fault of  Mister Michael's wife  that there was  no toast this  morning for
 Little Worker.  

 "The bakery  delivery occurs  at ten  o'clock this  morning," offered  the food
 center helpfully.  

 "I will be gone with Mister Michael by then. I will not be home at ten o'clock.
 I must eat something different." Little Worker paused to reflect. "I will  have
 hot cereal with a spoon of jelly on it."  
 
 "There is no jelly. The Bull ate that also. With peanut butter."  

 Little Worker tensed her fingers reflexively. Her morning, disturbed already by
 the new odor coming from Mister Michael's bedroom, was not getting better.  The
 change in routine  upset her. It  felt like a  morning when chefs  came. But no
 chefs were here.  

 "I will have an egg then," said Little Worker.  

 "There are eggs," said the food-center.  

 "There is no jelly for an egg?" hopefully asked Little Worker one last time.  

 "There is no jelly even for an egg."  

 "Then I will have an egg alone."  

 Little Worker sat at a table with  metal legs and white tile top. When  her egg
 came she ate it, licking the plate to get all the yolk. It would serve to  make
 her fur glossy. But it did not taste as good as jelly.  

 When she was done, Little Worker  ordered the food-center to prepare and  serve
 breakfast for Mister Michael  and his wife in  the south dining room.  Then she
 walked through halls and  storage rooms until she  arrived at the south  dining
 room.  

 Mister Michael was already there, seated  at one end of a long  polished table,
 reading a newspaper and sipping coffee.  

 "Good morning, Mister Michael," said Little Worker.  

 "Morning," said Mister Michael somewhat gruffly.  

 Little  Worker  quivered  inside.  Mister Michael  did  not  seem  himself this
 morning. He worked too hard, thought  
 
 Little Worker. He had too much on his mind. The state demanded too much of him.
 He should be better to himself.  

 Little Worker coiled up  at Mister Michael's feet  beside the table, where  she
 could watch everything that happened.  

 Breakfast was  served. Mister  Michael's wife  did not  arrive on  time. Mister
 Michael began to eat anyway. Only when the fine Canadian ham and scrambled eggs
 and poached fish were cold did she come through the door.  

 Mister Michael's wife was dressed for shopping. She wore an ivory jacket  short
 in front but with long tails that hung  to her knees in back, over a pale  blue
 silk blouse and tulip-hemmed ivory skirt. She wore blue metallic stockings  and
 creamy high heels.  She smelled heavily  of expensive perfume,  which failed to
 conceal  entirely from  Little Worker's  keen nose  the aromas  of her  recent
 mating.  

 Sitting gingerly, as if sore, Mister Michael's wife picked idly at the food set
 before  her. Neither  she nor  Mister Michael  spoke for  some time.  Finally,
 though, setting down his paper,  which rustled loudly to Little  Worker's ears,
 Mister Michael  said, "There  are some  important people  coming up  today from
 Washington. They'll want to meet you."  

 "How very tedious. And what time would that be?"  

 Mister Michael seemed to be restraining his anger. "Around two."  

 "I'll try to be there."  

 Mister Michael's anger escaped.  "Try! You'd damn well  better be there. As  my
 wife, you have certain official responsibilities, just as I do."  

 "No one elected me to be the prime minister's wife."  
 
 "You elected yourself when  you married me. You  can't pretend you didn't.  You
 knew quite well that I  might end up as prime  minister someday. I told you  so
 from the outset. God,  what do I ask  of you, other than  to show up for  a few
 ceremonial occasions? Do you  imagine I've got it  any easier? It's not  a part
 time job, governing a whole bloody continent!"  

 "You wanted the job. I didn't."  

 Mister Michael folded  his hands, as  if afraid of  what they might  do. Little
 Worker's hands clenched in sympathy.  

 "Let's not argue, shall we? Please make  every effort to be at the Ministry  by
 two."  

 'I'll simply rush through the stores then."  

 "Good. I  appreciate it."  Mister Michael  looked down  at Little Worker. "It's
 time to go. Would you please get my briefcase? I left it by the bed."  

 Little  Worker quickly  gained her  feet, eager  to please.  "I will  get your
 briefcase. Where will you be?"  

 "Just inside the front door. Oh, have the car pull around also."  

 "I will have the car pull around," agreed Little Worker.  

 On  the  way to  the  garage, Little  Worker  considered the  argument  she had
 overheard. She reached  the same conclusion  she had arrived  at while standing
 before Mister Michael's  wife's bedroom door:  Mister Michael's wife  was not a
 good one for him.  

 In  the garage,  Little Worker  confronted the  sleek, low-slung  car. "Mister
 Michael wishes you to idle at the front entrance."  
 
 ''I will  exit the  garage, after  opening the  door. I  will proceed  down the
 drive, through  the gate,  after opening  that also,  and around  to the  front
 entrance. There I will await further orders."  

 "Good."  

 The car started its  ceramic engine and opened  the garage door. Little  Worker
 left it. She  took the back  stairs to the  second floor and  approached Mister
 Michael's bedroom from a  direction different than that  by which she had  gone
 earlier.  

 The door was ajar. Little Worker entered.  

 The room was not empty.  

 Lying languidly on the bed among the rumpled sheets was a naked gynomorph. When
 she heard Little Worker enter, she opened her eyes.  

 "Hello," said the gynomorph. "I am a hetaera, of the Lyrical line. Do you  wish
 to hear me sing?"  

 Little Worker was stunned. "No.  I do not wish to  hear you sing. What are  you
 doing here?"  

 "I am now owned by Mister Michael. He  brought me here. Do you wish to know  my
 pedigree?"  

 "No."  

 "I will recite it  anyway. I am comprised  of five species, with  three percent
 being human. My skeletal structure is avian, insuring a lightness and appealing
 fragility.  I weigh  only forty  kilos. My  musculature is  feline, my  skin a
 derivative of chamois. My brain  is based on that of  a mink. I have a  vaginal
 contractile index of ninety. My pheromones are tailored specifically to  arouse
 Mister Michael."  
 
 The gynomorph moved her legs and arms luxuriously and arched her back slightly,
 elevating her pubis. Little Worker stared furiously, her mind in turmoil.  

 "I am comprised of  twelve species, with a  full ten percent being  human," she
 finally countered.  

 "My measurements,  in centimeters,  are one  hundred, forty,  eighty. What  are
 yours?"  

 Little Worker looked down at her stocky, compact, and muscled form beneath  her
 shift. "I do not know my measurements," she said.  

 The gynomorph smiled, revealing delicate  pointed teeth. She ran a  tongue over
 her lips. Little Worker could hear it rasp.  

 "Well," said the hetaera, "I guess you don't know much, do you?"  

 "It seems not," said Little Worker.  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 Now they  were at  the office.  The office  was different  from home: different
 noises, different smells. There were no windows in Mister Michael's office,  no
 blots of  jelly-light on  the tan  carpet, into  which Little  Worker's garment
 nearly blended. At home, Little Worker could do pretty much as she pleased,  as
 long as  she was  there should  Mister Michael  need her.  At the office—and in
 other public places—she had to be more circumspect and diligent. Little  Worker
 was on duty here,  in a way that  was more intense than  behind the electrified
 fence and active sensors of the estate. Little Worker normally prided  
 
 herself on  her diligence.  (Once, one  of the  men at  the Training School had
 said: "Little Worker, you are  the most diligent companion I've  ever trained."
 The men of the school  had been nice, in their  stern way. But no one  was like
 Mister Michael.)  

 Today, however, Little Worker's mind was not on her work.  

 Mister Michael's first afternoon appointment  had been shown in. Little  Worker
 lay quietly  behind Mister  Michael's big  brown leather  chair with  the brass
 studs.  Mister Michael  was meeting  with the  people from  Washington. Little
 Worker paid  scant attention  to them.  They had  been cleared  by Security and
 smelled  harmless.  Little  Worker  couldn't even  see  the  visitors  from her
 vantage.  They  were  just  a  collection  of  mildly  annoying  voices,  which
 interfered with her contemplation of the new and disturbing events at home.  

 When Little Worker and  Mister Michael had gotten  into the car, Little  Worker
 had circumspectly sniffed Mister Michael to  see if any of the hetaera's  odors
 still clung to him. She was relieved to find that none did. Mister Michael must
 have washed. For a moment she  felt heartened. But as the car  accelerated down
 the front drive, picking up its entourage of armored outriders on cycles at the
 security station on  the periphery of  the estate, Little  Worker realized that
 her relief was wrong. Mister Michael  might smell normal, but his attitude  was
 disturbed. He was not his usual self.  

 Little Worker wished  she could somehow  make everything right  for poor Mister
 Michael, who  worked so  hard and  whose wife  was so  bad that  he had to seek
 relief in the arms of that disturbing gynomorph.  
 
 Little Worker would do anything to make Mister Michael happy.  

 The visitors continued  to talk. Little  Worker was hungry.  Mister Michael had
 worked straight  through their  regular lunch  hour. She  would have toast with
 jelly  for  her belated  midday  meal, the  first  chance she  got.  Surely the
 Ministry's kitchens would  be able to  supply some. Perhaps  she could convince
 the home food-center—which was rather stupid—not to dispense any more bread  or
 jelly to the Bull andromorph. It would be worth a try.  

 Little Worker was suddenly bored with her own problems, since no easy solutions
 presented themselves. She decided to listen to the conversation.  

 "—tell you that you can't ignore them," said a visitor. "The Sons of Dixie  may
 seem like just another fringe group to  you up here in Toronto, but back  home,
 they command a lot of sympathy—some of it from powerful folks."  

 The man had a funny way  of speaking. He sounded emotional. Mister  Michael, to
 the contrary, spoke calmly and in the proper way.  

 "I'm not proposing that we ignore them. All I said was that we cannot afford to
 cater to  extremist elements  in the  Union. The  whole political  structure is
 still too  fragile, too  new. Naturally,  for the  first decade  or so, there's
 bound to be a bit of confusion and uneasy integration, as people settle down to
 a new way of being governed. But  we've had quite a bit of experience  with our
 own separatist element over  in Quebec, and the  major lesson we've learned  is
 that one must be firm. In fact, I intended to sound out you gentlemen on  
 
 how your  constituency would  react to  a ban  on such  groups as  the Sons  of
 Dixie."  

 There was shocked silence for a  moment. Then one of the visitors  spoke. "Why,
 that's outrageous. It's—it's unconstitutional!"  

 "I'll  have  to  remind you  that  the  Union no  longer  functions  under that
 document. New times  call for new  measures. Unless you  can convince me  there
 would be  outright revolt,  I believe  I'm going  to propose  such a measure to
 Parliament. No group which advocates  the overthrow of the Union—by  violent or
 peaceful means—will be permitted to function."  

 Confused grumbles and mutters and chopped-off phrases issued from the visitors.
 Mister  Michael let  them babble  for a  moment, before  cutting through  their
 objections.  

 "Gentlemen, I'm  afraid you'll  have to  consider it  done. Let's  turn to more
 important matters. The Brazilians are pushing us on the boundary  negotiations.
 Do we want to let them north of Chiapas, or don't we?"  

 Little Worker tuned out the unimportant  talk. She was more concerned with  her
 delayed meal.  

 At last Mister Michael, consulting his  watch, said, "Well, enough of work.  We
 have a few  more days during  your stay to  discuss such things.  I believe you
 expressed a desire to meet my charming wife. She should be here any moment."  

 Everyone waited. Little Worker shifted positions  to ease a cramp in her  right
 haunch. Mister Michael's wife never arrived.  

 When  the  vistors had  been  shown out  with  many apologies,  Mister  Michael
 returned to his seat. He was silent for a  
 
 time. Then he banged his fist on the desk. "Something has to be done about that
 woman," he said. "Something has to be done."  

 Little Worker silently agreed.  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 One day not long after this time, Little Worker found herself home alone.  

 This was highly unusual, for she  was seldom separated from Mister Michael.  In
 public or private, Little Worker was always by his side. Even when he  traveled
 abroad, Little Worker went with him. (Little Worker had been to a lot of places
 with odd names, mostly other cities;  aside from a few curious smells  here and
 there, they all seemed  alike.) But today Mister  Michael was at the  doctor's,
 getting his anti-aging treatment. He had just started the treatments six months
 ago,  when they  became available.  The location  of the  doctor's clinic  was
 secret, even from Little  Worker. Mister Michael had  explained to her that  it
 was for her own protection, so that  no one could capture her and force  her to
 reveal where  the clinic  was. Little  Worker had  to smile  at the  thought of
 anyone capturing her. For one thing, no one ever paid any attention to her. Who
 would think she knew anything worth  knowing? Little Worker felt it would  have
 been all right for her to go  with Mister Michael, but he wouldn't hear  of it.
 It was just him and the car, and the car would have its short-term memory wiped
 clean after the trip.  
 
 As for Mister Michael's wife—Little Worker didn't know where she was and didn't
 really wonder. After  the trouble she  had caused, Little  Worker couldn't have
 cared what happened to her.  

 All that mattered was that for the first time in six months—and only the second
 time since she had become Mister Michael's companion—she was without him.  

 It made Little Worker very uneasy.  

 So Little Worker wandered through the big empty house, searching for  something
 to occupy her until Mister Michael should return.  

 Upstairs, a fleeting impression made her pause outside the door of the  bedroom
 of Mister Michael's wife. Aromas of Bull seeped out to her. Impulsively, Little
 Worker tried the golden handle of  the door. It turned without resistance,  and
 the door opened. Little Worker entered.  

 The Bull was lying on  a couch. He wore nothing  but a spandex thong that  held
 his large  genitals as  in a  pouch. He  was flipping  the pages  of a  colored
 picture book. When he heard Little Worker  enter, he laid the book on his  hard
 muscled stomach, pictures up. Little Worker could see that the pictures were of
 matings, illustrating various positions.  

 "Hello," said Bull. "Do you wish to have sex?"  

 "No, I do  not wish to  have sex. I  am Little Worker.  I do not  have sex with
 anyone. I wish to talk."  

 "I can talk."  

 "Very good. Would you like something to eat while we talk?"  

 "Peanut butter is good."  
 
 Little Worker went to an intercom. "Food-center?"  

 "Yes?"  

 "Please send a jar of peanut butter to the bedroom of Mister Michael's wife."  

 "With a spoon?"  

 Bull looked guilty, as if doing something wrong. "No spoon."  

 "No spoon," repeated Little Worker into the intercom.  

 When the peanut  butter arrived, Bull  greedily unscrewed the  cap and, dipping
 blunt fingers in, began to eat.  Little Worker watched with approval. She  knew
 very well how nice it was to feast on one's favorite food.  

 "Do you enjoy making sex with Mister Michael's wife?"  

 Bull looked confused. "What do  you mean? It is what  I do. Sex is sex.  Peanut
 butter is what I enjoy. Am I supposed to enjoy sex also?"  

 "I do not know. Perhaps you would enjoy it more with someone else."  

 "Someone else? I don't understand. You said  you did not wish to have sex  with
 me—"  

 Little Worker was suddenly inspired. "I am not the only one home."  

 "There is another in the house who desires sex?"  

 "Yes. Would you go to her?"  

 "I am not supposed to leave this room—"  

 "You are supposed to provide sex when asked."  

 "That is true. You have stated a fact which contradicts the order not to  leave
 the room. What am I to do?"  

 "I tell you that you may leave this room."  
 
 "Who are you again?"  

 "Little Worker, Mister Michael's companion."  

 "Then I suppose I must listen to you."  

 "Very good. Please come with me."  

 "Let me finish this peanut butter  first—there. Show me to the one  who desires
 to have sex."  

 Little Worker led Bull out into the corridor and up to Mister Michael's bedroom
 door, which was locked. However, Little Worker knew that code.  

 Inside, the Lyrical gynomorph was found taking a bath. Amid the welter of sudsy
 bubbles in  the large  sunken tub,  only her  delicate face  and one  knee were
 visible.  

 When the gynomorph  saw Bull, her  eyes widened and  her nostrils flared.  Bull
 developed an immediate erection.  

 "You are the one who wishes to have sex," said Bull.  

 "It is my nature."  

 "Mine also. Is it convenient to have sex in the bath?"  

 "Yes, it is."  

 Bull tore off his thong.  

 Little Worker left the pair of morphs together.  

 Mister Michael's wife  was the first  to return home,  five hours after  Little
 Worker  had  arranged the  illicit  introduction. Soon,  she  discovered Bull's
 absence and his current whereabouts. Little Worker watched from the corridor as
 Mister Michael's wife  attempted in vain  to separate the  two morphs, who  had
 ended up on the floor beside  the bed, soaking the carpet with  bathwater. Even
 striking at the pair with the sharp heel of her removed shoe failed to end  the
 coupling. Eventually, special han-  
 
 dlers had to be summoned. They too failed to halt the couple's pistoning.  

 "It's no use, miz, they've developed a destructive feedback loop. We'll have to
 take them in to be put down."  

 "Just do it, then!" shouted Mister Michael's wife. "It's disgusting!"  

 "Yes, miz."  

 The morphs were loaded still interlocked  and bucking into the back of  a truck
 and driven off.  

 Little Worker was secretly happy.  

 But within days,  Mister Michael's wife  had procured a  Stallion, while Mister
 Michael solaced himself with a Moon Moth.  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 Little  Worker came  awake instantly.  She had  not been  sleeping well  lately
 anyway. Her life had not been right since that long-ago morning of no toast and
 jelly. (One good thing about the Stallion was that he prefered oatmeal.) Mister
 Michael  was always  preoccupied and  distant. At  times Little  Worker almost
 resented  having  to  be in  constant  attendance  on him.  When  she  had such
 feelings, she became violently sick,  for the bad thoughts conflicted  with her
 lessons from the Training  School. Then she had  to remind herself that  Mister
 Michael and his welfare were all her reasons for being.  

 And now there was noise from downstairs.  

 There should  have been  no noise  from downstairs.  It was  the middle  of the
 night. Oh, yes, once there had been  
 
 noise in  the middle  of the  night from  downstairs. Guards  from the security
 booth had come in to  check on a possible breach  of the perimeter. But it  had
 been  only a  sensor failure.  Perhaps there  had been  another sensor  failure
 tonight. Little Worker would go see.  

 She got as far as the head of the marble stairs.  

 There she  confronted four  men. The  men wore  optical-distorting garments and
 infrared goggles. They  carried light-rifles and  had other weapons  slung from
 their hips. They were not security men.  

 ''Well,  well," said  one intruder.  "Lookee here.  It's one  o' them  fuckin'
 cultivars. I'm gonna blow its head off."  

 "Don't get cocky, son," said a man  who appeared to be their leader. "Just  cuz
 we took out the local  boys, don't mean we can  make all the noise we  want. No
 shooting unless I say so. Anyway, maybe  this thing can save us some time.  You
 there—where's the Pee Em sleep?"  

 Little Worker was  not afraid. She  carefully considered the  terrorists before
 replying.  

 "I will show you. But you must collect his wife too, or she might summon help."  

 One terrorist whistled softly. Another said, "Shee-it, these vars ain't got  no
 loyalty at-tall!"  

 "Okay, Beautiful, lead on."  

 Little Worker conducted the men to  the bedroom door behind which slept  Mister
 Michael's wife. 'They  slapped an illegal  unscrambler to the  lock. The device
 ran through all the possible combinations in three seconds, and they were in.  
 
 Mister Michael's wife lay  sleeping in the arms  of the Stallion. The  men made
 various apparently honest  grunts of shock,  which awoke Mister  Michael's wife
 and her bedmate.  

 Soon, she and the  Stallion had been herded  into Mister Michael's room,  where
 the Prime Minister was found in a similar situation with his new gynomorph.  

 One of the terrorists flicked on the lights, which seemed unnaturally bright at
 this forlorn  hour. The  men removed  their goggles  and shut  off their suits,
 which had begun to hurt Little Worker's eyes. She was grateful.  

 The two human captives  and their morphs stood  shivering in the center  of the
 room, the morphs naked and Mister Michael  and his wife in robes. Three of  the
 terrorists seemed calm, but one swiveled his gun nervously from side to side.  

 Little Worker  curled unconcernedly  at Mister  Michael's feet.  She knew  that
 Mister Michael was trying to catch her eye, but she ignored him.  

 "Who—who are you from?" at last demanded Mister Michael.  

 "Sons of Dixie,  folks. We felt  our point of  view wasn't reaching  the proper
 ears. So we're aimin' to change things. Ain't that right, boys?"  

 "You're—you're all wired on something."  

 "Mebbe  so, boss.  But that  don't prevent  us from  shooting straight.  'Zact
 opposite, in fact. So let's just follow orders, if you don't want to get hurt."  

 "What do you intend?" asked Mister Michael's wife.  
 
 "We're taking you 'n' the Pee Em on a little vacation. You'll go free when  the
 gummint listens to us and does somethin'."  

 A second terrorist spoke. "What about these friggin' vars?"  

 "Slag those sex toys," said the boss.  "Make it quiet though. But save the  one
 that helped us—it might come in handy again."  

 One of the men unholstered a pistol. Before anyone could react, it spat twice.  

 Gelatin capsules hit the morphs and burst, releasing lysis catalysts. In  under
 a minute, the two morphs were single mingled puddle of thick slime, atop  which
 for a minute floated the Moon Moth's tougher gemmed wings.  

 "Okay, folks—" began the leader.  

 Unnoticed, Little Worker  had slyly extended  an arm toward  the bare ankle  of
 Mister  Michael's wife.  Now, she  pricked it  deeply with  a newly  unsheathed
 razored claw.  

 Mister Michael's wife screamed.  

 The terrorist with unsteady nerves shot her through the eye.  

 Before the man's trigger-finger could relax, or any of the others could tighten
 theirs, Little Worker moved.  

 The part of her inheritance that was 30 percent wolverine took over.  

 The four  intruders soon  lay dead  with their  throats torn  out, soaking  the
 carpet with their blood where once the Bull and Lyrical had coupled.  

 Little Worker calmly licked the blood  from her lips. She really preferred  the
 taste of jelly. Wetting her palms repeat-  
 
 edly with her tongue,  she meticulously cleaned the  fur on her face.  When she
 was done, she turned toward Mister Michael.  

 He had collapsed across the body of his wife and lay sobbing.  

 Little Worker gently approached. She touched him tenderly. He jumped.  

 "Mister Michael," said Little Worker, "everything is all right now.  

 "You and I are alone."  
 
 Cockfight  

 I will allow as how  bein' a waste gipsy is  not the most settled way  of life,
 nor the easiest on the nerves. And  it's surely no career for a married  man—as
 Geraldine never tires of remindin' me.  

 But I ain't married. And I never listen to Geraldine.  

 Anyway, what's so rough about the life? First off, there's the constant travel.
 You got to learn  to keep as little  in your kit as  a blind Bhopal beggar  and
 generally stay as loose as a  Bull's balls. Your in-demand ass is  always bein'
 faxed around  the globe,  from one  hotspot to  another, whenever  some muni or
 fabrik or werke or abe gets to  feelin' a tad guilty and decides they're  gonna
 clean up a little piece of the  big, big mess they've all made durin'  the last
 filthy century.  

 Some of these places ain't so bad, in terms of relaxin' when the job's over for
 the day. When we  were in Milan, Italy,  for instance, reamin' out  their toxic
 sewers  where some  asshole way  back in  '86 dumped  twenty tons  of assorted
 pollutants and contaminated the whole city's water supply, I was able to do all
 kinds of  cultural things,  like visitin'  churches, and  seem' The Last Supper
 (considerably improved,  
 
 in my opinion, since they sprayed  the restorative bugs on it, despite  all the
 juicer  critics sayin'  it looked  digitally enhanced),  and checkin'  out the
 architecture of the Eye-tie chickenhouses. (One was in a real palace, and  some
 of the girls was supposed to be real princesses. It was just possible, too, cuz
 I remember that when Monaco was forbsed-over and trumped-up, there was a  whole
 generation that had to latch onto jobs real quick.)  

 Other times, you're  gonna find yourself  in the ass-end  of nowhere, some  god
 forsaken place  that makes  Robert Lee,  Texas (my  birthplace), look  like New
 Orleans at Mardi Gras. I have shivered at fifty below with no audience but dumb
 greasy  penguins,  cleanin' up  an  Antarctic oil  spill,  and baked  my  sandy
 britches at  one hundred  plus, decommissioning  a Mideast  CBW plant. And both
 times there  was nothin'  to do  after your  shift except  play flashcards, get
 wiped  on  needlestrength-one tropes,  and  spill atmosphere  with  your fellow
 gipsies. (Maybe summa the  talk might lead to  bumpin' uglies with one  of your
 fellow gips, if that's what fills your  receptors, but I try to stay away  from
 the gals  that work  in the  same line  as me,  they all  bein' as familiar and
 excitin' as your  elderly mustache-wearin' aunt  or some old-maid  grade-school
 trope doser.)  

 It's times like these that you tell spine-tinglin' kings and barkers about  all
 the shit you  have seen. Times  when the rems  was sleetin' around  you thicker
 than fleas on  a junkyard dog,  knockin' your chromos  loopier than those  of a
 two-headed  snake, and  you were  wrasslin' a  hot core.  Times when  you were
 standin' waist-deep in some stinkin' swamp full of PCB's  
 
 and dirty antique motor-oil and industrial solvents and God knows what-all, and
 you seen the snout of a  mutant Amazonian 'gator barrelin' toward you  faster'n
 the Orient Express, and you barely  had time to raise up your  force-multiplier
 for a single blow before the 'gator was on you.  

 But surprisin'ly enough, the net effect of all these after-hours horror stories
 is not to discourage us gips, but rather to make us feel special and important.
 After all, who else has  such a vital job as  us? Cleanin' up this poor  abused
 planet is—or should be—society's number-one priority, after all, and they ain't
 invented a robot yet that's smart enough  or tough enough to do what we  do, or
 take the shit  we endure. Imagine  some hunk of  heuristics pokin' its  sensors
 into  the hells  we gotta  enter, without  fryin' its  CCD's and  crispin' its
 boards. As for the splices, the union keeps them out. And as long as we get our
 regular search-and-repair silicrobe shots, we ain't gonna suffer any more weird
 diseases or terry-tomas than your average New Yorker or Nevadan.  

 Not that I do it mainly for glory or outa some sense of duty to humanity. Shit,
 no. I don't think you'll find one greenpeacer out of every thousand gipsies you
 talk to. I do it cuz the eft's  damn good, and so are the bennies, and  you can
 retire after fifteen  years. (My company,  Dallas Detox, Inc.,  was one of  the
 first to  pioneer that  particular policy,  and that's  one of  the reasons I'm
 purely proud  to work  for them.  Another's that  they are  one hunnerd percent
 American, and  there's not  many companies  left that  can make  such a  claim,
 'specially since they  fully phased the  Union in ten  years ago. Now,  I don't
 hold with them Sons of Dixie, or any of the other  
 
 constitutionalist groups, legal  or underground, but  there is something  about
 being ruled by Canucks  that just goes up  my craw a mile.  And if I got  to be
 ruled by them, leastwise I don't have to work for them. Yet.)  

 Anyway, it's a decent life, and sometimes an excitin' one, even if, as I  said,
 it's no career for a married man—as Geraldine never tires of remindin' me.  

 But I ain't married. And I never listen to Geraldine.  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 When Stack came into the dorm, wavin' the metamedium printout that bore the DDI
 logo  in its  upper corner  (a pair  of tweezers  nippin' a  double helix)  and
 smilin', we all knew we had gotten a good postin'. But we couldn'ta guessed how
 good till the crewboss spoke.  

 "Parliament has  voted, boys  and girls.  The Slikslak  is deadmeat,  and DDI's
 gonna pick the corpse."  

 Well,  the  roar  of  excitement that  greeted  this  announcement  rattled the
 biopolymer panels of the big Komfykwik Kottage we were livin' in, there on  the
 shores of Lake Baikal in Greater Free Mongolia, which stagnant pisshole we  had
 finally finished de-acidifyin' and  ecobalancin' and revivifyin' and  suchlike.
 We were  goin' home,  stateside, back  to the  good old  U.S. of  A. (and  I'll
 continue to call it that till my dyin' day, despite all laws to the  contrary).
 To actually get an assignment back in civilization—it was too good to be  true.
 No more funny  food or dark-skinned  women or comic  jabber which you  couldn't
 understand without takin' a pill. It was hog heaven for a poor gipsy.  
 
 I was emptyin' my locker and packin' my kit on my bunk when Geraldine sidled up
 to me all innocent-like. I pretended not to notice her.  

 "Lew," she said, in a voice as  sweet as corn syrup on candied yams,  "Stack is
 making up the  room-roster for Waxahachie.  We are going  to put up  at a local
 motel, and all the rooms're doubles. I don't suppose . . . "  

 I looked up at Geraldine then.  She was wearin' earrings shaped like  biohazard
 signs, her brown hair was cropped shorter'n mine, with a lopsided swatch across
 her brow, her face was naked of makeup, save for silicrobe tattoon  butterflies
 at the corners of her lips, and she barely filled out her size small  DDI-issue
 coverall. She reminded me of the kid sister I'd never had.  

 "Geraldine, I do appreciate the offer or suggestion or proposition or  whatever
 you wanna call it. But if I have told you once, I've told you a million  times.
 The chemistry is just not there. My probe don't match your target. Look, I like
 my women big, busty, and dumb, and you are neither."  

 The  tattoons  a  milli  beneath  Geraldine's  skin  fluttered  their  wings in
 agitation as the tears leaked like Israeli root-drips from her eyes.  

 "I—I could be dumb  for you, Lew, if  that was what you  really wanted. There's
 new tropes for that, I heard. Dumbdown,  MoreOn . . .  As for the  other stuff,
 well, it'd cost me plenty, but I'd do it for you. Honest, I would—"  

 I slapped my own forehead. "Holy shit, Geraldine, I ain't askin' you to change,
 get that  into your  head right  now. I  was only  outlinin', like, the kind of
 woman that jumps my  
 
 gaps. Listen."  I put  an arm  real uncle-like  around her  shoulder. "You're a
 helluva gipsy.  I never  seen anyone  better at  dredgin' a  bay or  sprayin' a
 forest full of pear-thrips than you. I  am proud to be your partner on  any job
 Stack gives us. But  that's where it ends,  you latch? Strictly a  professional
 relationship."  

 Geraldine had turned the taps off  by the time I finished my  speechifyin'. She
 knuckled her eyes, then extended one hand. We shook.  

 "Okay," she said, sadder'n a preacher who's seen the collection come up  empty,
 "if that's the way you want it. It's better than nothing, I guess."  

 We loosed our shake. "See you on the plane, Lew."  

 I went back to my  packin'. What a mixed-up gal.  I wondered why people had  to
 lose it when it came to their  emotions. Thank the Lord we at least  had tropes
 and strobers nowadays to help.  It was hard to imagine  how it had been just  a
 few decades ago, before the bioboys understood all there was to know about  the
 brain. Not  that you  should come  to rely  too much  on such aids, I believed.
 There  was something  to be  said for  a natural  life. Why,  look at  me, for
 instance.  Once I  had taken  all the  mnemotropins prescribed  in school  and
 learned what I  had to, did  I keep on  takin' 'em? Nope,  not me. As  my daddy
 always said, "Son, if we was meant to get our experience outa a pill, the  Good
 Lord woulda made 'em easier to swallow."  

 Before that  day was  over, we  were boardin'  a DDI  suborb, all  laughin' and
 jokin' at  the thought  of hittin'  the streets  of Dallas  once again.  We had
 barely settled into the  
 
 flight, however, when we were told to  buckle up once more for the landin'  and
 take our circadian-adjusters.  That's the problem  with these hour-long  jumps:
 they don't give you no time to feel like you really been travelin'. One  minute
 your ass  is in  Mongolia, the  next minute  you're home.  It does require some
 mental gymnastics.  

 We got hung  up in Customs  for a couple  of hours—longer'n the  flight itself.
 Turned out a couple of our gips had tried to make a little extracurricular  eft
 for themselves  by attemptin'  to smuggle  back Mongolian  bugs in their blood.
 Probably some kind  of ethnic-specific high  that they figured  would sell well
 among  the Dallas  community of  ex-pat Hong  Kongers. The  Customs probes  had
 unzipped the nongenotype codes faster'n spit dryin' on a griddle, and Stack had
 some fancy  dancin' to  do to  get off  with just  a bloodwash, by claimin' our
 innocent liddle boys was infected without their knowledge.  

 In the  terminal we  were crossin'  the atrium  when a  squad of IMF crick-cops
 bulled  through,  carryin'  their  chromo-cookers  and  packin'  splat-pistols,
 lookin' mean as eighty-year-old virgins with libido-locks, headin'  doubtlessly
 for some Fourth-World infection or infestation of some sort. We gave 'em a wide
 berth outa respect, as they are about the only ones with a dirtier job than  us
 gips. We  got it  relatively easy,  dealin' with  old well-known hazards, while
 they get all the new and superdangerous shit.  

 Outside DDI had a couple of Energenetix cowbellies with drivers waitin' for us.
 Most of the folks clambered right into the minivans (I made a point of  gettin'
 in a different one  
 
 from  Geraldine), but  Tino and  Drifter—the boys  who had  gotten pinched  by
 Customs—had to take a  piss real bad. Side  effect of the bloodwash.  They'd be
 leakier'n a sharecropper's cabin in a hurricane for the next day.  

 Stack called out, ''Don't waste the biomass, boys."  

 Tino  and  Drifter  grumbled,  but  they each  opened  up  a  fuel  intake cap,
 unvelcroed their flies, butted their groins up to the vans, and did their  best
 to top off the tanks.  

 Refastenin' their coveralls, the two climbed in rather sheepishly. Tamarind,  a
 bantam-weight black gal  sittin' next to  me, who always  managed to get  off a
 great zinger with perfect timin', said, "A lot different than the last  sockets
 I seen you boys plugging."  

 Everyone cut loose  with all the  laughter we'd been  holdin' in, roarin',  and
 howlin' fit  to burst.  Even Drifter  and Tino  eventually joined  in the gipsy
 camaraderie. Hell, 'we knew it could've  been any of us that'd got  caught, and
 we couldn't  hold the  wasted time  against them.  Come what  may, us gips hang
 tighter'n the plies of steelwood laminated with barnacle-grip.  

 Thus enjoyin' ourselves  in our loose  gipsy way, we  motored south out  of the
 mass of gleamin', glassy Dallas towers, headin' toward our latest assignment.  

 Waxahachie was about twenty-five miles south  of the city, so we had  roughly a
 forty-minute  drive.  (You  can't  push a  cowbelly  much  faster'n  sixty kph,
 especially when fully loaded.) Some gips settled in for a nap, which helps  the
 circadian-adjusters kick in, but I was too excited to be back home to sleep, so
 I levered open a window and let the familiar  
 
 dusty scents of a Texas summer waft in while I watched the scenery laze by.  

 We passed a small  orchard of peachtrees at  one point. The trees  were full of
 splices harvesting the force-grown fruit. The human overseer lay in the  shade,
 collar-box by his side,  within easy reach. To  me the splices looked  about 50
 percent chimp, 40 percent lemur, and 10 percent human. But I coulda been off by
 a few percent either way.  

 "I sure do dislike  those splices," said Tamarind.  "Thank heavens we got  laws
 keeping them down."  

 "Not to  mention the  collars and  diet-leashes," I  added. Then  I got a funny
 notion which I had to share. "Hey,  Tam, you ever feel weird about the  splices
 and your heritage and all? I mean,  like maybe they hold the same position  now
 that your folks did, a couple of centuries ago?"  

 "Shit  no. They  aren't human,  after all,  are they?  And that  makes all  the
 difference."  

 I could see her point. "Well, I guess in a way the splices make it possible for
 an old redneck  like me to  be buddies with  a gal of  color like yourself  and
 mostways not think twice about it."  

 Tam punched me in the shoulder. "You got it, Lew."  

 Shortly after that, we pulled into  the parking lot of the motel  Geraldine had
 mentioned to me  back at Lake  Baikal. There were  a lot of  other DDI vehicles
 there, all with the tweezered helix on their sides, and, as I later found  out,
 some other gipsies  were even bunkin'  in the quarters  that used to  house the
 Slikslak staff. I figured this for one of the biggest deconstruction jobs I had
 ever taken part in. With any luck,  
 
 it'd last a good long time, so I could continue to enjoy the comforts of a real
 bed, good American food,  and sweet Texas poontang,  a juicy sample of  which I
 was gonna make haste to lay my hands and stiff probe on as soon as possible.  

 In the  motel lobby,  Stack called  our names  off a  roster. "Shooter,  you're
 bunking with Benzene Bill in three-sixteen."  

 I swore. Benzene  Bill—so called for  the tattoon of  a spinning snake-in-mouth
 Kekule ring he sported off his massive right bicep—was a mean-natured  sumbitch
 I had never gotten along with.  Maybe I woulda been better off  with Geraldine,
 even if I had hadda fend off her constant feminine advances.  

 I  found Bill  in the  crowd, and  we headed  for our  room together  in tense
 silence.  

 Inside, Bill said,  "Lissen, Sludgehead, if  I want to  bring some nookie  back
 here, you'd better clear out on my say-so, whether it's for the whole night  or
 not."  

 I put my kit down and calmly faced him. "Bill, the facts is, you are as ugly as
 an ape 'n' hornytoad splice, and no  sleeve is gonna look twice at you,  lessen
 she's paid some big eft, or she's  maybe been dosed with a combo of  uglybuster
 and lubricine."  

 Bill grabbed the front of my coverall. "Why, you cocksucker—"  

 "Bill," I said all calm and gentle-like, "do you remember Marseilles?"  

 He snorted then, but he let me  go right fast. Retreating to his bed,  he began
 unpacking his kit,  and there was  no more said  about me clearin'  out for his
 improbable ruttin'.  
 
 It's good to get the terms straight in any relationship right from the start.  

 Well, the day was pretty shot by then, but we still had time for a tour of  the
 Slikslak itself, to get acquainted with the place we were gonna be demolishin'.  

 Everyone was  kinda disappointed  when we  arrived at  the old  Superconductin'
 Supercollider, which  had had  such a  checkered, on-again,  off-again history.
 Wasn't much of the SCSC aboveground.  It was all buried beneath the  prairie, a
 ring of deep-cooled magnets and beam-bouncers and particle-chambers some  fifty
 miles in  diameter, all  contaminated by  decades of  experimentation in a nice
 mild way that promised low rems. (I understand the lunar facility that replaced
 the Slikslak is  twice as big,  and cost half  as much to  build, what with the
 free vacuum and new superwire.)  

 When we got down below, though,  everyone's enthusiasm picked up. This job  was
 gonna be easy—hardly any exotics aside from liquid hydrogen—and the sheer  size
 of  the  place  meant  it  would  take  practically  forever.  What  a sugartit
 assignment!  

 Back at the motel, with dusk comin' down like silk sheets in a Paris  helmsley,
 we found that DDI had laid on a humongous Tex-Mex barbecue for our first night.
 As  I've  said  a  hundred  times—and  not  just  when  Stack  was  around   to
 overhear—they are swell employers with  a lot of class. Smellin'  the beefaloes
 and leanpigs  turnin' on  their spits,  holding a  cold cheer-beer  in my hand,
 watchin' the stars poppin' out one  by one like random pixels on  God's antique
 monochrome display, listenin' to the joyful chatter of my  
 
 fellow gips, contemplatin' the easy job ahead of me, I was as near to heaven as
 I have ever been on this mostly sad ol' earth.  

 And that peaceful feelin', so pure and unnatural, I reckon now, is what  should
 have alerted me to my comin' troubles.  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 It was the  first weekend after  we had started  the Slikslak job,  and we gips
 were ready to party.  Several days of bone-breakin'  labor, with nothin' to  do
 after  hours  except  raster  whatever  gaudy  gore'n'garters  plasma-com   the
 flatscreen was offerin' or play a hand of flashcards or metabolize some samogon
 at the dingy Waxahachie roadhouse known as Mustang Sally's (the lady owner wore
 a palomino's tail), had left us achin' for some release.  

 So a bunch of us—me, Geraldine, Tam, Tino, Spud, Geneva, IgE, even Benzene Bill
 and some others—signed  out a van  and made the  trip into Dallas,  lookin' for
 some Big Fun.  

 I was drivin'  and all my  actions felt effortless.  We had all  had a thorough
 tonin'-up performed  on us  by the  company cell-scrubber,  so all  my workweek
 aches and pains  were gone. My  skin was as  tingly as that  of a playpet  from
 Hedonics  Plus.  Beyond  the ultrapure  single-crystal  windshield,  the speedy
 nighttime scenery looked particularly hi-rez, with all the shadows dithered  to
 fractal depths. I was  confident tonight would rack  up some megadigits on  the
 Fun Readouts.  

 Once in Dallas, we headed straight for Deep Ellum, the prime pleasure  district
 of the  city. Parking  the van  and setting  its defenses,  we hit  the crowded
 sidewalks, walkin' with our  
 
 kickass gipsy style,  guys as if  we had a  barrel between our  legs, gals like
 they were slidin' along on a greased pole right at crotch height.  

 I  tell  you,  it  made  me  proud  as  the  ten-year-old  who  knocked  up the
 neighborhood  widow  to be  stridin'  through the  city  with my  fellow  gips,
 confident in our solidarity and fully aware of our so-ci-et-al importance.  

 Deep Ellum was thronged  with folks of every  stripe and pedigree enjoyin'  the
 false halogen day. There were  splices runnin' errands for their  owners. There
 were preteeny peptide-poppers four or  five cohorts down the genetic  line from
 my own,  streamin' free  'n' wild  with the  members of  their sets and posses,
 sportin' their fancy  Action Potential clothes.  There were gerrys  and gullas.
 There were NU cops carryin' flashlights and shockers to keep the peace  amongst
 the various factions, not to mention the local dirty-harrys. All in all, it was
 a highly stochastic and organic scene.  

 Well, we began hittin' the bars around eight, exposin' our receptors to various
 bands rangin' across the noise spectrum, from multipolar music to old-fashioned
 country-western picked out on a lone synthesizer, and meanwhile not  neglectin'
 to ingest all manner of delightful deliriants and insidious intoxicants.  

 Around midnight I seemed  to come back to  myself as if my  consciousness was a
 balloon on a tether light-years-long, which I had to oh-so-slowly reel in.  

 "Where are we?" I said to Tino.  

 "In Parts Unknown."  
 
 I gathered that was the  name of the bar where  we sat. It was a  smoky, noisy,
 jam-packed troglo kind  of place. On  its raw stone  walls hung neo-neon  signs
 that said stuff like REDRAW YOUR  MAP2 and WHAT'S YOUR AMPERAGE? The  bartender
 was a simian splice which hung by its tail from an aerial rail and mixed drinks
 with four human hands.  

 All  of a  sudden, like  storm waters  through an  arroyo, or  the opening  of
 petcocks on the feedline of a breeder-tank, I remembered my urges of a few days
 ago, to  bury my  face in  some down-home  Texas target.  In an  instant I  was
 hornier'n a kid's pet unicorn. I scoped out the dance floor, spottin' Geraldine
 shakin' her skinny little butt with  some local dude. Then my eyes  passed over
 her to alight on my dream girl.  

 She stood a good six feet tall, thanks to her hi-heels. Five-inch ivory  spikes
 that grew out of the calcaneum of her tarsus bones, they were tipped with  gold
 caps. The rest of her feet were bare, with special hi-impact soles that I could
 see  when she  kicked toward  the ceiling.  She wore  some Wind  Skin neoprene
 tights, but nothin' above the waist. Her tits were enormous, and thanks to  the
 implanted cantilever  lifts, projected  out as  firm and  confident as  a CEO's
 handshake. She had  had the refractive  index of her  aureoles altered so  that
 they were mirrors. On her cheeks were little patches of iridescent fish-scales.
 I was willin' to bet a week's eft that her tongue was cat-raspy. In short,  she
 was just what the cellscrubber ordered.  

 I pranced out onto the dance floor, cocky as a dirty-harry carrying heavy metal
 and a journal full of wires.  
 
 Her partner was a little south-of-the-border dude that I pegged right from  the
 start as a Brazilian. The Brazzes  was heavy into Texas lately, ever  since The
 Doctor's Plot to assassinate the PM had caused such chaos in the upper echelons
 of the NU.  

 I tapped the Brazz on the  shoulder. "Hey, meninio, how's about lettin'  me cut
 in?"  

 The little sludgehead just ignored me.  His sleeve, though, seemed to like  the
 idea. She stropped her lower lip with her tongue, and I swore I could hear  the
 sandpaper sound of it above the  music. The Brazz's cockiness and his  sleeve's
 allure got  me so  damn inflamed  that I  did something  rash. I spun the Brazz
 around and coldcocked him  with a right to  the jaw. Then I  grabbed his sleeve
 and tugged her toward the door. She didn't resist for more'n a milli.  

 Outside in  some shadows  I backed  her up  against a  wall and stuck my tongue
 halfway down her throat. Then I took a handful of her crotch.  

 I  was like  to die  when I  encountered a  basket full  of male  equipment. I
 disengaged quickly from the kiss, but was too shocked to withdraw my hand.  

 "What's the matter, honey?" she said. "Looking for this?"  

 I felt everything  squirm and writhe  beneath my palm  like a hooked  crawfish,
 resultin' in a slow and stealthy envagination and labiation.  

 Holy radwaste! I'd picked up a maff!  

 Last time I was stateside, maffs had hung out in their own clubs, and a  feller
 was mostly safe from accidentally hittin' on one. I guessed things had  changed
 since then.  
 
 I backed off and trod on someone's foot.  

 It was the little Brazz. I fell into an offensive posture, then stopped.  

 He was holding something out to me.  His card. I felt sorta dumb, still  makin'
 deadly-like with my hands, so I relaxed and took it.  

 "Senhor," said  the Brazz,  "you will  have the  honor of  meeting me, Flaviano
 Diaz, in the local cockpit, daiqui a oito dias, or your carcass will grace  the
 window of the local emporio."  

 He bowed and left. That was when I looked at his card.  

 It said: Flaviano Diaz, Capoeira Instructor, Redbelt, First Degree.  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 I stood barefoot and barechested in  the dusty yard behind the motel,  sweatin'
 under a Saturday  noontime sun hot  as an episode  of Siouxie Sexcrime.  What a
 hell of a way  to be spendin' my  free time, practicin' for  an engagement that
 was like as not gonna result in my own bloody death by evisceration. But I  had
 no one to  blame except my  own fool self,  and as my  daddy always said, "Son,
 there is no point in beatin' up  on yourself if you can beat on  someone else."
 And that was what I fully intended to do, or die tryin'.  

 I lifted another five-pound bag of  flour from the crateful I had  borryed from
 the commissary.  I walked  somewhat awkwardly  over to  the shade  cast by  the
 scrawny pin oak that was the motel's sole foliage. Hangin' over a branch from a  
 
 rope was a sling of plastic netting, just at head-height. I took out the  empty
 slashed flour bag that was inside the ripped net and substituted the full  one.
 When I walked off a few paces, I left a trail of white footprints leadin'  from
 the pile of flour on the ground.  

 Facin'  the suspended  flour sack,  I went  all cat-like,  tryin' to  will the
 tension and doubt from my  body and mind. I moved  in on the enemy, fakin'  and
 feintin', dippin'  and glidin'.  When I  felt I  had that  dumb ol'  flour sack
 completely befuddled, I pivoted and launched a high arcin' perfect kick at it.  

 Sunlight flashed  off a  crescent of  glass as  it razored  through the bag and
 nettin', spillin' flour like a cloud of construction silicrobes.  

 Someone whistled behind me. I turned. It was Benzene Bill.  

 "I'm glad you wasn't wearing those when we tangled before," he said.  

 Bill's words flashed me  back to Marseilles, when  we had been involved  in the
 big Mediterranean cleanup. He was new to the team then and seemed to have taken
 an instant dislikin'  to me, probably  cuz I was  the only one  his size. I got
 sick of his endless  hasslin' of me and  decided to settle things  once and for
 all. In the city, I found an academy that taught savate, or "ler box  fransay,"
 as they  call it  otherwise. With  appropriate trope  conditionin', I  was soon
 qualified to kick the wings off a fly in flight. Shortly thereafter, I put Bill
 down once  and for  all. Bill,  being a  lazy bully,  never upped the stakes by
 goin' in for his own conditionin'.  
 
 Later, when we were stationed on the Thai-Kampuchean border doin'  jungle-biome
 restoration at the site of some old refugee camps, I took the chance to study a
 little at a monastery, under the monks what taught Thai kick-boxin'.  

 I had thought I  possessed some pretty slick  moves. But that was  before I had
 seen the tapes of various capoeira masters.  

 Capoeira was Brazz hand and kick-boxin'. The moves had an African basis, salted
 with Bahian  tropico-funk. Sometimes  it looked  almost like  innocent dancin'.
 Until the capoerista rocketed his opponent with a heel upside the jaw.  

 Me 'n' Flaviano Diaz in the cockpit was gonna be an interestin' match. I  hoped
 I would survive to appreciate it in my old age.  

 Now I looked down at my moddies that Bill was rasterin'.  

 My spurs.  

 I  had  visited the  bodyshop  the mornin'  after  the mess  at  Parts Unknown,
 reckonin' I had  no time to  waste. The proprietor  was a gerry  who musta been
 born a  good hundred  years ago.  I listened  close when  he spoke, figurin' to
 benefit from his experience.  

 ''Believe me, I know these  Brazilians. They share the Argentinian  fascination
 with the  knife. Your  man will  chose a  superalloy steel  pair of spurs, most
 likely the  Wilkinson'or Gilette.  Those are  fine spurs,  but too  heavy. They
 invariably slow one down. Now these"—he  took down a slim case, opened  it, and
 revealed two  transparent scimitars  nestled on  black velvet—"are  superior in
 every way. Bioglass by Corn-  
 
 ing. They hold just as sharp an edge as superalloy, but are featherlight.  Hard
 to  focus  on,  too.  Moreover,  they  provide  superior  bonding  at  the bone
 interface. We will grow the glass right into your tibia."  

 The old man  paused. "Oh, by  the way, the  law requires me  to remind you that
 these are  sold strictly  for decorative  purposes. Now,  if you  agree to that
 condition, shall I begin the installation?"  

 What could I say? I took 'em. I also  let the guy talk me into a pair of  musky
 scent-glands, located right at my wrist pulse-points. He said it would make  me
 feel more macho  and attract more  women. I didn't  have the heart  to tell him
 that was how I had gotten into this jam in the first place.  

 Archin' my soles, I jerked the spurs up and down a hair, showin' off for Bill.  

 "Yeah, pretty  neat," Bill  agreed. "However,  the outlaw  line still  has Diaz
 favored over you at three-to-two. I plan to make some hefty eft off your  loss,
 sucker." Bill started laughing. "See you in the pit tonight."  

 He left before I could contradict him. But I wasn't sure if he wasn't right.  

 I  was gettin'  another flour  bag set  when Geraldine  came into  the yard.  I
 pretended not to see her.  

 "Lew," she said, "please, don't do it. You know DDI will protect you from Diaz.
 There's no need to risk your life with something illegal like this."  

 "You say somethin', Geraldine?"  

 "Yes, I said  something, you damn  stubborn pig's asshole.  I said don't  throw
 your life away for your stupid pride."  
 
 "Sorry, Geraldine, I can't rightly hear what you're sayin', for some reason  or
 other."  

 "Oh, go to hell, you ignorant shitkicker!"  

 Flour filled the air as my foot thumped back to the earth.  

 "When you see me whippin' that spic's butt, Geraldine, you will feel  different
 about things."  

 She just glared at me, then stormed away. At the door of the motel, she stopped
 and yelled out, "And those scent-glands make you smell like a wet ox!"  

 I quit  practicin' after  that. With  supporters like  Bill and  Geraldine, the
 spirit had gone plumb out of me. Standin' one-footed and lifting my ankle to my
 knee, I used a bandana to wipe off first my left spur, then my right.  

 At suppertime I stoked up by eatin' a big steak, a pound of pasta, and a  whole
 apple pie, chased with a dose of  Digestaid. By fight time my stomach would  be
 empty, and my body would have all that protein and carbs to burn. Then I turned
 in for a little nap, sleepin' surprisin'ly easy, considerin' what I faced. When
 the alarm woke me, I got up and showered. I put on my ostrich-skin boots, which
 I had had  to slit up  the back to  accomodate the spurs.  With my jeans tugged
 down over 'em, they didn't look so bad. Then, without sayin' goodbye to anyone,
 I  took  a  one-man  fuel-cell  utility  vehicle  into  the  city  to  keep  my
 appointment. I didn't feel like travelin' with the others. Let them show up  on
 their own, if they were comin' at  all, I figured, after all the crap  they had
 given me.  

 The  cockpit was  located in  an old  warehouse in  the Camspanic  barrio. The
 abandoned look of the place was  
 
 somewhat belied by  the quantity of  cars parked in  the neighborhood. I  added
 mine to the ranks and went inside.  

 There were  rickety bleachers  up to  the shadowy  rafters, and  they were  all
 packed with  a restive  crowd jacked  up on  Sensalert. At  their focus  was an
 ankle-high wooden ring about as big as a backyard swimmin' pool. It was  filled
 with sand. Two guys were rakin' some blood under, so I figured a match had just
 ended.  

 I found the referee, a blonde  with pinfeathers where her eyebrows should  have
 been and told her who  I was. In a minute  she had rounded up Diaz  from out of
 the crowd and brought him over to me. Sure enough, I could see he had gone  for
 the Wilkinson blades.  

 "I am gratified to find you are a man of honor, Senhor."  

 "Honor, my pecker, I'm just here for the satisfaction of thrashin' the ass of a
 perverted little foreign maff lover."  

 "Whatever  the  anatomical  peculiarities  of  the  lady,  Senhor,  she  was an
 excellent dancer, and I  will be happy to  defend her character by  leaving you
 expiring in the dirt from which you arose."  

 After this exchange  of front-porch pleasantries  we both stripped  down on the
 sidelines, while the ref fetched the Bloodhound.  

 Diaz had  a midriff  that coulda  been carved  outa chocolate-colored  granite.
 Despite his  bein' three-quarters  my size,  his upper-body  musculature nearly
 matched mine. I prayed my longer reach would count for somethin'.  

 We peeled down  to just our  Kevlar crotchguards. I  made Benzene Bill—who  had
 moved up to the front row to  
 
 gloat—hold on to  my clothes and  boots. Not that  I was gonna  survive to wear
 'em. My balls felt 'bout as big as a Hamster's.  

 The ref brought the Bloodhound round. It came up to me first, licked some of my
 sweat, then nipped the flesh between my thumb and forefinger to draw blood.  

 "Nuffin," growled  the augie-doggie,  after rolling  the juices  around on  its
 palate. Then it did the same for Diaz, who came up clean too.  

 "Okay,  gents,  you're  both  operating  under  correct  physionorms,   without
 enhancements. Let's get this show on the road."  

 We entered the ring,  and the crowd cut  loose with a barbaric  roar that musta
 resembled what the spectators at the Colliseum sounded like.  

 The ref spoke  into her lapel  mike. "Okay, citizens  and otherwise, we  have a
 grudge match here. On my left  is a visitor to Greater Dallas,  Senhor Flaviano
 Diaz from south-of-the-border way."  

 Diaz got a big round of  applause, which was only natural considerin'  the ties
 here to his region.  

 "And on my  right is a  homeboy, originally from  Robert Lee, Texas—Mister  Lew
 Shooter."  

 My applause matched Diaz's—more or less.  I scanned the audience and thought  I
 spotted Geraldine and some other gips.  Then I yanked my concentration back  to
 the cockpit.  

 "All right, roosters, you both know the rules—there are none. Except of  course
 that the winner gets to decide if the loser receives medical treatment or  not.
 Go to it, and may the best cock win."  
 
 The ref backed out in a hurry.  

 When her foot left the ring, Diaz moved.  

 He tried a galopante first,  a blow of the hand  to my ear to knock  my balance
 out. I deflected it so that it glanced off my temple with stingin' force.  Then
 I drove two stiffened fingers into his sternum. It was like pokin' a plank. But
 I've pierced a few plys of steelwood  before, and I knew he felt it,  though he
 barely showed it.  

 The crowd was screamin' for blood. As  if to oblige, Diaz launched a bencao,  a
 forward kick. I watched as his foot  seemed to travel in slow-mo, its slice  of
 sharpened steel headin' straight  for my throat. At  what seemed like the  last
 possible moment, I dropped  below the blow. Restin'  on one hand, I  kicked his
 single supportin' foot out from under him.  

 But instead  of hittin'  the sand,  Diaz converted  his motion  into an aus, or
 cartwheel, finishin' up on his feet across the ring.  

 I closed  with him,  figurin' to  soften him  up with  a few punches. We traded
 blows to the torso and head for a  few dizzy seconds, and I won't say who  took
 the worse punishment. We clinched, then pushed apart.  

 Somehow Diaz had  ended up with  his back to  me. This was  it, I thought, your
 first and last mistake,  you little bastard. I  got lined up to  slice him open
 when he turned.  

 But he didn't turn. Instead, arching his back, he flew into a macao, or monkey,
 shootin' halfway across the ring.  

 Now I had my back to him.  

 I spun around.  

 Too late.  
 
 Before I knew it, I felt two slices across my upper thighs.  

 The fucker had opened up both my femoral arteries.  

 I wavered, then collapsed onto my  stomach, feelin' strength drain out with  my
 blood.  

 "Now," said Diaz, "I will keep my promise."  

 His voice told me where he stood. With the last of my energy, I pulled a mule.  

 Goin' into what amounted to a handstand,  I hooked both my spurs into his  gut.
 And ripped down, draggin'  Diaz to the sand  and spillin' his innards  onto the
 bloody sand.  

 "Any farmboy knows not  to fuck with a  mule, asshole," I managed  to say, then
 blacked out, wonderin' as I did what kind of medical attention two losers would
 get.  

 I musta been out only thirty seconds or so when the dirty-harrys showed up.  

 (I later learned  that Diaz had  diplomatic immunity, and  the authorities were
 worried about him comin' up zero-sign and causin' a scandal. That was the  only
 reason they'd  crashed the  usual Saturday  night frolics,  admittedly a little
 late.)  

 Well, they blew down the doors and dispersed a cover of Fear-o-Moan and Whammer
 Jammer to handle any resistance. The folks in the crowd who wasn't pukin'  were
 shriekin' and  clamorin' like  a buncha  Girl Scouts  who had  wandered into  a
 nudist camp, while  me 'n' Diaz  lay bleedin' to  death. (Flat on  the floor, I
 escaped most of the aerosols.)  

 Then I blacked out again.  

 Next time I came to, my head was in Geraldine's lap.  
 
 Geraldine was cryin'. Musta been the cop-gas, I guess.  

 Through her tears, she said, "Don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, Lew, I had
 a medikit, I brought it with me just for you, I patched you up."  

 I tried to lift my hand up  to feel my thighs, but couldn't. Geraldine  grabbed
 my paw and brought it up to  her face. Then, unconsciously or not, she  started
 rubbin' my scented wrist up and down the side of her neck.  

 "You'll be all right, Lew, I'll post  your bail and visit you in the  hospital.
 You'll see."  

 I  found my  voice deep  down in  some lonesome  cavern of  myself. "I—I  ain't
 listenin' to you, Geraldine," I croaked like a bullfrog flattened by a semi.  

 "Yes you are, Lew. Oh yes you are."  
 
 Big Eater  

 This is the story of how I saved Chicago from a Second Flood, stopped my sister
 from going totally Buggy,  and earned a promotion  right out of the  lite-servo
 class to alpha-symbland, all in the same day.  

 With a little help from Big Eater, of course.  

 That fateful morning started like any other.  

 The wordbird woke me at seven out of my heaven. Not at all synthetic, just  the
 old deltawave-syncretic. Rem-memories hazed my gaze. Just like a screamcurse, I
 seemed stuck  in my  dreamverse. Though  it wasn't  so bad,  maybe even  triple
 gonad. Something about drifting forever down a river of feathers. On my back, I
 was catching up on  my slack. Coasting along  just humming a song.  Mighty nice
 change from my strife-life brain-drain. Which the nerdbird was still  harp-harp
 hopping on.  

 "Time to get up, time to get up! Now seven-oh-one-oh-three! You'll be late  for
 work, Corby! Time to get up!"  

 The sweet dream had fled, so shaking my head, I climbed out of bed. It reverted
 to a couch almost before I could uncrouch.  
 
 "Okay, okay! Shut your trap, I'm done with my nap."  

 The wordbird closed its beak right in midsqueak.  

 I could tell  from the rhymes  that ran through  my skull that  it was way past
 time for me to get well. So the first bore-chore I attended to was to rip-strip
 my old KabiPharm  latch-patch off and  slap a fresh  one on behind  my ear. The
 sensitive sensor,  so as  not to  offend, changed  to rich  cocoa brown, my own
 skin-blend.  

 As the tropes perfused, I asked for the news.  

 The TogaiMagic endoplants in the  wordbird reacted to my voice-choice.  The big
 bright parrot on its  perch, interrupted in midpreen,  began to recite the  CNN
 audio feed coming through the multiplex tether that also fixed it to its perch.  

 "Yesterday  Mayor  Jordan launched  a  week-long celebration  of  his eightieth
 birthday by officially opening the new  Joliet station on the extension of  the
 Chi-Mon DASA mag-natrain line. Attending the ceremonies were the North American
 prime minister, the director of  the Great Lakes Bioregion, several  World Bank
 officials,  and many  of the  mayor's old  teammates. All  were present  at an
 exclusive party later that night, featuring entertainment by a host of the most
 uptaking stars  from Bollywood  to Taikong,  including the  Newsy Floozy, Jonny
 Kwesti, and Wubbo the Whale.  

 "A spokesdemon for the Transgenic Oversight Committee has issued a warning that
 the notorious rogue splice known as Krazy Kat is suspected to have  infiltrated
 the GLB. All  franches are asked  to report any  suspicious sightings to  their
 commensal buzzworms or to patrolling TAC-TOCs.  
 
 ''An Anti-Em demonstration in front of  the Board of Trade erupted in  violence
 late in the afternoon. The familiar chant of 'No mods, no mixes!' soon  changed
 to shouts of 'Burn the  miscegenators!' Authorities declared an emergency  risk
 bubble of ninety naders intensity  covering three square blocks for  a duration
 of thirty minutes plus-minus and dispersed clouds of Riotnip and Incontibarf.  

 "On financial fronts, the  Hang Seng Index registered  a day of heavy  trading,
 reflecting the turmoil on the Prague exchange. Dalal Street responded by . .  .
 "  

 "Softer," I ordered  the bird, and  the parrot voice  of the Central  Nerve Net
 dipped in audibility to a low reassuring murmur.  

 A wordbird is a  primitive, limited way to  interface with CNN, I  know, but it
 was all I was permitted by my altered bioparms. The same incident that had left
 my neurocircuits a  bit scrambled and  prone to rhyme-times  made it impossible
 for me to experience virtuality or even plain three-dee anymore.  

 You see, I was one of the Hiphop Heads.  

 Not many people remembered the incident. I mean, so much happened nowadays, and
 things changed so  fast. What with  the Temp-Trop War  and the Grey  Goo Booboo
 intervening—Well, it's not surprising lots of lesser scandals and  yocto-minute
 wonders were  forgotten. After  all, the  whole affair  happened over ten years
 ago. Though it did affect three million plus-minus people. But scattered across
 the whole North American  Union, the victims were  only about 4 percent  of the
 population. Anyway, what happened was this.  
 
 Some three  million percipients  were tuned  into Virtual  Music Transmission's
 half-hour show known as "Rap Klassix" when VMT experienced an act of  sabotage.
 (As  I  recall,  the  individual  or  group  responsible  was  never positively
 identified; suspects ranged from the Sons of Dixie to the Limbo Cannons.) In an
 instant, before any of  the perks knew what  was happening or could  disengage,
 VMT's baud rate was tripled, safety overrides were disabled, and new  templates
 were laid over the standard transmission.  

 The  add-on routines  consisted of  an illegal  copy of  Microprose's Hardcore
 Reform, which  was normally  licensed only  to government  and gembaitch  penal
 institutions.  

 The intruder master software did its  job. Locking out the volition centers  of
 the perks, taking  as its text  the innocent raps,  Hardcore Reform reamed  new
 neural pathways in three  million brains, establishing the  fifty-year-old raps
 as dominant behavior paradigms.  

 By the time the authorities shut  VMT down, three million people had  had their
 brains rewired.  

 At  age thirteen,  innocent cheb  still living  with his  mom and  sis in  the
 gecekondu projex, I was one of them.  

 Well, to make a hairy narry less scary, the trope dosers and mccoys  eventually
 fixed most  of the  neural damage  the terrorists  had wrought.  Except for one
 minor tic.  

 All us perks who got our brains  skew-fried Would carry inside till the day  we
 true-died A distributed web of spurting  nerve gaps That made us want  to rhyme
 out our urb raps.  
 
 The best that the big labs like Novo Nordisk and Cantab and NeosePharm could do
 was batch up a trope that  alleviated the symptoms. A daily dose  of poemasomes
 kept the Tourette-like syndrome mostly in check. Except during times of stress,
 or often just upon waking, or if I ingested any other really radical tropes,  I
 was pretty much normal in my speech and thought patterns.  

 Naturally there were lawsuits and, eventually, damages awarded. Each victim got
 ten thousand NU-dollars.  

 I gave half to my mom. I'm sorry to say that she nulled the whole balance on  a
 single trip to the tribal casinos at Second Mesa, without even enough left  for
 the side excursion to the Grand Canyon by LED-zep that she had always wanted to
 take. I gave a thousand to my sister, Charmaine, and we all know how she  spent
 hers. As for me, I was determined not to waste my share.  

 Although before the  incident I hadn't  really devoted much  thought to getting
 out  of the  projex, afterwards  I was  really determined  to make  a life  for
 myself, having seen the  trouble that could come  from lying around all  day on
 the prole-dole just inhabiting virtuality.  So I daleyed a minor  city official
 and got my name  illegally posted to the  list of lottery-chosen prospects  for
 CivServ jobs.  With the  remainder of  the eft,  I latched  the black meds that
 allowed me to  pass the aptitude  test with a  low grade. (I  would have scored
 higher,  but under  the stress  my essay  came out  rhymed, and  they took  off
 points.)  Combined with  my official  disability status,  the score  got me  my
 first-ever and still  current job: humble  Eater Feeder under  the boss of  our
 corps, Cengiz Ozturk.  
 
 Who was going to be mighty pissed this morning if I was late again.  

 So I poured Pioneer plantmilk over a bowl of Stressgen Supercereal and  slurped
 it down.  I slipped  into my  blue and  gold CivServ  Windskin uniform  and was
 almost out  the door  of my  fission-cee when  a personal  message with  a high
 priority code got past my filters and loudly interrupted the barely audible CNN
 feed.  

 "Corby," squawked the parrot, "this is your mother! I'm calling from home!  Get
 over here right away, it's your sister!"  

 Before I could argue back  that I'd be late for  work if I did what  she wanted
 and couldn't she handle things herself, Mom had cut the connection, leaving  me
 with no choice except to jump my rump to her bawl-call.  

 I kicked a chair and started to swear, then I bolted down the stairs.  

 On the intrametro  train I cudgled  my brain. What  could have gone  amiss with
 Sis?  

 Before you could count from two to six, there I was at the gecekondu projex.  

 The projex had been old when I was a tad; now they looked ancienter than Adam's
 NAD. Unsmart buildings lined  dingy streets; hustling nonfranches  littered the
 plazas of  grocrete. Each  had a  scam or  a story  to tell;  a tale  of woe or
 something to sell. Mutawins and hojats were on stroll-patrol, encountering vexy
 derision from babydolls with sexy sincisions. The scene was total jhuggi jopri,
 and all my troubled past flooded back on me. But I held my head high and walked
 on by. In blue and gold, now adult-old, I strode  
 
 past the various hawkers proud and  tall, showing them I didn't belong  here at
 all.  

 Hoping I  could control  my rhymes  if only  I thought  about neutral  times, I
 remembered the history of the projex.  

 Way back in the teens, during the Last Jihad, just after the Fall of  Istanbul,
 the IMF began allotting refugees to various countries, cities, and  bioregions.
 Chicago had gotten  mostly Turks and  a smattering of  Crobanians, who had  all
 been forcibly funnelled into the hastily constructed projex.  

 One of these flee-gees had been my dad.  

 Dad  had  fallen in  love  with a  local  girl named  Chita  Garvey—my mom,  of
 course—who happened then to be a very xinggan Cubaitian some sixteen years old.
 Dad's relatives  weren't too  uptaking about  the eventual  multicult marriage,
 which was soon followed by the birth of a son, then a daughter.  

 One day when I was eight and Sis was just born, Dad and a hardline cousin named
 Zeki got into a serious argument about how Dad had betrayed his heritage.  Zeki
 claimed Dad  had been  verraten und  verkauft. Words  escalated into blows, and
 that's when cruel cuz put the boot in.  

 Out of his pocket,  Zeki whipped a military  model neural shunt (Snowy  surplus
 from Operation Rock the Casbah) and slapped it on Dad's neck. Quickly burrowing
 spineward,  the boot  grabbed control  of Dad's  motor impulses  and literally
 forced Dad to choke himself to true-death.  

 Ever since I had kind of been the man of the house.  

 Which was why Mom was turning to me now, even though I no longer lived with her
 and Sis.  
 
 As I climbed the  worn steps of familiar  old Building Nine (referred  to croak
 jokingly by  its residents  as the  Golden Horn),  the slow  shadow of  a laser
 entrained dirigible passed over me, and I sadly recalled Mom's long-unsatisfied
 moonbeam-dream of visiting the Grand Canyon in person. It seemed like  everyday
 strife-life just had a way of mind-grinding a person right down. Look how  much
 eft and trouble I  had gone through just  to land this cysting  lite-servo job,
 and how events like today's kept conspiring to put me in danger of losing it.  

 If only, I thought as I rode the smelly elevator upwards (the car was liberally
 bespotted with the glandular signatures of  rival tribes and zokus), if only  I
 could do  something really  uptaking to  show everyone  what I  was capable of.
 Maybe then I could get some real security in my life. . . .   

 Little did I know then the fate-date the near future had in store for me.  

 On the  forty-fourth floor  I came  to the  family door.  I could  hear Mom and
 Charmaine yelling  right through  the macromolecule  walls, so  I didn't bother
 knocking but just palmed the sweat-vetter gene-screener and stepped right in.  

 A burst of overdue deja vu hit me. Nothing had changed in the year 'since I had
 moved on, and  that meant nothing  had changed since  time began. My  childhood
 Build-a-Cell kit still sat on a  shelf. The aging Philips virtuality rig  still
 sported spots of dumbpaint from an attempt at redecoration three years ago. The
 forever-dying orchidenia plant still clung to life.  

 Mom  had her  back to  me, blocking  sight of  Charmaine. When  Mom turned  and
 stepped aside, I could see what had made her roughride and chide so snide.  
 
 Charmaine had added feelers to go  along with her old familiar antennae.  And a
 row of itchy, twitchy buglegs running down each side of her torso. Her clothing
 had been grommetted to accomodate the new members.  

 "Oh, no, Charm," I said. "I thought you had given up on the Roaches? . . . "  

 My  sister  had  a  perez-pretty  face,  despite  the  wispy,  feathery, living
 proteoglycan  antenna-rods  projecting  out a  good  meter  from her  forehead,
 iridescent black. But now,  messed up with grief,  anger, fear, and tears,  her
 face looked really bug-ugly.  

 "I'll never give up on the Roaches! I was just waiting to add more mods until I
 got enough eft!"  

 Mom burst in. "Tell your brother how you got two thousand NU-dollars! Go ahead,
 tell him!"  

 Charmaine straightened up defiantly. "Just like you, Ma. I won it at the cats."  

 Mom glared at me for support. "You heard her. She stole her own mother's  stake
 for the track—my one little luxury—and bet it all on one race. She, jeune fille
 estupida, who couldn't tell a cheetah from an ocelot!"  

 "I won, didn't I? And I paid you back double."  

 "But look how you spent the rest! Mutilating your beautiful body like that!"  

 "It's my thorax, and I'll do what I want with it! Besides, you're one to  talk!
 You ain't hardly no Miss Baseline Betty yourself!"  

 I realized that there was something different about Mom that hadn't  registered
 in the confusion till now. She had  
 
 had her  chocolate complexion  spotted-dotted like  one of  the racing cats She
 loved. And translucent feline whiskers bristled around her kisser.  

 "Pah! My little vanity is like my memere's old-fashioned eyeshadow compared  to
 your craziness. And besides, the belle gato is a mammal like us. But roaches—".  

 That was the match to Charmaine's fuse.  

 "Go ahead!" she exploded. "Say it! Roaches are bugs! Well, you're not insulting
 me by saying that.  Bugs are glorious! They're  not our inferiors, they're  our
 superiors! Bugs were here long before  mammals, and they'll be here long  after
 we kill ourselves off! I'm proud to be a Roach! And as soon as I get some  more
 money, I'm gonna get a full carapace! Neurocrine and Berlex are in a price war,
 and  shells're  getting  cheap  as prostaglandins!  Weevil  has  one,  and it's
 beautiful!"  

 Mom  wailed.  "Ai-yi-yi!  Damballah,  Erzulie,  and  Jesus  save  me  from this
 disrespectful girl!"  

 All of a sudden, my legs felt  like puddin'. I had heard this whole  argument a
 hundred times before. Their life was on replay, mine was on delay. How long was
 I going to  be trapped while  these two yapped?  Didn't they see  I had my  own
 probs that made my head throb? I was trying to make something of myself after a
 bad start, but these two fighting were ripping out my heart.  

 I  sat down  all dreary-weary  in a  chair, and  my eyes  fell on  a fishbowl
 tabletopped near there. In  it swam four flaking  trilobites. The sight of  the
 watery wigglers reminded me of my job, and I shot to my feet.  
 
 "Listen, you're not going to solve anything by yelling at each other. That's no
 way to act for a  daughter and mother. Ma, you  and Charmaine both need to  get
 your fingers off the hot buttons. What's done is done and should be forgotten."
 I had a sudden  inspiration. "I'm going to  take Charmaine to work  with me. We
 can talk about  things and see  what we see.  I'll bring her  back tonight, and
 we'll all have a meal together."  

 Mom smiled. "You were always  such a good boy, Corby.  I knew I could count  on
 you to talk some sense into la cucaracha here."  

 Charmaine stiffened. "Ma, I'm warning you—"  

 I grabbed Charmaine by the elbow, brushing one of her new abdominal legs, which
 jerked reflexively. I hustled her out the door.  

 "I'll  make your  favorite, Corby,"  Mom called  out down  the hall.  "Grilled
 mammoth steaks!"  

 We were on the train heading crosstown before Charmaine would talk to me.  

 "Mammoth steaks!" she huffed. "I'm lucky if she nukes me a lupinovine chop!"  

 I felt myself relax a little, the annoying rhymes retreating into some unprobed
 lobe. At least  Charmaine wasn't going  to stick to  her sullen silence.  Maybe
 there was a chance to straighten things out.  

 "You've got to  let up on  Ma, Charm. You  know she's not  exactly the domestic
 type. And  life's been  hard for  her since  Dad died.  You shouldn't block her
 receptors about her gambling, for instance. It's really the one pleasure  she's
 got these days."  
 
 Charmaine stiffened,  and her  new abdominal  additions began  to wave like the
 legs of a  stepped-on roach. It  seemed she didn't  quite have full  control of
 them yet.  

 "What about Me? Ain't I nothing to  give her some pleasure? Why can't she  take
 some interest in me and my life,  huh? She's always praising you to the  skies.
 But me—all I get is her gleet and pus."  

 "Charm, there's no need to nasty.  Look, Ma likes me better because  somehow, I
 think, I remind  her of Dad.  And she's proud  of me because  I got out  of the
 projex. Not that this  job is anything much,  believe me. As for  why she keeps
 catalyzing your leukotrines, it's—"  

 "I know, I know, it's the Roaches. Well, I got news for you and Ma. I am not  a
 larva any more, I'm an adult. And my mind is made up. The Roaches are the  best
 thing that ever happened to me. Once a Roach, always a Roach. And pretty  soon,
 I'm gonna be a  Roach all the way!  And it won't be  any too soon. Because  big
 things are gonna happen any day now, and the Roaches—"  

 Charmaine stopped herself.  

 "What? What kind of sneaky-freaky things are the Roaches up to?"  

 Folding all  eight of  her arms—two  baseline and  six add-ons—across her body,
 Charmaine clammed  up, and  nothing I  said would  get her  to reveal  anything
 further.  

 When the  train pulled  into our  stop, we  got in  line to  get off  and found
 ourselves behind  a Visible  Man. The  fright-sight of  all his working viscera
 through his transparent gut-bucket made me want to hurl my cereal.  
 
 What a mayday payday this was turning out to be!  

 Aboveground, we stood for  a zepto on the  tree-green lakeshore. A tart  breeze
 flustered our hair. Sunlight played on the clean waters of Lake Mitch. Not  far
 from the transit stop loomed the headquarters of the Eater Corps, a subdivision
 of the  GLB Authority.  Toward this,  Charm and  I made  our way down paulownia
 shady pedpaths.  

 EC HQ used  to be the  Shedd Aquarium, back  in the last  century. But like all
 old-time zoos and such, with the  advent of splices the Shedd had  quickly gone
 out of business. With  transgenics of all types—many  of them more exotic  than
 anything nature had ever produced—visible and touchable (even, in the case of a
 Hedonics  Plus product,  beddable), to  be found  in street,  home, and  store,
 public interest in seeing  dull caged specimens had  nulled out. All the  retro
 exhibitors had quickly sold their stock as raw lab material and folded. And  as
 far as a  zoo's utility as  a repository of  endangered species went—well,  the
 Great Restockings had ended that use.  

 But this old-time tourist diz still retained some connection to animals,  which
 I frequently had cause to think on.  

 At the door I met up with  one of my proxies and fellow Eater  Feeders, Sharpy,
 who seemed in a bit of a flushed rush.  

 ''How's Ozzie this worn morn?" I asked a bit nervously.  

 Sharpy's face was a mass of  long drooping folds and corrugated wrinkles,  like
 his doggie namesake. Even when happy, he looked doomy-gloomy. And as now,  when
 actually  preoccuplexed,  he  could  make  a  technogoth  resemble  a  gameshow
 vannawhite on Pollyannamide.  
 
 "The Khan has me scared. He's just not his old apoptositic self. He's given all
 of us the day off to attend an official blyfest over in the Loop. Some kind  of
 sensitivity training in how to deal with Anti-Em demonstraters. Now I ask  you,
 would the Khan we know and detest shed a yocto-tear about the feelings of  some
 friggin' rifkins?"  

 Inexplicable as Ozzie's actions  were, they seemed good  news for a change.  At
 last on this crazy  day, something was finally  going my way, and  I felt zetta
 okay. Until Sharpy's next words.  

 "Except you. He's been asking everyone if they've seen you yet. Seems he has  a
 special chore just for Cadet Corby."  

 "Mighty Ogun! Now my ass is grass, no sass!"  

 "Not necessarily.  Remember, I  told you,  he's not  acting like  the old Khan.
 Maybe he'll go easy on you. But you'd better get in there soon."  

 "Right. Thanks for the warning, Sharp."  

 "No skin off my dewlaps.  Hey, who's the Love Bug?  Want to spend the day  with
 me, Cricket?"  

 During our conversation, Charmaine had stood in bored silence, wiggling her new
 legs in a programmed sequence to  gain greater control over them. (I  hoped she
 was  remembering to  take her  cecropins.) But  now she  bristled at  Sharpy's
 remarks.  

 "Eat pyrethrum, chordate!"  

 "Charmaine, please. She's my little sister, Sharp, and she's not in a good mood
 today. I apologize for her."  

 "No mammal has to apologize for a Roach!"  
 
 "Put it in a vacuole, Charm.  Listen, Sharpy—I'll see you later. I'd  better go
 take my bitter meds from the head."  

 I hauled Charmaine along to the office of Cengiz Ozturk.  

 In the  anteroom, I  pushed Charmaine  down onto  the Biospherics slouch-couch.
 "Stay here. We haven't finished talking about the probs of our little  germline
 yet. I'll only be a zepto—I hope."  

 "What am I gonna do while I wait?"  

 "I don't care if you count your hairs. Raster some vid, you selfish kid.  Can't
 you tell I'm gonna catch hell?"  

 This rough talk—which her loving brother never used toward her—seemed to  waken
 Charmaine to the  variety of my  anxiety, and she  sulkily picked up  a pair of
 retinal painters provided for waiters.  

 "Olivetti Eye Blasters," she sarcastically intoned. "These are shit."  

 The expression on my face caused Charmaine to shut up and don the glasses.  

 I entered the zig-zaggy light-trap to Ozturk's inner sanctum.  

 Cengiz  Ozturk was  a veteran  of the  Last Jihad.  An officer  of the  secular
 Turkish government, he  had been among  the last evacuees  from Istanbul during
 its seige by the Jihad's shahada-sicarios and consequently had caught the worst
 of their assault, taking a hit from a bizarre new weapon.  

 There used to be a basal disease called xeroderma pigmentosum. Those who had it
 were so sensitive to sunlight  
 
 that an average day in the pre-ozone-hole sun would give them cancers and other
 cyto-malfunctions.  

 Ozturk  had  been hit  with  a designer  infective  agent based  on  this retro
 disease. Now it lurked ineradicable in his soma.  

 A few photons  at the frequency  of visible light  impinging on his  skin today
 would  be enough  to trip  a cascade  of death-agonists  throughout his  body,
 resulting in a yotta-painful death.  

 He had  been med-evacked  in a  light-tight homeopod  and installed  in an null
 photon  underground  facility,  where  bonestretchers  and  cellsmelters  could
 investigate his condition. But in the end all that could be done for him was to
 adapt his vision to infrared and find him an alpha-symb-land desk job.  

 Which had turned out to be director  of the Eater Corps, my boss. And  needless
 to say, this whole experience had left him a less-than-cheerful sort.  

 As I felt my way down the  last zag, I braced myself for the  Dow-Hughes shrink
 wrap that was the final safety barrier between Ozturk and the world.  

 I met the bedsheet  of pliable film face  on and pressed ahead.  I really hated
 this. The semiorganic film wrapped itself  around me from head to toe,  sealing
 shut, pinching off behind, more drawn from the dispenser and ready for the next
 entrant. Mouth-  and nose-holes  opened of  their own  accord. My  useless eyes
 remained hooded.  

 Now I was no danger. Had I  been carrying a weapon, I couldn't have  reached it
 beneath the wrap. Even if I had a  
 
 flashlight  in  hand, ready  to  fire, the  film  would have  frustrated  it by
 invading the mechanism or  reflexively immobilizing my twitchy  trigger finger.
 Sure, there were sophisto ways around the wrap, but who really wanted to  smoke
 an old soldier  like Ozturk anyhow?  The extra security  was just paranoia  and
 status-flash on his part.  

 I stopped just inside the door. "Uh, Captain Ozturk? It's me, Cadet Corby. .  .
 . "  

 The room was flooded with low-freak illuminating rads, and I could almost  feel
 Ozturk sizing me up with his altered eyes as I stood here blind. What I put  up
 with for this job! But it was still better than the projex—or so I told myself.  

 At last Ozturk spoke. His voice  sounded funny, mechanical almost, and I  could
 see what Sharpy had meant about his not being his old self.  

 "Cadet, I need your to help conduct a small experiment. You are aware that  the
 terrorist splice known as Krazy Kat has been reported in the vicinity?"  

 "Yes, sir."  

 "Well, I'm  very concerned  that he  not subvert  our Eaters. Accordingly, I've
 redesigned their dietary leash. I'd like to run a field trial before  switching
 over entirely, however. Make sure the  NOAEL is as simulated. Please take  this
 sample and feed it to the Rivermouth Colony."  

 I extended my hand slowly, so  as not to trip the wrap's  freeze-reaction. Into
 my outstretched palm was placed a packet.  

 "Do you wish to dataglove the leash's new molecular structure?" Ozturk asked.  
 
 "I'm sorry, sir, I can't use datagloves. It's my disability—"  

 A strange satisfied tone crept in Ozturk's voice. "Oh, of course, I should have
 remembered. Very well, Cadet, that will be all."  

 I held my  breath, waiting for  some reprimand about  being late. But  it never
 came. I  had the  impression, in  fact, that  I now  stood alone, Ozturk having
 disappeared into his attached living quarters.  I didn't wait to get kissed  or
 dissed, but figured I was dismissed.  

 Midway through  the light-trap,  I was  freed by  a mist  from the shrink-wrap.
 Gathering up Charmaine—who of course had to complain I was interrupting her S&M
 vid of "Hot Purple Pain"—I signed  out a Skoda Skooter and a  Taligent poqetpal
 and got ready to carry out my assignment.  

 Riding north through city streets, Charmaine behind me on the saddle-seat,  her
 pinchy insectlegs digging into my ribs as she hugged me, I pondered why Captain
 Ozturk  had chosen  me for  this mission—it  bugged me.  Was it  a prelude  to
 promotion, a mark of my devotion? Or just sheer chance, no cause for flights of
 romance?  

 When no answer came clear, I pushed the question to the rear and motored on.  

 Soon we  arrived at  the point  on the  shore opposite  the Rivermouth  Colony,
 roughly six blocks south  of Oak Street Beach,  where lucky franches basked  in
 the heat.  

 Charmaine and I stood  on the low grocrete  jetty painted with the  EC insignia
 and reserved for official use—vehicle moorings and Eater feedings and  such—and
 I pointed out the Eater habitat to her, some half-klick offshore.  
 
 Shading her eyes  against the lake-sparkle,  Charmaine said, "Wow,  that's big!
 You know, I never bothered to come look at this before. Kinda like a New Yorker
 never visiting Television City. Is it made out of—rocks?"  

 "Stones, mud, trees, driftwood, old car parts—whatever the Eaters can  scavenge
 from the lake. They're master builders."  

 There was a note of pride in my voice that was there by choice. After all these
 years of working with the Eaters,  I had become one of their  virtue-repeaters.
 The splices  were honest,  humble, and  dutiful. And  despite naysayers, I even
 believed they were beautiful.  

 And to think  that without a  terrorist act, the  Eaters would be  fiction, not
 fact!  

 Twenty  years  ago,  the  first  designer-waterweed  invasion  of  the  GLB had
 occurred. The  initial invader  had been  a modified  Canadian pondweed, Elodea
 canadensis, introduced into the St. Lawrence Seaway. Its repro-rate was low-mag
 compared to  what followed:  Elodea took  a whole  week to  double its  initial
 biomass. Well, the GLB eradicated  by lo-tech smart-chem means the  infestation
 of pondweed, only to find itself attacked by an even fiercer  milfoil-alligator
 weed cultivar. They zapped that too, but it was just the edge of the wedge.  

 For next came the infamous water-hyacinth/kariba-weed splice.  

 Within days  the entire  GLB was  declared a  disaster zone  of plus-minus  one
 kilonader.  

 Now,  a youngster  like Sis,  who hadn't  even been  born at  the time  of the
 disaster, might wonder just how much trouble  
 
 a little nontoxic  flowering aquatic plant  could cause. Based  on the training
 materials I'd seen,  and my own  toddler-memory of being  taken to look  at the
 enormous floating mats of vegetation, I'd say the trouble was yotta-nasty.  

 The hykariba  (as it  came to  be called)  doubled its  numbers every two days,
 individual plants breaking  off from their  clonal parents and  drifting off to
 colonize virgin  territory. Coalescing  in enormous  floating rafts  two meters
 thick in some places,  the hykariba soon blanketed  the entire GLB. The  plants
 impeded shipping,  clogged the  intake pipes  of industrial  and drinking-water
 plants, and contributed to flooding  by displacing watermass. As the  oldest of
 the  shortlife  plants  began  to   decay,  they  used  up  available   oxygen,
 axphyxiating fish and  phytoplankton. The stench  from the big  finny kills was
 incredible. As a last insult-result,  the mats were excellent breeding  grounds
 for mosquitos.  

 It took bioremediation forces from across the whole Union to null the  invader.
 Before they succeeded,  the genetically identical  mass of plants  grew to form
 the largest single organism in the history of the world.  

 One of the weapons in the fight had been the Eaters.  

 Hastily  but deftly  morrowed out  of nutria,  manatee, and,  of course,  human
 germlines (which is what always got the rifkins so upset), the  hykariba-hungry
 Eaters—otherwise known  as mantrias,  nutratees, or  coypu-cows—were introduced
 into the devastated ecosystem as fast as they could be turned out by Invitrogen
 and Prizm, Biocine and Catalytica.  

 Once the crisis was over the  Eaters remained, first line in the  GLB's defense
 against future intruders. They patrolled  
 
 and roamed in  the waters they  called home. Restrained  by diet leashes,  they
 always returned to their beaches. Where they were met by a Feeder such as yours
 truly, who pampered his charges with applause unduly.  

 "How do you get them to come?" Charmaine asked with what I hoped was  unfeigned
 interest.  

 "Like this."  

 I took the poqetpal out  and tapped in my private  code. Then I stuck the  unit
 underwater, where it began to broadcast its ultrasonic call.  

 Within minutes, the first Eater arrived.  

 Big Eater.  

 Head of the colony,  Big Eater was larger  by half than any  other nutratee and
 twice as smart. Befitting his leader's rank, the head bull was the only one  in
 the colony who had the speech feach.  

 Gushing up out of the water like a furry brown torpedo, Big Eater sprayed us in
 his usual greeting, and Charmaine squealed. Gripping the jetty with his  crafty
 paws, he  left the  bulk of  his body  still underwater.  Rivulets ran from his
 coypu-cow muzzle, off ears and jowls that were part of his special gene-puzzle.  

 Big Eater smiled. "Cor-by. How are you?"  

 I tousled the sleek  oily fur. "Doing okay,  Big Guy. How's the  missus and all
 the little calves?"  

 "The she is good. The lit-tle ones  are good. We eat. We watch for  bad things.
 We sleep. We build. Life is full."  

 "Great, great, I'm glad to hear it."  

 Charmaine squatted down beside me. "Can—can I pet him too?"  
 
 "Sure. Big Guy, this is my sister, Charmaine."  

 "Char-maine, hel-lo."  

 I watched Sis instinctively scratch Big Eater's favorite spot, right behind his
 ears. She seemed to have reverted  to her innocent chrono-years. "Oooo, he's  a
 real teddy-weddy, yes he is. . . . "  

 Unable  to resist  a prod,  I said,  "I thought  you Roaches  weren't keen  on
 mammals. . . . "  

 Charmaine instantly  got all  hard. "Humans  are what  we hate,  the privileged
 ones. These poor splices—they don't bear any responsibility for what they  are.
 We show solidarity with all downtrodden species. And someday—"  

 "Someday what?" Charmaine didn't answer. "You know, you're almost talking Krazy
 Kat-style trash. You might even get arrested for it if the wrong people heard."  

 Standing, Charmaine said,  "I don't care.  We're willing to  fight for what  we
 believe in."  

 Before we could  argue anymore, Big  Eater interrupted. "Why  did you call  me,
 Cor-by?"  

 "Oh, right. It's time  to try a new  pill." I opened the  packet Captain Ozturk
 had handed me.  

 Big Eater seemed puzzled. "It has not been e-nough days for more pills."  

 "I know. But this is a special pill. Protection."  

 "Pro-tec-tion?" Big Eater looked fierce. "Who wants to harm the pod?"  

 "A bad splice," I said, ignoring Charmaine's impolite snort.  

 Big Eater pondered. "I will get the o-thers."  
 
 He was gone with a splash, we hung in like a rash, soon they came en masse.  

 Now, most Eater Feeders, lazy CivServs that they are, just broadcast the  pills
 on the waters  and assume every  coypu-cow will snatch  one. They don't  really
 care if an individual misses out  and dies a nasty programmed deficiency  death
 shortly thereafter, all  hemorrhages and tachycardia.  After all, they're  just
 splices, right? You can always breed more.  

 I didn't buy it. I always fed my charges individually. It was my job.  

 So now, as Big Eater watched proudly from the side-lines—he was always the last
 to get his dose, insuring that all his pod were provided for first—I doled  out
 the  new  pills one  by  one to  the  mantrias as  they  surfaced, gulped,  and
 disappeared, a never-ending stream of whiskered snouts.  

 About halfway through—twenty  minutes and fifty  mantrias—I noticed out  of the
 corner  of one  eye that  a young  nutratee had  approached Big  Eater and  was
 chittering something at him. Big Eater swam up to the jetty.  

 Before I knew  what was happening,  Big Eater had  knocked the remaining  pills
 from my grasp and into the water.  

 ''Bad pills!" Big Eater said. "Make cows swim mad."  

 "What? What do you mean?"  

 "Cows don't go home. Go to Sta-tion Eight."  

 Station Eight was one of the  artificial islands erected in Lake Mitch  to help
 prosecute the hykariba war. Abandoned for many years, it was nothing more  than
 a graffiti-sprayed trysting spot, or a place for a picnic when the weather  got
 hot.  
 
 "I don't know what to say. It wasn't supposed to work out this way—"  

 "Big Eater must go. Must help the sick ones."  

 "No, wait! We'll come with you."  

 I hopped onto an EC jetski. Charmaine dropped down behind me.  

 "Charm—"  

 "Forget it! You  wanted me along.  You're not gonna  leave me behind  just when
 things get interesting!"  

 Big Eater was already gone. I didn't have time to argue.  

 I gave the ski its codes and  powered up the flownodes. We shot off  across the
 water like Neptune and his daughter, outpacing the remaining Eaters.  

 Once we  were beyond  the Eater  construction, Station  Eight appeared, a small
 isle dotted with some crumbling structures overgrown with vines and weeds  from
 wind-sown seeds.  

 As we drew nearer, things became  clearer. From a few meters offshore,  this is
 what we  saw: nutratrees  lay on  a old  launch ramp,  while around  them stood
 figures fussing with straps and clamps.  

 Charmaine recognized them before I did.  

 "It's—they're Roaches!"  

 I didn't like the scene and I tried to swerve, but there came a volley of shots
 and I lost my nerve.  

 "Beach it! Now!" yelled a gun-toting Roach.  

 I ran the jetski aground and climbed down.  

 Charmaine rashly approached the hot-tempered Roach. "Weevil—?"  
 
 The Roach  eyed us  meanly with  Orthoptera optics.  Resplendent in  his winged
 shell, he had us pinned like bugs with his gun barrel.  

 "I don't know what  you're doing here, Charmaine—how  you found us, or  whether
 you're here to help or hinder us—but  you can't be allowed to delay our  plans.
 These vars won't stay responsive forever."  

 "What are you doing to them?" I demanded.  

 Weevil  focused now  on my  uniform. "A  CivServ boy,  huh? This  must be  your
 brother, Charmaine. It seems we were right  not to trust you enough to let  you
 in on the scheme."  

 "What scheme?"  

 "These  transgenics have  been suborned  by Krazy  Kat himself.  A new  trope.
 They're running on a carefully timed set of instructions now. Each one is going
 to carry an explosive pack up the Chicago River. We're going to breach all  the
 underground utility  tunnels beneath  the river  and flood  the whole Loop. All
 kibernetic maintenance will be brought to a standstill."  

 "But the poor Eaters . . . " said Charmaine.  

 "A few expendables in the cause of freeing their kind."  

 "No!" I shouted.  

 Charmaine tried  to reason  with Weevil.  "It's okay  to hurt  the humans. They
 deserve it. But can't you spare the splices?"  

 "Too late. The plan won't tolerate changes. We have to detonate the  explosives
 as soon as they're in place, or risk detection. And that just doesn't give  the
 cows time to escape.  
 
 And who really  cares? So long  as we win.  Both of you  now—over there, behind
 that wall."  

 Under the gun's threat it looked like our sunset. We turned to march off.  

 And then they came.  

 A coypu-cow is hardly a dolphin, but they can swim awfully fast and flow like a
 fountain. Out of  the water the  remaining loyal Eaters  launched themselves up
 the slippery slope, each  one a hundred kilos  of wet flesh, that's  dope. They
 bowled over the Roaches like a living wave, coming their human Feeder to  save.
 Knocked the Bugs off their feet, pinning them to the wet grocrete.  

 I rushed that evil Weevil then, cracking  his carapace with a kick and a  grin.
 Gun in hand, I was now topman.  

 Down to the waterside I sped, looking for one familiar head.  

 "Cor-by," said Big Eater. "This is what we need pro-tec-tion from?"  

 "Not any more, Big Guy. More like the other way 'round."  

 Well, of course it was  Krazy Kat himself whom I  had talked to in the  dark of
 Captain  Ozturk's  office. Poor  Ozzie—or  his corpse  anyhow—had  been at  the
 interview too. The bad splice had picked me on purpose. You see:  

 He knew  I couldn't  handle a  glove, Thought  I'd be  sloppy when push came to
 shove. Didn't know  I took pride  in my work—  Made that Kat  look like a yotta
 jerk!  
 
 Not many humans  can claim they've  been in a  room with the  notorious Kat and
 walked away,  and for  a while  I was  the metamedium  darling of  the hour. It
 seemed only natural for the EC to reward me with the Khan's job.  

 And as for Charmaine—well, she was naturally pretty soured on the Roaches,  and
 the Eater Corps was now one Cadet short, and I was head of the Corps—  

 And you know what kind of town Chicago is.  
 
 The Boot  

 I was sitting in my office, feeling  as bored as the caretaker of a  New Mexico
 solar farm  on a  cloudy day  and wishing  for a  client. After  two months  of
 inactivity, I didn't much care what kind. Any client would do. A socket looking
 for her runaway plug. A gerry  wanting a line to the hottest  new semi-illegal,
 demi-sanctioned golden-age dreamscene. (This year, the hundredth anniversary of
 Woodstock made that particular nostalgia-ware  top of the bops, especially  for
 the original attendees who still  survived.) A ten-year-old hoping to  silicone
 slide  his  way  through  the  legal thicket  that  blocked  the  path  to full
 franchise. (The NU Parliament had just lowered the age to twelve, but even that
 envelope was  being pushed  by the  newest tropes.)  Even a  grieved and  angry
 spouse itching to get the burst on the mate she suspected of weekly  sex-change
 flings with maffs. I had had them all before, at one time or another, and would
 no doubt get them all again someday. And when I did, I would take their eft and
 do what they wanted, no questions asked. Someone with finances as precarious as
 mine can't afford the same scruples  as your average trumps and forbeses.  It's
 an augie-doggie eat augie-doggie world, after all.  
 
 But right now it looked like I wouldn't have to worry too much about exercising
 my ethics. Already noon, and the day was shaping up as dull as a debate between
 the Green and Conservative candidates for governor of Cuba. In other words,  an
 instant-replay of the past sixty. Outside my self-cleaning windows (one of  the
 nice features  of this  new building;  but I  was starting  to wonder  how much
 longer I could afford the rent), sunlight glinted off the Charles River. On the
 far bank bulked  the black silicrobe-built  bubble the authorities  had hastily
 erected around MIT ten years ago,  during the Grey Goo Boo-boo. The  hemisphere
 visible aboveground continued below,  forming a completely enclosed  sphere. It
 had gone  up in  less than  twenty-four hours,  but it  had seemed like as many
 days. I remember watching, from my  front-row seat, along with the rest  of the
 world, as divisions of NU militia,  guided by the top cricks and  watsons, kept
 the mocklife tendrils and feelers  at bay with water-cannons pumping  enzymatic
 lysing fluid, until  the silicrobes could  complete the container.  No one knew
 what, if anything, was now going on inside the shell. There hadn't been time to
 engineer any  sensors in.  The dome  was still  patrolled around  the clock, by
 guards in liftcages. It was just another thing you lived with.  

 I was thinking about popping open a cheer-beer and rastering some thrid-vid  (I
 had  become addicted  to daytime  gameshows, particularly  Your Life's  on the
 Line), when I heard  footsteps in the hall  outside my door. I  hastily took my
 feet down off my desk and tried to  project the image that I was busier than  a
 four-armed bartender at happy hour.  
 
 The footsteps didn't  go past my  door, as so  many had before.  Instead, there
 came a knock.  

 I checked the security screen, liked what I saw, and said, "Come in." The  door
 unlatched itself and swung open.  

 She  had  on  a stylish  suit  in  acidic purple  and  orange.  The jacket  had
 asymmetrical lapels  trimmed with  blue vat-grown  mink; on  the larger one was
 pinned an orchidenia that I could smell from six feet away. Her skirt hung down
 to her  ankles on  the left  side, but  revealed her  whole right leg. She wore
 chrome chopines that added four inches to her height. Her black curly hair  was
 piled high, with a blonde curl dangling down over her forehead. She had  canary
 yellow irises  and a  small tight  mouth. On  one cheek  she wore  a small love
 cicatrix shaped like the astrological symbol for Venus.  

 "Please," she said, "could you cover the windows."  

 "Lady, we're on the fortieth floor—"  

 "You can't tell what optics are out there. Nanocams are everywhere these  days.
 Please, do it."  

 I shrugged and spoke. "Shutters."  

 Sheets of opaque piezoplastic that had been curled up at the top of the windows
 stiffened down  like tongues  across the  glass, under  the impulse  of a  mild
 electric current. I boosted the lights.  

 "Have a seat," I offered. "Can I get you something to drink?"  

 She sat and crossed bare  right leg over left. I  saw the tattoon of a  panther
 she wore on her outer upper thigh. Every thirty seconds it opened its mouth  in
 a silent snarl.  

 "Yes, thank you. I'll have a Foma Froth, if you've got it."  
 
 I  kicked the  splice sleeping  at my  feet. "Hamster,  wake up,  we've got  a
 visitor."  

 Hamster opened its eyes  and blinked. It preened  its whiskers and said,  "Yes,
 sir, my help is needed now?"  

 "Damn right, you dumb trans. Get a cheer-beer for me, and a Foma Froth for  the
 lady."  

 Hamster got up and  adjusted its short tunic.  It walked to the  small magnetic
 fridge, got  the drinks,  served them,  then asked,  "Will that  be all that is
 needful, sir?"  

 "Yeah, go back to sleep."  

 Hamster did just that.  

 "Cheapest transgenic they make," I apologized.  

 She  waved her  hand negligently.  "No matter.  My name  is Geneva  Hippenstiel
 Imhausen. May I see your licenses?"  

 I passed my ID card over. Showing topmost was my Massachusetts PI license.  She
 repeatedly flexed the  card to reveal  my North American  Union, EuroComm, IME,
 Brazilian, and orbital credentials. She flexed  it one final time, and a  naked
 pinup of  the thrid-vid-star  Siouxsie Sexcrime  in one  of her  more notorious
 poses was revealed. I had to  admire Geneva's composure. No expression, just  a
 faint reddening of her cicatrix. She handed the card back. "It seems to  reveal
 everything I need to know about you."  

 "That puts you a leg  up on me," I said,  eyeing the leg in question.  "Could I
 ask what you're here for?"  

 She leaned forward. "I want you to put a boot on someone."  

 Well. That  took me  by surprise.  I wouldn't  have guessed  that was  what she
 needed.  
 
 "You do do boots, don't you?" she asked, lifting one neatly scribed eyebrow.  

 "Oh, sure, but they're tricky. It'll cost more than my average rates."  

 "That's no matter. There's much at stake."  

 I mentally  raised my  rates by  half. "I'll  need to  know more  before I  can
 definitely take the case. Who are you booting, and what does he have that's not
 his?"  

 She sighed. "It's my husband. Jurgen  von Bulow. He's made off with  the latest
 trope from  the company  I own.  Perhaps you've  heard of Hippenstiel-Imhausen?
 We're a  German firm,  specializing in  bioactives. Our  most recent product is
 still in the  experimental stages. It's  an explosive new  neurotropin. Even to
 speak of it now is rather risky.  That's why I wanted the shutters down.  And I
 assume your office is recently swept. . . . "  

 I nodded. She continued, rather reluctantly.  

 "What my husband took is a trope that allows stochastic reasoning, insight into
 the dynamics of chaos.  We were hoping to  have it perfected before  word of it
 reached our competitors.  But my husband  absconded with some  doses of a  test
 batch and  plans to  use them,  I'm certain.  He'll ruin  our secrecy.  And, if
 anyone ever got to him and unwound the codes from his bloodstream—there go  our
 patents."  

 "Why'd your husband steal from his  own company? Doesn't he stand to  gain from
 your eventual profits?"  

 Geneva looked  both disgusted  and embarrassed.  "My husband  married into  the
 company. I control it. He's something of a wastrel, and I've had to keep him on
 a short  
 
 leash. Apparently it was too galling, and he's finally slipped it.''  

 "I don't understand enough about this new trope. How's he going to use it? What
 makes you so sure he won't just sell it to one of your rivals?"  

 "No, no, that's not his plan. You see, he loves to gamble. And this trope—"  

 "You're not claiming it'll let him beat the odds—"  

 She nodded. "Exactly right. Insight into the underlying patterns of  apparently
 random events."  

 Mother of mutants, this was big. I redoubled my fees.  

 "The regular authorities—"  

 "Too many leaks. I need a single man."  

 I stood up then and walked around to her side. I raised a hand to her face. She
 didn't flinch.  I lightly  dragged my  roughened thumb  over her  cicatrix. The
 love-scar was packed  with more pleasure  'ceptors and nervepaths  than a tenth
 generation biochip. When she climaxed, her panther reared up on its hind legs.  

 After she opened her eyes, I said, "I'll bet you do."  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 I don't talk to anyone on a personal level much anymore since my wife left  me.
 Mostly it's just  hard raps with  the perps and  the bad numbers  and the dirty
 harrys and the clients and the streetlife I encounter in my investigations. And
 when I don't have a case going, there's just Hamster to talk to.  
 
 I still can't say why I bought the little transgenic. It wasn't a deadly  model
 like some guys packed. The  most it could do in  that line was give you  a bite
 that might  get infected  in a  week or  two if  you didn't  wash regularly. It
 wasn't particularly smart. Every  command had to be  phrased with a minimum  of
 ambiguity, or you'd run the risk of a major quench. Like the time I told it  to
 "fill  the car  up with  methane. .  . .  " It  couldn't play  any games  more
 complicated than checkers, and it lost  every time. And Lord knows it  wasn't a
 playpet. Sterile, technically female, Hamster had as much sex appeal as a  cold
 mackerel. It was essentially shapeless, and its special diet made it smell like
 wet hay. Not offensive, but  hardly sexy. Now, if I  had been able to afford  a
 Golden Colt or a Snakehips, that would have been another story. . . .   

 Still and all,  I was used  to the splice.  It was sort  of like a  pair of old
 slippers, or a  chair worn to  my shape, except  that it could  nuke supper and
 clean the office and nod when I bounced ideas off it.  

 That's why I was talking to it, now that Geneva had left.  

 "I guess the first thing  we'll have to do is  head out to Logan and  see if we
 can pick up von  Bulow's trail from there.  His flight arrived three  days ago,
 but I've had colder starts."  

 "Yes, you have, sir. I am certain you have, although I cannot remember  exactly
 when. I am trying to think now. This is hard work, sir, just give me a  moment.
 There was one time, I am sure I will think of it in a minute—"  

 "Hamster—"  

 "Yes, sir?"  

 "Cut the crap and get me my gun."  
 
 I don't pack deadly force.  No flashlights or splat-pistols or  pellet-throwers
 for me. In most tense situations, I  prefer the cool, calm voice of reason,  or
 flight. If I have to take someone out, I do it temporarily, with a shocker. All
 you need is an inch  of bare skin to deliver  a patterned jolt of current  that
 overloads the higher neural  functions, such as making  the decision to kill  a
 harmless PI.  

 I slapped the gun Hamster passed me  to my hip, where its biopoly barrel  mated
 to the holster-patch on  my pants. It would  be there when I  needed it, coming
 free at the touch of my hand alone, thanks to onboard sweat-vetters. I opened a
 desk drawer and took out my boot unit and a pad of fluorescent-orange  adhesive
 stickers. I slipped them into an outer  pocket on my vest, where I could  reach
 them easily. Then I headed for the airport, Hamster tagging along. In my  mind,
 I was already spending the EC money Geneva was going to pay me.  

 Once at Logan, I headed straight for  the cab stand. I was betting that  a plug
 with von Bulow's tastes wouldn't have taken mass transit.  

 Sure enough, the third cab I questioned was the one he had ridden in. It was  a
 Turing  Level  Two  and had  all  the  quirks of  its  kind,  including a  high
 redundancy factor.  

 "I must  see authorization  first. If  you have  authorization, I  must see it.
 Please show your authorization."  

 I fed my credentials into a slot.  The cab seemed satisfied and spat them  out.
 "Yes, sir, I picked up the human you describe. Here is his picture."  
 
 The cab flashed a view of von Bulow that matched the digitals Geneva had  shown
 me: dirty blonde hair atop a craggy profile and dangerous lilac eyes.  Handsome
 the way a purebred basal dog like  a Borzoi is and likely just as  neurotic and
 skittish. Some of those frigging European aristocrats are so inbred, especially
 now  that  they can  fix  up any  little  congenital trouble  like  leukemia or
 hemophilia, that they make  the king of England  look like a mongrel.  This was
 not  going  to be  an  easy boot,  I  could feel  it  all the  way  down to  my
 mitochondria.  

 "Here is his pedigree, as read  by my chromosniffers, sir." Wave after  wave of
 numbers and metagrafix rolled across the screen.  

 "Okay, give me a  hardcopy of both." The  pedigree would be handy  if von Bulow
 changed his looks. But I wasn't betting on that, as he seemed a self-satisified
 type, too obsessed and complacent to imagine anyone might be after him.  

 "Where'd you drop him?"  

 "Drop, sir? I am not allowed to injure humans—"  

 "What was his destination?"  

 "The Copley Plaza."  

 I should have guessed. It figured he'd vector for the biggest casino in town.  

 I drove so  fast back into  the city that  my car's shell  could barely keep up
 with the aerodynamic changes,  shifting shape a dozen  times a second. A  metro
 dirty-harry in his fan-lifter buzzed me, but I transmitted a priority code that
 made him veer off. This case looked  like it was going to be wrapped  up sooner
 than I could have hoped.  
 
 At the  Copley I  went straight  to the  registration console.  It was actually
 being manned by  a human, but  that's just the  Copley's policy: no  splices on
 their staff,  and all  the ones  owned by  guests kept  discreetly out of sight
 (except, of course, for bodyguards). I had to check Hamster at the stable.  

 The clerk was  a piebald black  man wearing a  topknot laced with  gold wire. I
 flashed him my card.  "Mass Pee Eye." He  blinked twice, without expression.  I
 looked at my own ID. The  stupid cab had left Siouxsie Sexcrime  uppermost when
 it had read the card. I flexed the plaz back to the right creds.  

 "Yes, sir, how may I help you?"  

 Slipping my left hand into  my vest pocket, I palmed  the boot. "Do you have  a
 guest named Jurgen von Bulow?"  

 The clerk ran a mental eidetic. "He just checked out this morning, sir."  

 Bugshit! "Let me guess. He broke the bank, wired his winnings to Paraguay,  and
 caught a suborb south."  

 "No sir, not quite.  Mister von Bulow lost  heavily. In fact, had  we not taken
 the precaution of pre-debiting  his proxy—as we do  with anyone who intends  to
 play the games—he would not have had enough to pay his bill. As it was, he left
 here very much down on  his luck. As I might  phrase it, were I off-duty,  'His
 lily-white ass was dragging.' "  

 That  didn't make  sense. Either  the casino  games were  rigged worse  than a
 Fourth-World election, or  the stolen trope  was junkbond. Neither  alternative
 seemed likely.  

 "Did he happen to mention his plans?"  

 "No, sir, he did not."  

 Dead end. I turned ruefully away.  
 
 Something bumped my ankles.  

 I looked down.  

 It was Flipper.  

 Flipper was a fishboy I  knew from around town. He  was a Fuser, a member  of a
 sect that  sought personally  to atone  for the  extermination of the dolphins.
 (They claimed humanity's guilt was not diminished by the subsequent  restocking
 of the seas.) Flipper's arms had been melded to his torso, his legs fused  shut
 from toes to crotch.  He wore a slick  grey suit that handled  bodily functions
 and made him look like a sleek torpedo. He rode a little wheeled dolly that ran
 on fuel cells.  

 "Hey, Flip, what's metabolizing?"  

 "Not much. But I heard what you were asking the clerk just now."  

 "Why don't we go outside?"  

 I walked—and Flipper rolled—out the Copley.  On the busy sidewalk, no one  paid
 any attention to us.  

 "So, whatcha know, Flip?"  

 "I was hanging around the casino all day yesterday, hoping to hit a big  winner
 up for a  donation to the  church. I saw  the plug you're  looking for. He  was
 really off  the far-end  of the  spectrum. After  a while,  when he  began zero
 summing worse than ever, he started talking to himself. 'Turbulence,' he  said.
 'It's all turbulence, noise, and strange attractors. I can't ride the flow.'"  

 Sounded to  me like  the tropes  hadn't quite  kicked in  yet, or von Bulow was
 having a tough time coordinating the new dataflux.  

 "Yeah, go on."  
 
 "When he was  wiped out, he  came up to  me. 'Fishboy, I  need some black meds.
 Who's on top in this town?' "  

 "And you sent him to—"  

 "Who else? The Vat Rats."  

 I nodded. It was a solid lead.  

 "Thanks, Flip. I'd shake your hand if it were possible."  

 "Screw that human chauvinism.  Just make sure the  church gets credited with  a
 good-sized chunk of eft."  

 "Will do. Catch you later."  

 "Swim free."  

 I went back and got Hamster out of the stable, tipping the splice-check girl.  

 "Thank  you,  sir, it  is  good to  see  you again,  sir,  I was  waiting  most
 patiently, sir."  

 "Hamster, shut the fuck up."  

 "Immediately, sir."  

 We went looking for the Vat Rats.  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 Over the past half century Boston had been hit by a dozen gang invasions. First
 it was the Bloods and the Crips, out of LA, back in the eighties and  nineties.
 Then it was the Hong Kong Tongs, when that entrepot went red. They segued  into
 the  Cambodians,   Hispanics,  Camspanics,   Colombians,  Novascots,   Brazzes,
 Jamaicans. . . .  Each had ruled the metro for a brief period that always ended
 in  a bloody  dustup, with  the victors  setting up  exclusive shop.  Finally,
 though, the pattern of foreign invasions had been  
 
 disrupted by two  factors: the establishment  of the North  American Union, and
 the dominance of tropes and other lab-bioactives over organic drugs. The NU had
 sewn up its borders tighter than a  dose of Lipzip. That kept out the  nonlocal
 competitors. And the slimemold spread of legal neurotropins through schools and
 socially santioned avenues  created the young  local biobrujos, who  proceeded,
 with  their home  amino-linkers and  chromo-cookers, to  brew up  the sublegal
 tropes and  strobers. Various  sets fell  into particular  special niches, turf
 struggles were minimal, the social order was not disrupted, and the authorities
 looked the other way at most of it.  

 Despite such a diffuse network and  the impossibility of figuring out a  strict
 hierarchy, there were some sets that had more status than others.  

 Those generalists, the Vat Rats, were one of the posses at the pinnacle.  

 The V-Rats lived in the labyrinth of abandoned pipes that had once fed sewerage
 into the  formerly toxic  harbor. When  the whole  city was  retrofitted with D
 compoz  silicrobe sanitation  units, there  had been  no need  for the  antique
 system. Every once in a while someone still raised the topic of digging it  all
 out, but the payback wasn't bottom-line  enough, and the metro would just  drop
 the matter.  

 Cold water dripped down my neck. It  felt like a zombie's caress. I stood  in a
 pool of  sludge up  to the  ankles of  my boots.  Hamster was shivering, but it
 wasn't from the cold.  

 We were  surrounded by  Rats, illuminated  by my  lantern. They  all shared the
 dental moddies that gave them their  
 
 name. Other than that, they were as motley a lot as your average set.  

 "Lookin' for some Rat poison, slimjim?"  

 "No thanks. Let me see Zuma Puma."  

 "The Puma's a busy slagger. He don't see just anyone."  

 "He knows me."  

 The Rat looked dubious. "What's the log-on, then?"  

 I told him.  

 "Wait here."  

 I waited. The  Rats watched. One  was gnawing what  looked like a  human femur.
 Hamster kept shivering.  

 "Calm down. No one's going to hurt you while I'm around."  

 "I cannot help it, sir. These are not nice folks."  

 The Rats tittered.  

 The spokes-Rat returned. "Puma'll see you."  

 "Like I said."  

 We exited the maze of pipes  into a big dry bubble-room littered  with personal
 effects: the Rats' nest. A door led to the Puma's private quarters. Hamster and
 I went through alone.  

 The Zuma Puma  reclined on a  pile of cushions.  He wore flexible  piezoplastic
 armor, its effectors slaved to his own electrochemical biosystem. From out  the
 neck, wrists and ankles of the armor protruded tawny fur. His face was bare.  A
 playpet I recognized as a Green Canary model sat beside him, stroking his  fur.
 When we entered, she let out a brief trill of song.  

 "Haven't seen you in a while, slagger," said the Puma.  

 "Not since I saved your tail from the Marrow Mothers."  

 The Puma laughed. "That's one version of the story."  
 
 "Commonly called 'the truth.' For which I figure you owe me a favor."  

 "Depends on the magnitude."  

 "You had a client this morning." I described von Bulow. "What did he want?"  

 "Sorry, slagger, can't tell  you that. You know  all our transactions are  eyes
 only. Who'd come to us if they thought we'd, ah, rat on them?"  

 "You know it won't get any further than this room."  

 The Puma was feeling mean. "Sorry. Anything else?"  

 I pulled my shocker off my hip. The Puma laughed.  

 "What are you gonna do with that toy,  knock me out? When I come to, you  still
 won't know anything."  

 I aimed at his chest and  pulled the trigger. The dart embedded  its microhooks
 into his armor.  

 "Bad shot, slagger. You didn't even connect with the flesh."  

 "I know." I sent current down the wire. The Puma stiffened boardlike out on his
 couch, just like a window shutter.  

 "The fuel cell in this is rated for a month of constant output. When I leave by
 your bolthole with your Canary, your Rats will try breaking in. I don't imagine
 they'll  succeed,  given  your  security.  I  understand  dying  of  thirst  is
 particularly nasty."  

 "I'll sue the cartel that sold me this piece of shit armor!"  

 "Only if you tell me what I want to know."  

 The Puma gave an exaggerated sigh.  "Okay. The guy wouldn't let us  unravel his
 blood. That made us curious, and  
 
 we were gonna try for a sample anyway. But he was launch-on-warning and  pulled
 a flashlight on us. Put a quick end to any fiddle and diddle, and we  desisted.
 He proceeded to describe his prob.  Sounded like he needed a high-powered  math
 coprocessor and some grafix wetware. We laid them in, and it seemed to  satisfy
 him.''  

 "He say what he intended to do with 'em?"  

 "Hey, it's getting hard to breathe in this suit—"  

 "It'll only get harder. C'mon. Where was he going?"  

 "Well, our fee pretty much wiped him out. He wanted to know where he could  get
 a big  stake to  gamble with.  I told  him the  casinos' in  this town were too
 conservative to loan him anything. It's true, you know, Boston's as far out  of
 things as the Oort Cloud. I sent him to Atlantic City."  

 "Right." I reeled the dart back in. The Puma relaxed.  

 "You make it hard to act friendly," he said.  

 "Not my biggest worry. See you around, Zee Pee."  

 Back on the streets, I joined a line at a Bank of Boston machine. Flipper's tip
 had paid off, and  I was going to  credit the church's account  before I headed
 for Atlantic City.  

 The guy in front of me took back  his card from the machine. He went to  pocket
 it, then something made him halt. He  looked at his card, swore, then drew  his
 gun and fired into the bank machine.  

 The machine let  out an electronic  squeal. It shot  out of its  wall-alcove on
 four wheels and tried to race  off. It knocked down a salesman.  The salesman's
 sample case hit the  ground and broke open.  Shards of music filled  the air. A
 woman  
 
 screamed. The guy with  the gun fired again.  This time he brought  the machine
 down.  

 A crowd was collecting around the shattered and smoking bank machine. The smell
 of frying circuits hung thick in the air. The angry customer bulled through the
 bystanders. He reached into the machine's guts and retrieved his original card.
 "Fucking  mimics," he  said. "Last  time my  card was  stolen, I  lost fifteen
 thousand NU-dollars."  

 "It's a hard world," said someone in the crowd, with incomplete sincerity.  

 "Bet on it," said the guy, and patted his holstered gun.  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 The Seraphim trip from Boston to Atlantic City was a good ninety minutes  plus.
 Von Bulow was  a few hours  ahead of me,  and there was  no way I  was going to
 catch up with him any faster than this. I was just as glad. It gave me a little
 time to think.  

 Hamster sat asleep in the seat beside me. I couldn't say why I was bringing the
 splice along. It would  have been just as  happy sitting at home,  watching the
 special transgenic thrid-vid channels, and  Papa Legba knows it was  absolutely
 no help on  a case. Maybe  I needed the  company. Maybe I  felt Hamster was  my
 good-luck talisman. Maybe my dendrites were tangled. What the hell, though. The
 little trans rode for half-fare.  

 I scratched behind Hamster's ears while I considered the case.  
 
 Von Bulow must be a certifiable monomaniac. Here he was, carrying some codes in
 his blood Which, if they worked, he could sell to any of a dozen companies  for
 practically a month's GNP from APEC. Instead, he was going to use them to get a
 few jolts from the casino games. I couldn't decrypt if. Maybe someone had wired
 his boards this way. For all I knew, he could be creaming in his jox every time
 the dealer called "vingt-une." I had run into kinkier stim-rep loops.  

 After half  an hour,  I gave  up pondering  the matter.  I couldn't be bothered
 trying to figure  out why people  acted the crazy  way they did.  If I had  any
 talents in that area, I  would have been able to  tell you why I came  home one
 day to find my apartment packed solid with self-replicating Krazy Foam, and  my
 wife gone. All I can handle  is what people actually do, not  whatever wordless
 impulses they might be  working from. I had  my assignment, and that  was that.
 Geneva Hippenstiel-Imhausen wanted back what was hers, and I was being paid  to
 get it for her.  

 I remembered the  feel of her  hot love-scar under  my thumb and  wondered what
 else she wanted.  

 The scenery rushed by  the single-crystal windows of  the train in a  blur like
 fast-forward video. Eventually, under New York,  I dozed off for a few  minutes
 too. It had been a long day.  

 We pulled into AC about eight P.M.  Hamster and I debarked and made our  way to
 the Boardwalk.  

 I hadn't been here  since they rebuilt the  Boardwalk behind the new  dike that
 kept  the  rising  Atlantic  at  bay.  They  had  used  Bechtel-Kanematsu-Gosho
 superwood and elevated  
 
 the structure four stories in the air, to wind its way past all the casinos. It
 was spectacular, in Atlantic City's usual tawdry style.  

 The walk was crowded with citizens  and splices. Tourists gawped at the  street
 performers. There was a crowd around a bikini-clad socket who had dosed herself
 with plenty of Bonemelt. She had  put a half-twist in her body  before grabbing
 her feet, turning herself into a human Mobius strip. To prove she was one-sided
 as she lay on her mat,  she had little sucker-footed crawlers walking  over her
 common ventral-dorsal surface. Good trick.  

 I stopped to grab a spirulina-dog and an orange soda. If von Bulow was here, he
 would just be settling down, not moving on, and I could take my time.  

 "Want something?" I asked Hamster.  

 "Oh, yes, sir, if you please. One of those nice chili-dogs, with extra sauce."  

 I made Hamster take its special  supplement. One a day, or goodbye  world. Sold
 only to registered human owners.  That's why there are no  runaway transgenics.
 Or not so many.  

 When we were finished,  I crumpled my napkin  and threw it on  the Boardwalk. A
 litter-critter snatched it up.  

 "Let's go get Mister von Bulow," I said to Hamster.  

 "If you say so, then that's what we must do, sir."  

 I found him inside the Time-Warner-Sears casino, at the roulette table. His  ID
 card lay on the betting board, flexed to show his eft balance. He kept  sliding
 the card from one red and black number to another, and his balance kept getting
 bigger and bigger. I watched him for a while. His  
 
 lilac eyes  were half-glazed  over, his  face wore  a zoned-out expression. The
 experimental H-I trope, as modified by the Vat Rats, was plainly a success. Von
 Bulow was rapt  up in the  nonlinear dynamics of  the wheel, seeing  chance and
 aleatory patterns materialized in intelligible forms that guided his play.  

 He never lost a spin. His balance was rising toward geostat orbit. His  winning
 streak had attracted a crowd of ginza-joes and dolly-dears, house playpxets and
 freelance eft-lifters,  not to  mention members  of the  management, who  stood
 around looking like they  had swallowed a quart  of worms. I doubted  if they'd
 object when I booted von Bulow.  

 I worked my way to his side. The management had halted play to check the  wheel
 and scan the crowd for remote interference. I used the opportunity.  

 "Jurgen, I've got a message from your wife."  

 He jumped. "What? Who are you? How do you know my wife?" He narrowed his  eyes,
 as if to use his  new insights to unriddle me.  A muscle jerked along his  jaw.
 "That is, if you even do know her."  

 "Ask not who the panther roars for, slagger, it roars for you."  

 He pushed back his chair. "All  right, all right, not here, for  Christ's sake.
 Let's step outside."  

 We walked out to a deserted  balcony. Overhead the stars glistened like  scales
 on snake. Von Bulow and I stood  about four feet apart. I sensed Hamster  by my
 side.  

 "Geneva wants her trope back, Jurgen."  
 
 He snorted. "Let her come and get it."  

 "She was busy, so she sent me instead." I had the boot concealed in my palm.  

 Before I could move, I was facing his flashlight, a Krupp pocket model.  

 "Don't complicate things, Jurgen—" I said, then went for him.  

 Laserlight lanced  past my  side, scorching  my vest  so I  could smell burning
 ripstop. One shot was all he got off before I slapped the boot on his neck.  

 The neural shunt burrowed under his skin and fastened itself to his spinal cord
 in a millie. Von Bulow collapsed to the floor.  

 I turned around. Hamster was twitching  with a scorched hole through its  tunic
 over its heart. I went over to the splice and picked it up.  

 "Not nice, not nice, sir—" it said, then died.  

 I went back to von Bulow. First I kicked him a half dozen times in the gut  and
 balls. He  didn't say  anything, because  he couldn't  feel anything  below his
 neck, and couldn't see  what I was doing.  Then I slapped an  orange sticker on
 him to show he was booted. I got  an autochair from the casino, put him in  it,
 and headed for the train station.  

 As predicted, the management put up no fuss. I left Hamster for them to dispose
 of. Geneva would find  a surcharge on her  bill equal to the  splice's original
 cost.  

 At the station, I copped a dose of Double-up from a public S&M parlor.  
 
 The ninety minutes back to Boston was enough to express my displeasure fully to
 von Bulow.  

 I was going to  have to mention to  Geneva to block her  ears when she had  the
 boot removed.  
 
 Blankie  

 The second-floor nursery window had been left open on a temperate summer day.  

 That was the fatal invitation.  

 No  antique  wire screen  protected  the opening  into  the sensate  house.  An
 intelligent invisible  air curtain  defeated insects,  large particulates,  and
 drifting organic debris  such as clothtree  leaves and airfish  spume. Barnacle
 like  microjets  around  the  window  frame  constantly  tracked  the  incoming
 intruders in jerky  chaotic patterns before  emitting their dissuasive  blasts.
 Large intruders over five hundred grams would be anticipated and neutralized by
 the house's alarm net and its entrained armaments.  

 But a small, alert wren-form bird,  like the one alighting now upon  the window
 sill, was anticipated by neither system.  

 The bird surveyed the nursery interior.  

 The walls held embedded silicrobe animated pictures: fairytale characters  that
 capered across the constantly shifting backgrounds. The Big Bad Wolf pursued  a
 cloaked Little Red Riding Hood; the young ballerina in her cursed red  slippers
 danced till exhausted.  
 
 In the  middle of  the room  stood a  white biopolymer  crib shaped like an egg
 halved along its long  dimension and resting in  a bip support base.  The Bayer
 logo blinked orange from portside. In the crib lay a naked baby boy of  several
 months, tummy up. Above him floated a mobile representing the Earth and some of
 its myriad  orbiting artificial  satellites. The  large globe  revolved and its
 tiny  attendants  spun  in their  intricate,  never-intersecting  orbital dance
 supported only by shaped magnetic fields emitted from the crib.  

 Beneath the baby was a Blankie, its Ixsys brandmark plain in one corner.  

 The Blankie was approximately  as big as a  large bath towel. Its  glycoprotein
 glycolipid paradermal surface was colored a delicate pastel blue and  resembled
 in texture antique eggcrate bedding foam. Except that the individual nubbins of
 the Blankie were much  more closely spaced, and  in the shallow dimples  of the
 Blankie gleamed a subtle organic sheen like a piece of raw liver.  

 The bird flew  from its perch  on the sill  and landed on  the crib's edge, its
 claws clutching the material of the Bayer halfshell.  

 At that point two things happened.  

 All of the  flat silicrobe characters  on the wall  stiffened and stopped.  The
 Woodsman, who had just emerged to rescue the swallowed Little Red Riding  Hood,
 was the one exception. He dropped his one-dimensional axe and began to yell.  

 "Intruder! Intruder! All security kibes to the nursery!"  

 Simultaneous with the alert, the baby  began to pee. A fountain of  yellow shot
 up a few centimeters from it.  
 
 When  the first  drops of  pee hit  the Blankie,  it responded  in its  trophic
 instinctive way. The  portion of the  Blankie between the  boy's legs elongated
 like a pseudopod or flap and reached up to cap and drink the urine for its  own
 metabolic purposes, simultaneously cleaning and drying the infant's wet skin.  

 The bird  dropped down  into the  crib while  the Blankie  was preoccupied.  It
 jabbed its  beak into  the Blankie.  Then, in  one spastic  implosive moment it
 pumped the contents of its nonbasal nasal sacs into the Blankie.  

 In a flash, its load of venom delivered, the bird darted to the rim of the crib
 and launched itself toward the window.  

 Now alert,  the window  caught it  instantly in  a flash-extruded  web of  Ivax
 Stickum.  

 The bird self-destructively exploded, charring the windowframe.  

 In the  crib the  Blankie was  writhing and  churning like  a wounded  octopus.
 Fractal blooms whipped up from it, then fell across the baby, who began to cry.  

 Within a second or two, the blooms coalesced into a blue webwork. When a strand
 fell across the baby's mouth, its cries ceased.  

 The door to the nursery flew open and assorted kibernetics appeared.  

 But it was too late.  

 The Blankie tightened its embrace like a basal anaconda.  

 The  sounds of  snapping bones  were registered  by the  confused and  helpless
 kibes.  
 
 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 I popped the silver datapins  from the player, abruptly terminating  the sounds
 of little Harry Day-Lewis's  death, collected less than  a day ago. Although  I
 had watched the  tragedy unfold a  dozen times since  then, I hadn't  quite yet
 gotten used to that fatal, snapping-sticks sound. I doubted I ever would.  

 I was sitting in my office in the building that housed the Boston branch of the
 North American  Union's Internal  Recon and  Security division.  Although I had
 occupied this  fiftieth-floor corner  room for  sixteen months,  since my  last
 promotion, it still felt alien to me. All those years operating my own  private
 investigating firm out of increasingly  cheaper quarters had left me  unused to
 luxuries such  as Organogenesis  self-cleaning carpets  and Zeneca squirmonomic
 chairs. Not to mention the steady posting to my eft-account.  

 But I had  had to get  out of the  PI biz after  the job I  had done for Geneva
 Hippenstiel-Imhausen. That had been my last case before my crackup.  

 While booting her  husband, I had  lost my sidekick,  a useless low-end  splice
 named  Hamster.  If you  had  asked me  prior  to the  murder  of the  cut-rate
 transgenic what the little shag meant  to me, I would have said  zepto-nothing.
 But there  was a  lot I  hadn't known  about myself  back then, and my fatherly
 affection for the splice had been one such secret.  

 I  had  purchased  Hamster right  after  my  wife left  me  and  apparently had
 transferred a  lot of  unresolved feelings  to it.  Anyway, that's  what Doctor
 Varela, the expert  in Behavioral Pragmatics,  had told me  during my analysis.
 But the beep  
 
 analysis hadn't happened until I hit planck-bottom, winding up in a clinic  for
 mel-heads.  In  illegal  doses,  the  melatonin-analogue-based  trope  I became
 addicted to let me sleep  all day except for an  hour or two, lost in  pleasant
 dreams inspired by a second trope, TraumWerks (produced, ironically enough,  by
 the H-I gembaitch owned by my ex-client).  

 I had  wasted away  to a  muscleless ninety  pounds before  a routine  sweep of
 streetlife picked me up and deposited me in Varela's rehab joint.  

 When I got out, officially a  functioning member of society again, I  had opted
 to continue in law-enforcement, rather  than be regrooved for a  different job.
 Accepted by the IRS,  I had started as  a simple walkabout operating  out of my
 Kenmore Square koban, eventually reaching my current status, a detective in the
 Unit for Polypeptide Classification and Monitoring, better known as the Protein
 Police. (Our motto: ''We collect strings.")  

 Now, rolling the datapins reflectively between my fingers, as if hoping to feel
 the intangible nanoscratches that  encoded Harry Day-Lewis's death,  I wondered
 if maybe I was getting too old for this job. I had thought I was used to nasty.
 But this was a new magnitude of evil.  

 My office door said, "Kasimzhomart Saunders wishes to enter."  

 "Let him in."  

 K-mart was my current human partner.  His parents had emigrated to the  NU from
 Kazakhstan during the tumult of the Last Jihad. As NUish as me, he looked  more
 exotic, affecting a dark complexion, Mongolian topknot and long  
 
 drooping mustachios. Today  he wore a  sleeveless shirt (at  our rank, uniforms
 were not mandatory) that  bore the demand of  the Selfless Viridians: "Give  me
 euthanasia or give me death!" My partner was big into irony.  

 Waggling his poqetpal significantly in  the air, K-mart said, "Finally  got the
 burst  on  the Day-Lewis  family.  Their respective  peltsies  took their  time
 cleaning up the data. Ran it through a dozen intelligent filters before  they'd
 release it. No proprietary secrets left. But there's still everything we  need.
 Want a squirt?"  

 "Sure. Pipe it over."  

 The file showed up on my desk screen a second later. I picked up the flimsy and
 flung it at  the wall like  a floppy pizza.  The flexistik screen  clung upside
 down, sensed its new orientation, and flipped its display. Now both K-mart  and
 I could read it.  

 After  letting  me have  a  quick scan,  K-mart  summarized. "Standard  plutes.
 Politics just what you'd expect from members of the tekhnari.  Semideviationist
 nouveau  peronistas.  Marshall,  the plug,  works  for  Xytronyx, field-testing
 mosaics. The socket, Melisma,  heads a crada sired  by Cima Labs out  of Phenix
 Biocomposites. No major kinks—except for occasional separate visits to Hedonics
 Plus. She  favors the  Paris Percheron  lines, while  he goes  in for  the Moon
 Moth."  

 I made an admonishing mudra as deftly as I could, lacking hyperflexion. "Unless
 this is strictly necessary—"  

 K-mart smiled at  the notion of  having official access  to the peccadillos  of
 others. He was still young. "Just thought  
 
 you should know all the angles. Anyway, they decided to put the prodge together
 last year, when their combined eft topped two hundred kay. Set themselves up as
 prime candidates for a kidnapping and  ransom demand from any posse of  wackos.
 Sons  of  Dixie,   League  of  Country   Gentlemen,  Radical  Optimists,   Plus
 Fourierists, you name 'em—they'd all like a crack at such a scion."  

 "But there was nothing overt,  right? No warning posts, no  anonymous messenger
 splices, no letter bombs?"  

 "Right. The attack on the Blankie was the first sign of any trouble."  

 "No  chance  they're behind  it  themselves? Some  insurance  scam? Post-vitrio
 depression?"  

 "Nope.  If you  want to  drop the  pins on  the interrogation,  you'll see  how
 authentically quenched they were."  

 "I didn't really think so. But you have to trace all the pathways."  

 K-mart twirled  his mustachios  like some  reductionist-paradigm villian.  "You
 know what I figure?"  

 "What?"  

 "The Blankie  itself was  supposed to  do the  kidnapping. Crawl  away with the
 prodge out the window, after it got its subversion-shot from the bird. But  the
 ganglia-mappings were screwy—bad engineering—and the heist went sour."  

 I thought about K-mart's theory for a  moment. It just didn't ring true to  me.
 How would the  combined mass of  the Blankie and  its human burden  have gotten
 past the sensate alarm? Surely any kidnappers sophisticated enough to gimmick a
 bird like that would have considered such a crucial  
 
 detail. Maybe  the Blankie  could have  bypassed the  house's circuits  somehow
 after its alteration. But then where would the pickup have occured? I  couldn't
 picture the Blankie inch-worming its way through town unnoticed. And there  had
 been no  suspicious intruders  located in  the immediate  neighborhood. No, the
 whole  kidnapping  angle, although  it  was the  obvious  answer, seemed  wrong
 somehow.  

 "These Blankies—I've never heard of them before this. Are they new?"  

 K-mart chased down a few hyperlinks and found the information. "Ixsys submitted
 all the documentation and beta-test results on them six months ago. The  NUdies
 approved  the Blankies  for the  domestic market  a month  after that.  Global
 licensing from the WTO still pending."  

 "What's their market-share?"  

 "Only ten percent.  The Blankies don't  have a lot  of the higher  functions of
 other childminders. Most parents still  favor Carebears and Mother Gooses  when
 the prodge gets a little older. But  the Blankies are cheap and easy for  round
 the-clock sanitary functions and monitoring.  They never sleep, for one  thing.
 Helps explain how they went from a zero to ten share in just under half a year.
 . . . "  

 I got up  from my imipolex  seat, which flattened  out into its  default shape,
 awaiting the next occupant. "Sign a lie-detector out of the stables." I  didn't
 work with the IRS splices directly anymore,  leaving that part of the job to  K
 mart. "We're going to pay the swellheads and trumps at Ixsys a little visit."  

 "You smell corprotage?"  
 
 "Does the Goddess's Daughter on Earth wear Affymax tits?"  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 Like many peltsies  and beeves, Ixsys  had no centralized  headquarters per se,
 being a distributed organization.  The local node was  just a few minutes  away
 from central Boston, in the edge city of Newton.  

 I met K-mart down  on the street. He  had signed out both  a cruiser and a  lie
 detector. The vehicle was a  standard Daewoo Euglenia, the hydrogen  source for
 its  ceramic engine  plain water  continuously and  smoothly broken  down by  a
 bioreactor full  of cytofabbed  algae with  photon input  piped from roof solar
 traps. The lie-detector was an Athena Neurosci Viper model. With a  combination
 of  infrared,  vomeronasal  and  lateral-line  sensory  input,  the  transgenic
 creature could  read epidermal  and subdermal  blood-flow, as  well as  ambient
 pheromone and respiratory  data, right off  a suspect to  make its judgment  on
 veracity.  With  basal  humans,  its  accuracy  rate  approached  unity; highly
 modified subjects introduced varying degrees of uncertainty. But most  innocent
 citizens didn't sport the kind of moddies necessary to defeat a Viper, and  the
 presence of such blocks was in itself evidence of a sort. In my book, if not  a
 court of law.  

 "I'll drive," said K-mart,  and we all got  in, the Viper sinuously  slithering
 into the backseat without saying anything.  

 The bawab at the Ixsys node was one of their massive Ottoman Eunuch models,  15
 percent human pedigree, the  
 
 rest a mix of simian  and water buffalo. I saw  the same kind as doorman  at my
 apartment complex every night. He towered  over us, his shaggy head level  with
 the door's lintel. The scimitar by his side was, I knew, really a  quick-lysing
 device: liquid protease compressed in the  handle could be released as a  spray
 from micropores in the blade, melting flesh in picoseconds.  

 The Eunuch growled wordlessly when he saw  our lack of Ixsys tags. But a  flash
 of our UPCM idents triggered a hardwired servility response, and he let us in.  

 We hadn't called ahead, not  wishing to precipitate any kind  of cover-your-ass
 reaction. (Although news of the  Day-Lewis murder had already been  culled from
 the  net  and  disseminated  by  millions  of  newsie  demons  throughout   the
 metamedium, and any  half-smart executive with  damage suits glimmering  in his
 brain would have already gotten ready for  our visit.) So we had to wait  while
 the receptionist arranged for  one of the Ixsys  trumps to meet us.  I spent my
 time admiring the colorful,  throbbing, hot-blooded plants in  their terrariums
 and trying  to decipher  the circuit  diagrams of  signaling pathways that hung
 decoratively on the walls.  

 The company rep  finally emerged: a  broadly smiling young  plug with a  modest
 crest of small bronze-colored dragon-like spines running from his brow over his
 head and down  his back, his  suit slit to  accomodate them. Pride  in a recent
 degree in  biobiz administration  was written  all over  his face.  Sacrificial
 lamb, an  expendable toe  dipped into  possibly shark-infested  waters. Achieve
 maximal deniability at all costs. It made me sick.  
 
 He stuck out his hand. "Pleased  to meet you, Officers. I'm Tuck  Kitchener, in
 charge of community relations and risk bubble analysis. How can I help you?"  

 "You're aware of yesterday's Blankie murder, I take it?"  

 Kitchener tsk-tsked. "Most unfortunate and deplorable. A clear case of warranty
 violation.  The   Blankie  should   never  have   been  exposed   to  exo-avian
 secretagogues under any circumstances. The  owners of the Blankie were  clearly
 at fault. I hope you agree. There's no question of corporate responsibility, is
 there?"  

 "I don't  know yet.  That's why  we're here.  I'd like  a look  at your  design
 facilities. Talk to the team members responsible for the Blankie."  

 "Why, certainly! Nothing could  be easier. If you'll  just accompany me to  the
 sterilization lock—"  

 Before long, K-mart,  the Viper and  I were sluiced,  dusted, and wrapped.  The
 exit procedure would be  even stricter, involving internal  search-and-destroy,
 to insure we didn't try to smuggle any proprietary secrets out.  

 Once  through  the lock,  we  made our  way  past breeding  vats  and reactors,
 paragenesis chambers and creches, wunderkammers and think-tanks, all staffed by
 efficiently bustling Ixsys staff.  

 "As you can see," Kitchener said boastfully, "we run a tight ship here. All  by
 the regs. No spills, no chills, that's our byword—"  

 K-mart interrupted. "We're not inspectors from NUSHA, Peej Kitchener. We're the
 Protein Police. And we're trying to  solve a murder. A murder involving  one of
 your products."  
 
 It  still  amazes me  that  anyone falls  for  good-cop-bad-cop, but  they  do.
 Uncertain of who  was senior, Kitchener  looked imploringly at  me. But I  just
 raised my eyebrows. The young trump began nervously to stroke his cranial comb,
 which  bent  like stiff  rubber.  "Ah, yes,  of  course. Why  don't  we proceed
 directly with your interview of the Blankie team?"  

 "Why don't we?"  

 So Kitchener took us to the swellheads.  

 Although I had dealt with doublebrains in the line of duty before, the sight of
 their naked bulging encephaloceles always  made me somewhat queasy. Cradled  in
 their  special  neckbrace support  chairs,  surrounded by  their  digitools and
 virtuality  hookups,  their  basal  metabolisms  necessarily  supplemented with
 various nutritional and trope exofeeds, they seemed to regard us visitors  with
 a cold Martian scrutiny.  

 K-mart appeared unaffected  by the massed  clammy gaze of  the eight Cerebrally
 Enhanced—or at least capable  of putting up a  better front than I—and  plunged
 right into querying the swells.  

 "Okay—how many backdoors did you jokers install in the Blankie ganglia?"  

 The  team  members exchanged  significant  glances among  themselves,  then one
 spoke. "I am  Simon, the leader  of the octad.  I shall answer  your questions.
 There are no hidden entrypoints. All is as the published specs declare."  

 "For the moment, I'll assume  that's true." K-mart glanced meaningfully  at our
 Viper, who had not  objected yet. But I  wondered how good its  skills would be
 against the swells. "Who did you steal from to build it? Come on, I  
 
 know you seebens are always plundering each other's finds. Who's got a mindworm
 against Ixsys and wants you to look bad?"  

 Simon actually betrayed a tiny measure of affronted dignity. "We derive all our
 insights  and  findings  direct  from  the  numinous  sempiternal   sheldrakean
 ideosphere.  Our  labors  are  unremitting  and  harsh,  as  we  prospect among
 uncharted territories of ideospace. To accuse us of theft is to demean our very
 existence!"  

 The rest of the interrogation went just as awkwardly, yielding nothing. Finally
 even the tenacity of K-mart wilted.  

 As we  were leaving,  my partner  turned to  the recumbent  CE's and said, "See
 y'all at Madame Muskrat's, boys!"  

 We headed  slowly toward  the exit,  while I  tried to  think of  another lead.
 Kitchener's smug look didn't help my concentration.  

 Then something from the Day-Lewis bio came back to me. The father's job.  

 I turned to Kitchener. "Who field-tested the Blankie?"  

 "Ah, that employee is currently on extended leave—"  

 "He is lying," said the Viper.  

 Pay dirt! K-mart jumped in.  

 "Allow me to read you your rights under the NU Treaty. You have the right to  a
 kibernetic counsel rated at Turing Level Five—"  

 Kitchener laughed  like a  man caught  with his  hand in  his pants  at a Amish
 church picnic. "Certainly you don't intend to arrest me for a mere slip of  the
 tongue, Officers?  
 
 What I meant  to say is  that the employee  in question had  to be fired  under
 prejudicial circumstances."  

 "What's the name? We'll want all your files on him. And what did he do?"  

 "His name . . .  Um, let me recall. Bert something. Bertrand Mayr."  

 "And why did you let him go?"  

 "Flagrant misuse and theft of corporate property."  

 "Precisely?"  

 Kitchener smoothed  his saurian  crest again.  "A small  matter of  sex. He was
 having sex with the product."  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 Sometimes I try to imagine what it  was like to live in reedpair times.  It was
 only last century, after all. A  lot of that cohort are still  actually hanging
 around, admittedly without many of  their original organs or neurons.  But even
 when talking with them, you can't really understand what their world was  truly
 like. One of the biggest puzzles is how they managed sex. They had to cope with
 deadly  venereal  diseases, intractable  neuroses,  fixed morphologies,  social
 condemnation of natural urges, and merely human sex-workers who offered  mostly
 heartless, perfunctory service due to their oppression and mistreatment.  

 Today,  gratuitous  venereal  diseases  have  been  extirpated.   (Deliberately
 inflicted ones are, of course, still a problem. I remember last year the tricky
 time we  had tracking  down the  perp spreading  neo-koro, the  penis-inversion
 plague.) The witch doctors of psychology have been replaced  
 
 by trope dosers. Malleable anatomy  is no longer destiny. Laws  finally reflect
 actual  desires (at  least in  the NU;  the situation  elsewhere varies).  And
 playpets bred and trained for their essential erotic functions come in a nearly
 infinite variety. (And humane treatment extends even beyond their useful stage.
 I understand that  their retirement ranches  offer a wide  range of crafts  and
 games.)  

 But despite all this,  you still get a  few hesomagari, the ''twisted  navels,"
 those full-blooded humans contrary or perverse enough to seek a fulfillment not
 socially sanctioned.  

 Such as Bert Mayr.  

 We had his files downloaded before we left Ixsys. And this was what we learned.  

 Mayr was  the son  of NU  citizens Rowena  and Boris  Mayr, ex-settlers who had
 retreated  in  failure from  the  hard life  on  board Aquarius,  the  floating
 arcology and  OTEC power  plant off  the coast  of Madagascar.  Their Lotto-won
 berths had gone to others when they fled back to Boston.  

 Boris had died here shortly after Bert's birth. Caught in the middle of a  turf
 war between the  Morgue Boys and  the Thai Guys  out in Charlestown,  where the
 mother still lived. She had never rebonded on a permanent basis.  

 Mayr  had grown  up to  be your  archetypical loner.  No friends,  no resident
 erotofiscal  partner, no  transient lovers.  Apparently, he  had followed  this
 solitary lifestyle ever since becoming fully enfranchised.  

 My cop's intuition  drew me a  picture of a  mama's boy, the  only token of his
 lost father, a coddled and fussed-over introvert.  
 
 In his  final year  of schooling,  Mayr had  shown aptitude  as a chromosartor.
 Given the standard Scios Nova cooker-splicer setup for twelve-year-olds, he had
 soon  modified it  with add-ons  purchased with  his pocket  money to  produce
 standalone entities up to the level  of annelids. He loved to hack  nucleotides
 and amino acids, perhaps  too much so. Legal  and moral boundaries appeared  to
 mean little to him.  He had almost gotten  expelled for the prank  of infesting
 the school's  showers with  nonreproductive hookworms.  He had  programmed them
 with only a thirty-day lifespan—but in that time they also secreted low  levels
 of psilocybin-analogues directly into the victim's gut.  

 When he had graduated, he found that his juvenile record of misdemeanors worked
 against him. No respectable peltsie would hire him as a chromosartor (at  least
 without  Mayr  consenting  to  a course  of  corrective  tropes,  a measure  he
 apparently rejected), for fear  of his dangerously irresponsible  attitude. The
 best  job he  could get  was field-testing  at Ixsys,  a position  he had  held
 unremarkably for the past decade.  

 "And then along came the Blankie," K-mart said, back at the office when we  had
 finished viewing the file.  

 "It must have triggered something latent in him. Or touched some active kink."  

 "Because he was the first to have  access to the Blankie, he came to  regard it
 as his personal property. He takes it home—Tara! You don't think Ixsys insisted
 he use it, do you?"  

 I shrugged. "That's what field-testing's all about."  

 "Shit! Thank Ishtar I work in  the adminisphere! Anyway, he gets hooked  on the
 Blankie, uses his skills to alter it  
 
 for  sex.  Then  when  Ixsys  finds out  and  fires  him,  he  goes suborbital,
 absconding with the product. Finally, he comes to resent anybody else who  owns
 one."  

 Nodding agreement,  I said,  "I think  we need  to pay  a little  visit to Peej
 Mayr."  

 "Should I sign out the Viper again?"  

 "No. A Bulldog."  

 A cocktail of canine, wolverine, hyena, and—of course—smattering of human,  the
 Bulldog was what we favored for  a one-perp pickup with low to  medium violence
 potential. (And Mayr's  MO, with its  kind of remote-control  aggro, led me  to
 suspect he  wouldn't resist  arrest.) Massing  only three-quarters  of a  basal
 human, the Bulldog was  capable of taking down  half a dozen nonmoddies  faster
 than you could say "Kreb's cycle."  

 In the car on the way to Mayr's last address, we got a bulletin.  

 Almost as if our  psychic attention on Mayr  had drawn him out,  there had been
 another Blankie incident.  This time the  vector for the  assault was a  family
 splice, a Dumbunni. Returning from  an errand, it had seemed  disoriented. Sent
 to its manger, it had wandered instead to the human nursery, where it was found
 gnawing  at the  Blankie with  its blunt,  newly venomous  teeth. Luckily,  the
 prodge was rescued before the Blankie began fibrillating.  

 "We've got to put  this guy away," K-mart  said, "or our personal  asses—not to
 mention the department's—will be so much feedstock. You've read the profile  of
 the average Blankie owner. He or she is a hardnosed, string-pulling plute who's
 not going to sit quietly for this."  
 
 "Agreed. But I'm actually more interested in the details of the perp's kink."  

 "Great. You can write it up later for the UPCM Journal. But we've got to  catch
 him first."  

 Mayr's last-known  residence turned  out to  be one  of those  old asymmetrical
 rhizomatic structures out  in Cambridge. The  bawab was a  doddering kibe whose
 split  casing  seams were  patched  with Radio  Shack  Silly Cement.  The  unit
 directed us to Mayr's flat, where our idents secured immediate entrance.  

 A stale  smell and  a layer  of dust  (the lowrent  place didn't even have self
 cleaning capabilities) told  us no one  had occupied the  rooms for at  least a
 month.  

 "Shit! Cold trail," K-mart said.  

 "Patience, patience. No telling what a search will turn up."  

 So while the Bulldog stood guard at the door, we began to go through the rooms.  

 I found  Mayr's porn  stash in  one of  the more  clever hideaways  I had  ever
 encountered. One portion of  the bumpy, seemingly dead  wall was in reality  an
 embedded modified  marine polyp  With very  good mimicry  features. It had taps
 into the residential structure's water veins, but apparently hadn't been fed in
 a while.  As I  was running  my fingers  over the  wall, the  polyp dropped its
 disguise, flexed open,  extruded tentacles, and  weakly attempted to  ingest my
 hand.  

 I yelped,  K-mart came  running, flashlight  in hand.  He lasered  the creature
 dead. Inside its still quivering husk were several datapins.  
 
 We dried  them and  popped them  into K-mart's  poqetpal. Images cohered. Right
 away I noticed something missing: the usual WTO official imprimatur: ALL MODELS
 ARE ENFRANCHISED CITIZENS OVER AGE TWELVE. Then I focused on the pictures.  

 Back in that reedpair time I had been recently speculating on, there had been a
 flourishing porn trade—conducted mostly in the old nation-state of  Japan—known
 as bura-sera. Images of young schoolgirls hoisting their skirts to reveal their
 simple, functional underwear. Sometimes this speciality extended to the sale of
 the underwear itself. Preferably soiled.  

 With the gradual lowering of the franchise to its current level, this trade had
 disappeared—merged, rather,  into the  mainstream. But  what K-mart  and I  now
 viewed reminded  me of  it and  was plainly  an offshoot  or descendent  of the
 burasera.  

 It was pix after pix of  diaper-clad individuals, ages ranging from newborn  to
 elderly.  There was  no actual  sex going  on that  would have  made the  pins
 contraband. But there was a lot of peeing and crapping.  

 K-mart was  disgusted. "This  stuff isn't  even illegal!  It's just stupid! Why
 would anyone murder over it?"  

 I shut off  the display. "You  got me, Kaz.  But if this  accurately represents
 Mayr's hardwiring, then you can see how the Blankie was like a match to  tinder
 for him. When Ixsys took it away from him, all he could think of was revenge."  

 Just then a bulletin came in. Another  Blankie taken out, this time by a  swarm
 of sweatbees. Luckily, no loss of human life.  
 
 "What next?" asked K-mart. "Maybe a talk with Rowena Mayr?"  

 "Sounds good. I think I'd like to ask her where she got her parenting license."  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 Rowena Mayr lived in an insensate building in a dismal neighborhood right below
 the Seraphim tracks. The super-fast train suspended from its overhead  monorail
 was relatively quiet. But the Boston-Montreal Express went by once an hour, and
 somehow you could feel its passage in your gut as it split the air.  

 The crumbling stoop outside Mayr's  building was occupied with dole-proles  and
 their nonschema prodges.  The adults were  drinking cheer-beers while  the kids
 were  playing  with those  cheap  trilobite pets  so  popular that  summer.  We
 garnered dirty looks as we  went in, but no one  tried to stop us. We  left the
 Bulldog by the entrance to forestall anyone sending up a warning.  

 As we approached the third floor door of Rowena Mayr's flat, I spotted K-mart's
 hand hovering near his flashlight.  

 I didn't know what to expect from Rowena Mayr, but it wasn't what appeared when
 the door finally opened to our knock.  

 Rowena Mayr was a  frazettatoid, member of a  highly egocentric group that  had
 splintered off  the old  Society for  Creative Anachronism.  Boris had probably
 been one too.  
 
 You didn't see  them around much  anymore, and I  was surprised there  were any
 left unretrofitted. No wonder the Mayrs hadn't felt comfortable in the spartan,
 utilitarian environment of Aquarius. . . .   

 Rowena had  had her  body sculpted  to resemble  one of  the impossible fantasy
 women  from  the canvases  of  her faction's  namesake  reed-pair artist.  Huge
 cantilevered  boobs,  a  waist  so  slim  it  must  have  involved  major organ
 displacement,  and  callipygian ass.  She  wore a  tiny  metal bra,  some  faux
 barbaric jewelry. From a fake gold chain  around her waist hung a few wisps  of
 colored silk.  

 She was such a self-contained, self-immersed, impossible creation that being in
 the same  room with  her was  like sharing  space with  an ancient  animatronic
 figure. I tried imagining having her as my mother. It was a major stretch.  

 "Yes, Officers. How can I help you?"  

 "It's about your son, Bert. Can we come in?"  

 "Certainly."  

 The  flat was  furnished in  High Conan.  We sat  on embroidered  cushions and
 explained the trouble her son had gotten himself into.  

 "Well, I feel  extremely bad for  Bertie. He was  always a good  boy and showed
 such promise. Red Sonia knows,  I did my best with  him! But I don't see  how I
 can help you now."  

 "He hasn't been in touch with you recently?"  

 "Not for years."  

 K-mart stood. "Mind if we have a look around?"  

 Rowena got hastily to her feet.  "Unless you have a warrant, I'm  afraid that's
 out of the question."  
 
 Nodding toward a closed door, K-mart said, "What's in there?"  

 "That's my shrine to  Dagon. Very innocent, I  assure you. But sacred.  Now, if
 you don't mind, Officers, I'd like to be alone—"  

 K-mart started to rap a string of antisense as he ambled about the room. "Oh, I
 was raised Dagonite, but I fell away. Haven't seen a shrine in ages. You  don't
 mind, do you?"  

 Before Rowena could stop him, K-mart had pulled the door open.  

 The Blankie was waiting.  

 It reared up  as tall as  a man and  twice as bulky,  a quivering blue  wall of
 cryptoflesh. Unlike what I knew about the small Blankies, this one radiated  an
 ammoniacal, fecal reek.  

 Bert had obviously been tweaking its parameters a little.  

 Before K-mart could  get his flashlight  up, the Blankie  fell forward on  him,
 wrapping him in its straitjacket embrace.  

 Rowena screamed. I  had my own  flashlight up, but  couldn't shoot for  fear of
 piercing the swaddled K-mart.  

 Something  barreled  past  me so  fast  and  hard it  spun  me  around. When  I
 recovered, I saw our Bulldog tangling  with the Blankie, all fangs and  talons.
 It zeroed in on a major ganglion, ripping it out in a bloody mess of dendrites.  

 The Blankie collapsed like an air-mattress that had sprung a leak.  

 I went to  help a slimed  K-mart up. Rowena  rushed past me  into the Blankie's
 room, shouting, "Bertie, Bertie, I tried to stop them!"  
 
 K-mart seemed shaken, but uninjured. "Tara!  I smell like the time I  fell into
 the family outhouse back in Kazakhstan!"  

 Flashlight in hand, I followed Rowena into the room.  

 But I needed no weapon to deal with little Berrie.  

 The fearsome  mastermind behind  the Blankie  murder lay  in an oversized Bayer
 cradle usually used  for burn victim  treatment, naked except  for an oversized
 cloth diaper. In one lax hand  was an Allelix sonic injector. From  the utterly
 wiped look on Bertie's  face, I could guess  that the injector had  been loaded
 with a probably irreversible dose  of Neonate Nine or some  other retrogressive
 synapse-disconnecting trope.  

 Rowena was kneeling by the cradle, weeping. Together, she and her son resembled
 some kind of tawdry, modern Pieta.  

 K-mart came up beside me, shaking his head. "Muy hesomagari."  

 I thought back to my own days as a mel-head. "But we've all got navels that can
 get twisted, Kaz. Leastwise, those of us born human."  

 On our way out, I came on the  Bulldog chewing up the evidence. In the heat  of
 the moment, its ancient instincts had overwhelmed its training.  

 I went to kick it, but changed my mind.  
 
 The Bad Splice  

 As if  blindly obedient  to one  of the  weirder plectic neothomist catastrophe
 figures,  my  life  seemed  to be  warping  itself  around  strange attractors,
 spiraling and darting up and down  cusps and caustics, pleats and furrows  that
 led to some unpredictable yet inevitable terminal boundary condition.  

 And the  worst part  was—I couldn't  tell if  on balance  I should be scared or
 glad.  

 Changes had swarmed through my life as thick as harvest thrips on a  cloth-tree
 during the  past few  months, enough  so as  to necessitate  a few  unscheduled
 sessions with Doctor Varela, my BP advisor.  I had thought I had seen the  last
 of that calm and erudite Behavioral Pragmatist after he had helped me over  the
 rough patch following my departure from the PI biz.  

 Since  joining  Boston's  branch  of  the  Protein  Police,  my  life  had been
 relatively simple  and undemanding,  despite the  quirks and  dangers of my new
 trade, and I had  felt no recent need  of beep counseling. But  lately all that
 had changed, leading Doctor Varela to nod and murmur sagely over my  condition,
 consult his snippets, and prescribe a course of  
 
 Biomet's  Angstaway paired  with Sciclone's  VivaciTee, as  well as  a general
 adrenergic booster. The tropes  seemed to be working,  although I still felt  a
 little off-parm.  

 But I was managing to cope well with quite a lot, I thought.  

 It had all started when the Big Brains in charge of the NU's Internal Recon and
 Security force (of  which the Protein  Police was a  division) had laid  down a
 couple of new ukases.  

 First,  there  were  to  be  no  more  human-human  teams.  We  were  just  too
 understaffed to permit such a luxury  to continue and would remain so  into the
 foreseeable future. What with the guaranteed prole-dole, the dwindling  numbers
 of  pure-gen,  fully enfranchised  humans,  and the  seductions  of virtuality,
 criminality,  and a  million sects,  cults, posses,  and sets  representing an
 infinite range  of hedonism,  nihilism, and  every ism  on the scale, potential
 candidates for  the force  were few  and far  between. (The  same was  true, of
 course, in  every branch  of the  NU adminisphere;  without kibes,  demons, and
 cocktails, the whole system would have suffered instant apoptosis.)  

 So all the old dual-human partnerships were split up. That meant I lost  K-mart
 Saunders, the most agreeable plug I had  ever worked with. In his place, I  was
 to choose between a var or a kibe. Well, since the death of my old var Hamster,
 I couldn't  really work  too closely  with the  splices and remain comfortable.
 That left the kibe.  

 The Turing Level Four kibes had just gone into general open-access  production.
 (The Level Fives, naturally, were  
 
 already up and running, but were  reserved exclusively for the use of  the IMF,
 World Bank, WTO, and  other ruling bodies of  the adminisphere, which liked  to
 stay one giant step ahead of the masses they governed. And of course the  Level
 Sixes were not far behind, close to finishing their semi-autonomous evolution.)
 The Toronto  HQ of  the Protein  Police had  just received  a month's  worth of
 shipments of Fours from the Bangalore macqui of Segasoft-TogaiMagic, and  these
 had been further distributed across the continent.  

 The kibe cores themselves  looked identical to and  had the same dimensions  as
 the  old  Level  Threes,  allowing  for  easy  retrofitting:  shiny featureless
 platters about as thick as  a stack of a dozen  ancient CD's. It was the  newly
 evolved qubitic  circuitry inside  that raised  their functioning  to a  higher
 level. As  for the  chassis that  would carry  the cores—well,  the force's own
 crada  had  come up  with  several new  models  specifically designed  for  law
 enforcement.  

 So my new partner became a synthetic, syncretic personality in a  mini-frisbee,
 capable of swapping bodies at will.  

 On top  of this  unsettling switch,  the Swellheads  had insisted  that all the
 humans on the force go in for a somatic upgrade. The mucky-mucks were tired  of
 losing  officers  to various  preventable  assaults. Baseline  bodies  were now
 considered insufficent to counter  the moddies of the  baddies. We had to  meet
 them head-on, match them in the arms (and legs and brains) race.  

 Like most people in all walks of  life, I had my share of implants  and add-ons
 and upgrades already: simple things that had helped me in my work, like sharper
 peripheral  
 
 vision, stronger bones, voluntary pain shunts. But unlike some bodyartists  and
 puzzlepluses, I  had never  gone in  for radical  modifications. What  was good
 enough for grandpooh was good enough for me. Now I was being told that I had to
 change or be dropped from the force.  

 Swallowing  my  trepidations and  instinctive  dislike of  being  bossed around
 (after  all, I  wasn't an  independent contractor  anymore), I  went into  the
 bodyshop.  

 I came out sheathed in flexible  imbricated skin like a pangolin's, its  plates
 chamois-soft to  the touch  yet capable  of turning  aside sharp  edges and low
 velocity projectiles. Additionally, my new integument from Calypte Biomed would
 react to the beam of a  flashlight by instantly altering its refractive  index.
 (I had once read  that the quickest basal  reaction in nature was  found in the
 jaws of a  certain ant, which  could snap closed  in a third  of a millisecond.
 Science had  considerably bettered  that.) I  had a  paralymphatic system  from
 Olympus Biotech that would aggressively  react to micro- and nano-invaders.  My
 arteries were reinforced  with CuraTech's neo-goretex,  my bones threaded  with
 Innovir's stonefiber. My heart had an onboard Hemazyne assist, as did my lungs.
 I had Agouron hyperflexure in  my fingers, increased haptic and  proprioceptive
 sensitivity, and certain  wetware enhancements from  BioCryst not available  to
 the general public.  Finally, I could  on short notice  generate several highly
 damaging  antipersonnel  cytokines  expressible  through  strategically  placed
 exocrine glands.  

 In short,  I was  now one  mean and  hyperefficient slagger  for the  forces of
 goodness and justice.  
 
 I was also on a half-dozen new tropes that allowed me to integrate my new  body
 image and sensory inputs.  

 It was just after this makeover that the final big change in my life occured.  

 I met Xuly Beth and fell in love.  

 Xuly Beth Vollbracht had been born in the Mercosur, grown up a gypsy waterbaby.
 Her parents, Rolf and Valentina, had managed a section of the Hidrovia,  roving
 up  and  down  that extensive  artificial  waterway,  supervising commerce  and
 maintenance, troubleshooting and policing. Educated  and trained as a noah  for
 the GEF, Xuly Beth  had been stationed at  various spots around the  world (she
 had  seen  parts  of   APEC,  CarriCom,  and  Scandibaltica),   monitoring  and
 remediating oceanic-atmospheric systems, before  ending up in the  Nova England
 bioregion.  

 We met at an official function hosted by the noahs to brief the Protein  Police
 on the latest rogue organisms we  could possibly expect to emerge from  runaway
 marine co-evolution. (Safe  as silicrobe technology  was supposed to  be, there
 were inevitable glitches.)  

 Luckily for me,  Xuly Beth was  far from repelled  by my altered  epidermis. It
 turned out that one of her first  lovers had been a fishboy from the  Hidrovia,
 and the experience had crystallized her taste for odd integuments.  

 Xuly Beth was the change in my life that tipped the scales toward gladness.  It
 was the first  time since my  wife walked out  on me that  I had a  functioning
 pair-bonding. It felt good.  

 And that feeling alone  should have been enough  to warn me that  something bad
 was about to fall right on my head like  
 
 one of Xuly Beth's programmed heavyrains out of the seemingly clear sky.  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 The first notice I had of trouble was the urgent patterned pinging of my flimsy
 one morning as I  sat at my desk.  I was on scheduled  fifteen-minute downtime,
 relaxing in a quasi-meditative state at  the focus of which was a  little token
 of her work Xuly Beth had given  me. In a clear cylindrical container about  as
 big as a pneumatic-tube message capsule, a self-sustaining miniature  silicrobe
 twister  ran  its  homeodynamic  contortions,  powered  only  by  sunlight. Its
 infinite  random  permutations  served  as  a  Taoist  exemplar  of mind-wiping
 potency.  

 But even the Tao  could not ultimately contend  against the earcon for  a Class
 One transmission. I resumed  my mind and voiced  the screen on. The  face of my
 immediate superior appeared.  

 Jo Priestly  looked nervous.  Not an  easy task  for a  woman who wore the ruff
 bordered head and  snouty-toothed face of  an oversized fringed  lizard. (I had
 seen perps faint during interrogation when she simply smiled.)  

 ''The cat's in town," she said.  

 "The Xuma Puma?" I asked, recalling the petty posse-leader I had more than once
 tangled with in the old days. "What's to worry?"  

 "I wish it was  only the XP. No,  I'm talking about the  one and only cat  that
 matters. Krazy Kat."  
 
 Now I knew why she looked worried. "I assume there's some java following for me
 to dethread. But maybe you could empeg it for me. . . . "  

 "You heard about Chicago? How the Kat nearly caused a Second Flood?"  

 "Sure. But I thought he screwed up.  Didn't he leave behind some cells for  the
 first time? All the public sniffers  should be programmed by now to  respond as
 soon as he slinks by."  

 "True, we've got his genome mapped, and that's more than we've ever had before.
 But it's not  good enough. The  Kat doesn't have  to go out  in public to cause
 mischief. He's got friends, allies, and sympathizers galore. And not just among
 the other splices either. There're lots of pure-gens who support the CLF—or  at
 least the nonviolent aspects  of their platform. Groups  such as the SPCC.  The
 Kat could easily stay holed up and still cause us yotta-shit. And don't  forget
 private transportation. The sniffers would  miss anyone in a car  with positive
 pressure seals.  No, we're  going to  have to  hit the  streets if  we hope  to
 forestall whatever deviltry the Kat's got  in his hat. Bone up, plug.  Then get
 out there and use your nose."  

 "Kakkoii," I said. "Cool  as the socket who  climbed into the Sack  and made it
 with the Farside storage ring."  

 The Chief was a member of the Shaker Revivalists and a doctrinaire  gone-gonad.
 Her  membranous  veined  ruff  flushed  an  agitated  crimson,  then  her  face
 disappeared. Another earcon sounded, and down invisible lines came the petafits
 on the Kat.  

 There was so much data it overflowed the flimsy's buffers. I released a  couple
 of my customized speculative  
 
 agents to work in background mode, setting them loose on what was known of  the
 Kat's MO. Then I settled down for  a long raster, grateful that some of  my new
 wetware allowed for dual-track processing.  

 Krazy Kat had been  born some ten years  ago in and into  frustration. His sire
 was a mullis  who went by  the gnomic name  of Doctor Radius.  At the time, Doc
 Radius was  a freelancer  under temp-bond  to Vivus-Neopath  and had  just been
 assigned to a  highly secretive project.  V-N had taken  an anonymous encrypted
 contract off the net  to develop a new  breed of cultivar according  to certain
 specs. The mosaic was to consist of 50 percent felidae of various germlines, 30
 percent  human,   10  percent   viverrine,  10   percent  miscellaneous  useful
 nucleotides.  Once  the  juvenile  splices  were  out  of  the  tanks,  as  yet
 unengrammed,  they  were  to   be  shipped  in  partial   stasis—without  human
 accompaniment—to an address that turned out  to belong to a dummy abe  fronting
 for the city government of Paris.  

 It turned out that the mayor of  that fine city had decided to secede  from the
 EC, after his decision  to make smoking mandatory  within city limits had  been
 quashed from on high.  (Tourism was down, and  the mayor felt that  if he could
 reimpose the retro ambiance of the city,  the crowds would flock back. . .  . )
 These new splices from V-N, all tooth and nail and cunning, were to be  trained
 and further bred as a corps  of mercenary soldiers, the backbone of  a Parisian
 self-defense force with which the mayor could enforce his secession.  

 Well, needless to say,  both the EC and  the WTO, among other  power centers of
 the adminisphere, frowned on such a  
 
 move and chose to express their displeasure most forcefully. (The ex-mayor  was
 due out of stasis in another  twenty years.) Upon discovering the plot,  before
 the splices were even shipped, the authorities  came down on V-N like a ton  of
 strange matter. The firm  was heavily fined, and  all the special splices  were
 ordered destroyed.  

 This did not sit well with Doc Radius. Like any devoted, obsessive,  manifestly
 brain-warped artist, he  had come to  regard the new  splices not as  mere work
 for-hire, but  as his  personal, beloved  magnum opus.  When the destruct order
 came down, Doc Radius managed to make  off with a single fetus. A secret  fetus
 not on the  original workorder, but  one he had  been tinkering with  as a side
 project, tweaking its parameters to his liking and esthetic sense.  

 This was the seed that was to blossom into Krazy Kat.  

 Raised in eccentric isolation  with only Doc R.  for a parental unit,  freed of
 the mandated dietary leashes or proprietary tattoons, Krazy Kat had turned into
 a dangerous monomaniac. As soon as  the Kat was mature enough to  reason, after
 about a year of accelerated and highly illegal trope dosing, he had fixated  on
 the admittedly high-handed and wanton  destruction of his fellow fetuses.  Only
 surviving member of his  aborted kind, the young  Kat had gone on  to study the
 conditions  under which  splices of  all types  served and  lived amidst  human
 society. What the Kat found apparently sent him over the edge. (And although  I
 myself  was certainly  no cocktail-sucker,  I had  to admit  that some  of the
 excesses and abuses documented here and elsewhere were nauseating.)  
 
 At the age of five, Krazy Kat  adopted the name by which the whole  world would
 soon know him and  took a vow. He  would devote his life  to liberating splices
 everywhere, waging a no-holds-barred campaign to make their "slavery" obsolete,
 too costly for human society to sustain.  

 Thus was born the Cultivar Liberation Front.  

 All  this  information  had  come to  light  shortly  after  Krazy Kat's  first
 unexpected and initially inexplicable terrorist excursion, the slaughter of the
 board of directors of Hedonics Plus  at their yearly meeting in Geneva.  In the
 ensuing worldwide  hunt for  clues, the  Tijuana branch  of the  Protein Police
 found  Doc  Radius's  trashed  lab,  as  well  as  the  Doc  himself, similarly
 lifelessly trashed. (At the time I had still been a loner PI, without access to
 this  hush-hush  information.)  Seemingly,  Radius  had  made  the  mistake  of
 objecting to all or  some of his progeny's  plans and had gotten  just what all
 humans deserved in the  Kat's eyes. And although  the Kat had thoroughly  lysed
 all  biomatter  samples  connected to  his  person,  he had  not  been  able or
 concerned  enough to  wipe all  the audiovideo  material the  Doc had  lovingly
 accumulated over the years.  

 I studied a  still shot of  the mature Kat:  over two meters  tall, tailed, one
 hundred kilos  of rippling  muscles under  a tawny,  nonbasal-striped pelt. His
 face was a sexy, oddly alluring, highly intelligent mix of panther, civet,  and
 human features, marred only by what I intuited was a permanent sneer calculated
 to reveal a glint of sharp ivory teeth.  

 My speculative agents  popped to the  surface, shattering the  Kat's image with
 their signature metagrafix swirls. They  
 
 had no insights into what Boston could  expect from the Kat, if he were  indeed
 in town. He seemed  never to repeat himself,  had no favored tactics  or, ahem,
 catspaws, being willing to strike anywhere, anytime, through or at anyone.  

 I  dismissed the  snippets and  summoned my  partner, knowing  the kibe  would
 already have assimilated the same data, in a fraction of the time. Waiting  for
 it  to  arrive, I  studied  the swirling,  captured  tornado in  its  tube. The
 microweather's patternless  patterns seemed  to mock  the chaos  around me. But
 paradoxically, the border of chaos and stasis was where life flourished. . . .   

 My partner arrived.  

 (The Turing Level  Four kibes came  with a curious  legal codicil. Just  as any
 fully enfranchised individual was legally responsible for the actions of his or
 her immaterial agents and  demons, shards and partials,  so was any owner  of a
 TL4 ultimately accountable for its  words and deeds. Mostly, corporations  bore
 the legal brunt; but among the  Protein Police, the burden had devolved  to the
 cops  themselves,  as   a  cost-cutting  measure.   If  my  TL4   did  anything
 contrasocial, it was my  ass on the line.  It was a big  responsibility, almost
 like having a prodge. So I called my partner "Sonny.")  

 Today Sonny was wearing a Hexcel  Enforcer chassis: a body with an  armature of
 stonefiber bones, buckytube circulatory system, muscles crafted of imipolex and
 resilin,  hide  of  super-sharkskin,  distributed  co-ganglia.  Looking  like a
 lumbering grey rubbery  giant, the chassis  boasted a neckless  human-like head
 with mock sensory inputs  designed to draw the  deadly fire of any  perp stupid
 enough to attempt an  
 
 assault on such a monster. The real audiovisual-chemo sensors were concealed at
 various points around the body, as was assorted weaponry. Slotted safely behind
 a tough protective abdominal panel was the kibe platter itself.  

 Sonny spoke in a pleasant tenor voice that seemed to emerge from its armpit.  

 "I assumed from the data that  there was a certain need for  overwhelming force
 in dealing with the renegade splice. Was I in error, Peej?"  

 "No, not in error. But maybe just a wee bit premature."  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 After  convincing  Sonny  to  change  into  a  relatively  inconspicuous,  less
 alarmingly  destructive  chassis  (a  BASF  mechanical  model  nicknamed   "the
 Washtub"), we hit the streets.  

 I  had a  destination in  mind: the  offices of  the SPCC.  Chief Priestly  had
 mentioned them. They were an obvious source of potential coconspirators for the
 Kat, but I was almost certain that I'd get nothing out of them. But frankly, it
 was the only lead I had.  

 Walking  through  Boston's  noisy,  hormone-hot  streets,  breathing  the clean
 exhaust of tuktuks, I tried to do as the Chief had directed and use my putative
 crime-sensitive nose.  

 Detouring down an alley  off Arlington, I surprised  a pack of scavenger  kibes
 trying to break into the Sinochem  Humpty Dumpster behind a bodyshop. The  pack
 of owner-less runaway kibes needed  certain organics for their maintenance  and
 frequently resorted to theft, as well as begging.  
 
 They must have disabled the  Dumpster's flee-and-shriek circuits, for it  could
 only rock back and  forth in place and  hoot dismally as they  attempted forced
 entry into its separation chambers.  

 Before I  could react,  Sonny was  barreling through  the pack, scattering them
 left  and  right.  A battered,  unsteady  nutraceutical  dispenser marred  with
 letterbomb graffiti toppled over, spinning its wheels uselessly. The rest fled.  

 Sonny extruded a snaky tentacle and found a socket on the crippled machine.  He
 jacked in, and the renegade dispenser died.  

 "Another societal  parasite terminated,"  Sonny declaimed  with a  trace of TL4
 pride.  

 "Yeah, great. Come on, Judge Dredd, we've got bigger fish to fry."  

 "Metaphor?"  

 I sighed. Just like having a kid. "Yes."  

 "Filed."  

 After a stop at an open-air tolkuchki  so that I could grab a snack  of biltong
 and camu camu fruit, we reached the  Stuart Street offices of the NGO known  as
 the Society for the  Prevention of Cruelty to  Cultivars. After fencing with  a
 wary human receptionist, I was admitted  into the offices of the director,  one
 Peej Jane Grahame-Ballard.  

 Grahame-Ballard was a small woman whose skull was capped with pink pinfeathers.
 Clad entirely in shiny nonorganics,  she was an obvious Carbaquist  Reverencer,
 like 99 percent  of the SPCC.  She regarded me  with a look  such as an elderly
 splice must display when confronted with the  
 
 knacker: a mix of  fear, contempt, and hatred.  In her wall cycled  a silicrobe
 animation of a charming prodge and  studly plug: scion and mate. I  wondered if
 she'd offer to introduce them to Krazy Kat.  

 "Peej Grahame-Ballard," I said with all the respectful gravity I could  muster,
 after flashing my  credentials, "we have  reason to believe  that the terrorist
 splice known as Krazy Kat has fled to our bioregion after the recent  thwarting
 of his  plans in  Chicago. Specifically,  to the  metroplex area.  The Unit for
 Polypeptide Classification and Monitoring is counting on the cooperation of all
 your members in the hunt for the criminal. Should the cultivar in question make
 any attempt  to contact  your organization—should  you even  so much  as hear a
 rumor regarding that individual—we insist that you immediately notify us."  

 Grahame-Ballard had  been doing  a slow  burn during  my speech  and now boiled
 over. "Of course! So you can rush out and kill him! Without even a pretence  of
 justice!"  

 "Justice is a word that applies  only to the enfranchised, Peej. Need  I remind
 you that for  splices, we have  a parallel, neatly  graduated system of  rules,
 rewards,  and punishments,  all formulated  scientifically over  many years  by
 experts with efficiency and utilitarianism in mind. Owners are constrained from
 cruelty, abuse, and overwork, while  splices are guaranteed food, shelter,  and
 meaningful employment."  

 "It's slavery, pure and simple!"  

 "A word  that has  no application  to any  being other  than a human, Peej. The
 transgenics are  property, plain  and simple,  just like  baseline milk cows or
 sheep."  
 
 "Creatures with up to forty-nine percent human genes are property?"  

 "I didn't make the laws, Peej. I just enforce them."  

 She snorted. "And  as for abuses—why,  I could show  you the records  of things
 that would  penetrate even  that armored  skin of  yours and  make your  stupid
 failsafe heart go into fibrillation!"  

 I thought about some of the things I had seen. "I sincerely doubt that, Peej."  

 "Every one of us should be ashamed  to participate in such a system! Don't  you
 ever feel ashamed?"  

 "Not when I'm doing my job, Peej."  

 Realizing she was getting nowhere  with me, Grahame-Ballard seemed to  deflate.
 "And your job now is  to find and execute a  noble creature who is plainly  the
 moral and ethical and sentient equal of you or me. . . . "  

 "Peej," I said, trying to keep calm,  "you have not seen the bloody results  of
 that 'noble creature's' brutal actions. I have."  

 "And who made him what he is? Mankind!"  

 I got wearily to my feet. "Peej, the Kat is one bad splice.  

 I advise you to use a long spoon when you dine with him."  

 "There are no bad splices, only bad owners."  

 "If you say so."  

 Back  on  the  street  I was  silent  for  a  while, letting  Grahame-Ballard's
 rifkinesque memes percolate uneasily through my cortex.  

 After  a few  blocks, Sonny  said, "We  will now  be staking  out Peej  Grahame
 Ballard? Perhaps you have surrepetitiously planted dustcams on her already?"  
 
 ''What makes you say that?"  

 "Plainly you intend to catch her dining with Krazy Kat."  

 I had to replay the conversation in my head.  

 "Metaphor," I sighed.  

 "Thank you."  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 I met Xuly Beth that night in Hopcroft's Cockaigne.  

 In reality, of course, I was back in our apartment in Boston and she was off on
 assignment somewhere up in the  Arctic, twiddling with icebergs or  glaciers or
 some other such pleasantly nonsentient  and tractable phenomenon. We made  it a
 point when  she was  in the  field to  meet at  least four  times a week at one
 virtuality site or another. Our current favorite was Hopcroft's Cockaigne, with
 its  candy  mountains  and sodapop  rivers,  peppermint  trees and  cottoncandy
 clouds. (Although I couldn't  imagine coming here much  more: not only was  the
 construx starting to reveal its shallowness, but lately it reminded me too much
 of the strange reality humanity was making of baseline Earth!)  

 We were wearing our actual appearances,  since we saw too little of  each other
 lately to be bored by our real shapes and faces. A privacy filter insured  that
 we  were alone,  despite the  possibility that  thousands of  others might  be
 wandering the same construx.  

 Sitting next to  me on a  bonbon rock soft  as a sofa,  Xuly Beth was finishing
 telling me about her day. "—so if this latest remediation works as well as  the
 simulations project, the  
 
 average sea level should start to drop by a quarter-inch per year! Why, we  can
 probably start to repopulate Bangladesh by the next decade!"  

 "Uh-huh, great . . . "  

 Xuly Beth  brushed back  her pastel-green,  metal-threaded hair  from her brow,
 revealing  twin barometric  bumps. Together  with her  current skin  choice of
 blocky  maculations,  the bumps  conjured  up the  image  of a  gawky,  lovable
 juvenile giraffe.  

 "You haven't heard a word I've said, have you?"  

 "I'm sorry, Jewely-Xuly, really,  I am. It's just  that this business with  the
 Kat is itching me  worse than a dose  of cryptoshingles. It's not  like dealing
 with your average criminal, some two-fit holopero or leeson. There, you've  got
 someone embedded in a societal matrix.  You generally have a good idea  of what
 such a person wants and how he'll go  about getting it. But the Kat is a  loner
 with no  goal other  than to  cause as  much disruption  as possible.  He could
 strike anywhere, anytime!"  

 "And doubting yourself like this is going to solve the case?"  

 "No, I guess not. . . . "  

 Xuly Beth  donned a  look of  concentration, fingering  her meteorological head
 bumps in the way  she had when she  was really puzzling something  out. After a
 minute or so she said, "How can  the Kat cause trouble? By himself, with  a gun
 or a bomb, he's just another lone mucker. If he wants maximal damage, he's  got
 to involve  others. In  Chicago he  had to  co-opt that  posse, the Roaches, to
 carry out his plans. Even if  
 
 he wants to release some deadly vector into the general population, he's got to
 find someone to batch it for him. He's no crick or watson himself, is he?"  

 "No, not as far as I know. . . . "  

 "So if you  just start shaking  down all the  criminal sources of  such things,
 you're bound to run into a signal that leads back to the Kat!"  

 I let  out a  sigh rather  more hopeful  than not.  "You're right, of course. I
 should have thought  of that angle  myself. Nothing's hopeless.  I guess I  was
 just letting  the magnitude  of the  case get  me down.  Plus someone  I had to
 interview today said some things that made me wonder why I do what I do."  

 Xuly Beth  stood up.  "I knew  it. You're  just not  thinking straight  because
 you're missing your little weather-girl. Well, she has just what you need. .  .
 . "  

 Xuly Beth disappeared, exiting the construx without even using a popup menu. In
 a few seconds she was back.  

 "I'm in my Sack, dear."  

 I didn't need to have my arm—or any other body part—twisted.  

 Breaking my neurolink to the telecosm, I found myself back in Boston. I took my
 Sack out of its maintenance rack, tickled it open, and climbed in.  

 You could  have a  strictly neuro-induced  orgasm in  virtuality, but  for some
 strange reason—maybe lesser bandwidth,  maybe something to do  with sheldrakean
 fields—it just wasn't identical with a Sack-administered full-body experience.  
 
 Back in Cockaigne, Xuly Beth and I went into a naked-bodied clinch, fell to the
 ground, and began to tear up the  turf. Back home and in the Arctic,  two Sacks
 were thrashing.  

 I was sure that if the Unit for Polypeptide Classification and Monitoring  knew
 that a side-effect of the somatic up-grade they insisted I have was  heightened
 orgasms, they would have deducted something from my pay.  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 When  the break  finally came,  it wasn't  precisely from  the criminal  front.
 Rather, it was from an allied set of outcasts, self-exiled eccentrics  despised
 by the majority of consensusmemed, post-reedpair citizens.  

 The Incubators.  

 The Incubators had figured in a previous case of mine, when I was still  paired
 with K-mart. A  new blight that  affected only third-generation  pumptrees from
 Hybritech had sprung up, and we  suspected that the Incubators might have  been
 somehow  responsible  for  it.  They had  never  exhibited  any  such terrorist
 inclinations before,  but like  most despised  minorities, they  were perpetual
 suspects whenever anything went wrong.  

 Since the metro relied on pumptrees  and their enormous taproots for its  water
 supply, there was immense pressure from the adminisphere to crack the case.  So
 K-mart and I came down rather hard on the Incubators at the time. And what  was
 worse, the misfits had been proven innocent, the  
 
 cause of the new plague eventually being traced to a mutant smut that was  able
 to prey on hematic vegetation.  

 So when, a few days after Xuly Beth and I had had our morale-boosting talk  and
 telefuck, an anonymous demon showing only bland metagrafix delivered a tip that
 the Incubators had recently done a big job for a secretive client, I was  aware
 I wouldn't be welcomed back with open arms.  

 But I was used to that.  

 Sonny was wearing  a Boston Scientific  chassis shaped like  a small tank  with
 multiple tentacles and  spray nozzles. I  knew the unit  was effective, but  it
 looked ridiculous. Not that  I cared, since the  possibility of a real  lead at
 last had me higher than a dose of Kiss-the-sky.  

 "Hey, Dalek," I said, "let's go visit some pariahs."  

 Sonny lumbered after me. "Certainly, Doctor What."  

 "That's 'Who.'"  

 "The advantages inherent  in the fuzzy  logic circuits of  a Turing Level  Four
 device  necessarily  involve  the  ability to  compromise  data  in  a creative
 manner."  

 The Incubators had  taken over an  abandoned antique petroleum  storage tank on
 the waterfront. The property was currently contested and in limbo, as the legal
 mess from the collapse  of the petroleum industry  was still being sorted  out,
 some decades after the fall. Sooner or  later, the new owners would find a  use
 for the land and the squatters would  be kicked out. But right now, it  was all
 theirs.  

 At the  makeshift sphincter  door in  the side  of the  tank facing the harbor,
 Sonny and I paused. "Stay out here and watch my back," I told the kibe.  
 
 "An  instruction  with contradictory  semantics  which I  am  fully capable  of
 rationalizing."  

 I shook my head ruefully.  

 Cleaned up with Transcell Scrubbing Bubbles, the inside of the tank bore little
 residual scent. What it did smell like was a combination of mold, decay,  dirty
 bandages, and sick breath.  

 And one additional, puzzling underscent that I couldn't quite place, even  with
 my enhanced senses.  

 Dimly lit by scattered bioluminescent globes stuck here and there from floor to
 domed  ceiling,  the  interior  of  the  tank  was  filled  with  a   mockcoral
 scaffolding.  

 From the organically fractal scaffolding hung the Incubators, in their  various
 slings and cocoons, like basal gypsy-moth larvae in their tents.  

 I boosted my vision,  but couldn't spot anyone  down at my level.  So I shouted
 up, "Protein Police! Is Smallpox here?"  

 There was no answer, but I saw  a shifting among the calcite girders. A  figure
 began to descend.  

 A lot of  the members of  the Incubators were  immobilized by their  perpetual,
 modified, nonconsuming diseases. That's why I had called for Smallpox, who  had
 been one of the relatively active ones last time. (They were all noncontagious,
 though.  Their propathogen  ideology, however  dogmatic, didn't  extend to  the
 point where they would have provoked a martyring backlash from the public.)  

 At last the climbing figure reached the floor and began to approach, limping in
 rags. I could see that it was indeed the riddled and cratered Smallpox.  
 
 "What  do  you  want?"  the pathogen-host  demanded.  "Can't  you  just let  us
 cultivate our  smallchain, low-gnomic  refugees in  peace? Isn't  it bad enough
 that  you  high-gnomic imperialists  have  wiped the  globe  clean of  so  many
 innocent  invisible lifeforms?  Do you  have to  persecute our  pitiful rescue
 mission too?"  

 "Listen, Smallpox, I don't care what  you and Leprosy and Syphilis and  Measles
 and Mumps and Polio and all the rest of your sick crew do with your own  lives.
 But  when  I  hear  that  you might  be  supplying  contaminants  to  a bigtime
 terrorist, that's when you've crossed the line."  

 Smallpox cringed. "We didn't supply anybody with anything."  

 "Oh, no? That's not what I heard."  

 Smallpox turned to leave. "Go away," he muttered. "You can't prove anything."  

 I grabbed the small man by his rags, picked him up, and stuck my face into  his
 raddled visage.  

 "Listen, my friend—how would you like to be cured?"  

 Smallpox blanched. "You—you wouldn't!"  

 "Try me."  

 "You murderer!" He began to kick. "All right, put me down, I'll talk."  

 I did, but kept alert for any funny moves.  

 "We have to earn a little eft somehow, you know," Smallpox began to whine. "And
 not  many people  will deal  with us.  So when  we were  approached with  this
 assignment, we could hardly refuse.  And besides, it was a  technical challenge
 right up our alley."  
 
 "How's that?"  

 "This character—now, understand, I never  actually saw him, so I  couldn't know
 he was a baddie—kibes conducted the whole business—anyway, this plug wanted  us
 to create a fast-acting, orally administered prion-based vector that would take
 up residence in the thalamus and upset the Llinas function."  

 I couldn't believe my ears. The Llinas function was the evolutionarily designed
 means whereby the thalamus, the  brain's master clock, bound all  sensory input
 and  cortical  responses  into  a  coherent  second-by-second  gestalt  of  the
 universe. Even the big cricks hesitated to mess with such a core function.  

 "You're telling me that you've created  an agent that will basically destroy  a
 person's timebinding facility?"  

 "More  or less.  But all  lifeforms are  equal, and  the prions  will flourish
 without actually killing their hosts."  

 Sonny must have been  reading my vital signs  and detected my nervous  concern,
 because he burst in like a mechanical octopus.  

 "Peej, what's to be done?"  

 "Wrap 'em."  

 Sonny's nozzles came alive, and  within thirty seconds the Incubators  were all
 enmeshed  in sticky  tangles. I  called for  a pickup  and relayed  what I  had
 learned to Chief Priestly.  

 And that was the end of the easy part.  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 The entire complement of the UPCM, as well as hundreds of representatives  from
 a dozen other bioregional and continental  
 
 agencies, were now on the track of the Kat. The next day, after receiving Chief
 Priestly's faint praise  (and implied condemnation  for not somehow  suspecting
 the Incubators sooner), I, too, was back on the streets.  

 The night of my discovery, I had met Xuly Beth in Cockaigne for what felt  like
 the last time. The  candyland had never seemed  shallower. Postsex, as we  were
 silently resting, she said, "Be careful, won't you?"  

 "Sure. Don't I have Sonny to watch over me?"  

 She laughed.  "Turing is  spinning in  his grave!"  Growing serious, she asked,
 "You still carry a poqetpal, even after your upgrades, right?"  

 "Of course. It's always smart to have a backup connection to the metamedium."  

 Xuly Beth fingered her bumps. "Good, good . . . "  

 The  Incubators  had all  been  thoroughly interrogated  without  revealing any
 further clues about  where Krazy Kat  was hiding. Sonny  and I explored  a half
 dozen random possibilities without success. And all the time, something in  the
 back of my mind was tickling my efferents.  

 Back at HQ, I took precious downtime to stare at the tornado-mandala.  

 And that's when it surfaced.  

 The odd scent in the tank.  

 I recognized it at last.  

 It was the scent of the Mats.  

 "Holy loas!" I said. "Sonny, come on!"  

 I didn't tell  anyone where I  was going, in  case it turned  out to be  a wild
 virus chase.  
 
 And as Doctor Varela  would later show me,  maybe I unconsciously wanted  a one
 on-one confrontation with the creature who had caused me so much frustration.  

 The UPCM kept a boathouse on the harbor. I signed out a swath—small  waterplane
 area twin hull—and was soon zipping out to sea at a good speed.  

 "We checked out the Mats when our assignment was first given," protested Sonny,
 wearing a Hughes chassis today that resembled a multilegged Hallucinagenia  out
 of the Burgess Shale.  

 "I know. But that's not to say that Krazy Kat wasn't elsewhere then, and on the
 Mats now."  

 "Possibly. I wish  I had been  able to confirm  your hunch as  to the origin of
 that smell."  

 "There was no time. Do you want to risk having those prions loosed on the human
 populace?"  

 "Then kibes would rule Boston."  

 I stared at the robot, but on this model there was no expression to interpret.  

 "A joke. Of the type that partners make to each other."  

 "Oh. Ha-ha."  

 It took an  hour to reach  the Mats, out  around the Georges  Bank, but I could
 smell them before I could see them.  

 The  vast collection  of cyanobacteria  and diatoms  carpeted several  thousand
 square  kilometers  of sea,  looking  like a  mushy  ectoplasmic rug,  floating
 meatloaf. Source of multipurpose biomass, home to a flourishing ecology of both
 basal and biofabbed useful and  edible creatures, the Mats were  cultivated for
 humanity by special-purpose, low-intelligence kibes.  
 
 One or more of which the Kat must have subverted and sent to do his bidding.  

 At the  landward edge  of the  Mats, a  small floating  station anchored to the
 seafloor served  the rare  human visitors:  an OTEC  power plant,  a beacon, an
 emergency habitat.  

 We docked. I wasn't attempting to be quiet, since there was nowhere for the Kat
 to go or hide.  

 ''Watch the boat," I told Sonny.  

 "Until otherwise needed."  

 I climbed onboard the gently rocking deck of the lonely, midocean outpost.  

 In the north,  I could see  curious stormclouds massing  in a previously  clear
 sky. But I couldn't  spare any thought or  attention for the weather.  My whole
 being was attuned to picking up the presence of the Kat. But so far, nothing.  

 That was why I was so surprised when, as I approached one side of the platform,
 his paw burst from the water and clamped around my ankle.  

 He yanked,  I went  down, but  not in,  as I  grabbed onto a stanchion. Feeling
 resistance, the Kat exploded out of the  water and onto the deck. He kicked,  I
 rolled, found my feet, and confronted him in a fighter's crouch.  

 "Sonny!" I yelled.  

 "Coming, Pee—" said the kibe.  

 Then there was a splash.  

 Two harvesters had  clambered aboard the  swath and dumped  Sonny overboard. My
 partner had gone to swim with the fishes. And he couldn't swim.  

 That left me and the Kat.  
 
 I suppose  I should  have been  honored to  be one  of the  few humans  ever to
 directly confront the legendary splice. But instead I was scared into almost  a
 Blankie-wearing state. After the way he had so easily brought me down, I had to
 run an emergency mantra just to stay cool.  

 Even dripping  wet, fur  plastered to  his noble  body, ears  flattened to  his
 skull, Krazy  Kat looked  every bit  the Byronic  antihero. There was something
 regal and wild about him and, I could see how his image had captivated so  many
 to his doomed cause.  

 "Give it up, Kat, and I promise you won't get hurt," I bluffed.  

 His voice mixed purr and snarl, his whiskers twitched. "No, just imprisoned and
 reviled, made to kiss my inferior's boots!"  

 "Better to live than to die."  

 "Not on those terms!"  

 "Your call," I said, then held my palm  out to him in a gesture like a  traffic
 kibe's.  

 Antipersonnel spray—blistering, blinding, stifling—lanced out from my  exocrine
 glands and caught the Kat in the face.  

 Roaring, he launched himself at me despite  the pain. We hit the plates, and  I
 felt  his  teeth in  my  neck, piercing  my  imbricated skin.  My  grip on  his
 shoulders meant nothing to him.  

 I guessed I was about to find out how good neo-goretex veins were.  

 Things started to get black, and I thought my vision was going.  
 
 But it turned out to be the clouds above.  

 And as I looked in disbelief, all hell broke loose.  

 Lightning, thunder, rain in buckets, then the final punch: a microburst of wind
 similar to the kind  that could and had  leveled whole tracts of  forest in pre
 GEF days.  

 The Kat and I  were sluiced off the  bucking station and into  the sea. Beneath
 the waves, I  finally managed to  break his hold—or  did he release  me? In any
 case, I was free.  

 I fought my way to the surface There was no sigh of the Kat.  

 Instead there was a fleet of approaching  swaths, into one of which I was  soon
 unceremoniously hauled.  

 We searched  for the  Kat with  eyes and  instruments and  remotes for  several
 hours, but of that bad, bad splice there  was no sign. He had gone to feed  the
 hungry sea, or perhaps not. Though escape seemed impossible.  

 Before we  left, we  even managed  to track  clown Sonny  and raise it from the
 ocean floor. The kibe had been heading  back on the bottom under its own  power
 and probably would have made it, if its brick hadn't run down.  

 The first call  I took after  getting patched up  was from Chief  Priestly, who
 dished out her usual mix of puffery and abuse.  

 The second one was from Xuly Beth.  

 "Isn't Global Positioning wonderful?" she said, joyfully teary-eyed.  

 "And aren't I lucky to have a friend in high places?"  

 "The stratosphere, to be precise," said Xuly Beth.  
 
 McGregor  

 1. The Tale of Peter Rabbit  

 Peter Rabbit stubbed out his cigarette on the rock upon which he sat, sent  the
 dead butt spinning with a flick of a stubby claw, and sighed.  

 It was night. The fragrant country air around him carried cleanly the noises of
 noncultivar life, poignant cries, lonely calls, sly rustlings.  

 Frogs, but no Jeremy Fisher.  

 Owls, but no Mr. Brown.  

 Badgers, but no Tommy Brock.  

 Hedgehogs, but no Mrs. Tiggywinkle.  

 These, his fellow splices, were penned, not free to roam as was he.  

 Peter reached  up to  the tip  of one  long ear,  the left.  That ear  had been
 illegally docked two years ago,  shortly after Peter's escape from  the Garden.
 This had been  the only way  to remove the  silicrobe owner-tattoon, the  Warne
 licensing mark, which had been injected at the Schering-Plough biofab facility,
 on behalf of McGregor's gembaitch,  
 
 before Peter was shipped. Afterwards, the ear had been regenerated. But the new
 part had always  felt foreign. Peter  had a tendency  to finger it  when he was
 nervous, as he was now.  

 His perch was high on a hill in the Lake District, near the village of  Sawrey,
 in the western bioregion of the European Community. Below, the village was  lit
 by the delicate glow of low-photonic  reradiants. To the south Peter could  see
 the grounds of the Beatrix Potter epcot, otherwise known as the Garden.  

 How long ago his life there seemed. . . .  He had spent only thirteen months in
 the Garden, but it had felt like forever. The silly skits, the gawping EC,  NU,
 and  CoPro  tourists,  the  tasteless  food—Through  kinky  proteins  or  rebel
 peptides, he had found himself totally unfit for his servitude.  

 The two years—a fifth of his warrantied lifespan—since his flight into the arms
 of the CLF had been packed with activity. On death's very doormat from lack  of
 diet-supplements, he had stumbled  upon the London nucleus  of the CLF just  in
 time. After  the docking  and the  standard course  of trope-training  and soma
 toning, he had been ready to play his part in transgenic liberation.  

 He had participated  in the infamous  Corrida de la  Muerte massacre in  Madrid
 during the  first part  of '31.  He had  helped slag  the board of directors of
 Hedonics Plus, the greedy human prokes,  at their annual meeting in Geneva.  He
 had been trapped in a shootout with  the Brazz branch of the IMF police  in the
 Jibaro maximall, barely escaping with his life. He had even assisted the  CLF's
 leader, the legendary Bad  
 
 Splice, Krazy Kat, in  Chicago, as they sought  to turn the Big  Eaters against
 the municipality.  

 In short, Peter had lived a full life in the past two years. The things he  had
 seen and done had made him a hardened rabbit.  

 Yet now, contemplating the notion of facing McGregor again, remnants of his old
 factory conditioning surfaced, nearly rendering him helpless as a kit.  

 He had asked for this assignment. But that didn't mean he had to relish it.  

 Peter reached inside the pocket of his tarnished-brass-buttoned blue coat for a
 dose of angst-banger and swallowed it  dry. Tugging at a whisker, he  sought to
 focus his mind  on the task  at hand. As  the renegade splice  watched, the big
 holosign outside the epcot winked out, and the last tourbus skimmed off.  

 Now the only  human (mere 51  percenter that he  was, he still  legally merited
 that status) left in the Garden was McGregor.  

 Now McGregor would begin to indulge in the "perks" of his position.  

 Now the splices had cause to fear.  

 Peter repressed his anger at the thought of what would be starting down in  the
 Garden at  this moment.  The blocker  was kicking  in, and  it helped him to be
 calm. He could not enter the Garden until McGregor retired for the night,  some
 hours from now. Till then, there was nothing to do but wait.  

 Peter lit up another cigarette.  
 
 Filthy human habit.  

 But he would never live long enough to get cancer.  

 2. The Tale of Two Bad Mice  

 McGregor leaned on his  cane, waving to the  departing tour-bus in his  creaky,
 lovable-irascible, old farmer way. When it had rounded the curve, he verbed off
 the holosign.  

 Then he straightened.  

 Standing erect, McGregor no longer radiated an air of cantankerous decrepitude.
 He seemed to bulk out, filling his suit of simulated brown homespun with  limbs
 and torso powerful as one of the Deere-Goldstar autoharvesters that reaped  the
 surrounding fields.  The big  white beard  cascading to  his shirtfront  looked
 completely incongruous now, as did his spectacles and cane.  

 Of a sudden, with an uncanny howl, McGregor tossed his cane skyward. It  soared
 higher than the chimney  pots on Hill Top  Farmhouse. Off came the  glasses and
 beard, as well  as the clothes  and hat. (The  animatronic beard crawled  a few
 inches, then halted.)  

 Revealed was a body  whose torso was plated  ventrally and dorsally with  tough
 overlapping armadillo-like scales. McGregor's  arms and legs were  wrapped with
 muscle, like those  of a dock-ape.  His skull was  hairless; silicrobe patterns
 pulsated just  under the  scalp, synced  electro-myographically with  his extra
 cortical matter. His genitals, retractable, were hidden.  

 McGregor spun to face the darkened barn.  
 
 "Your act died today!"  

 There was no sound from the barn. Only a subliminal emotional quivering  seemed
 to emanate in cold waves from the structure.  

 McGregor stalked to the splices' after-hours residence.  

 He banged the big door open.  

 The inside of the old-fashioned structure, which was not part of the tour,  was
 one  large open  space walled  and floored  with seamless  arbo-poly, for  easy
 cleaning. D-compoz waste units stood out  in the open in one corner.  Cots were
 placed  dormitory-style  along the  walls,  each with  a  small footlocker  for
 whatever personal possessions the splices had been allowed to accumulate: curry
 combs and liniment; sweets from the Ginger and Pickles concession stand, tossed
 to them by the patrons; a change of clothes.  

 By each cot stood its occupant, at full attention.  

 The smallest  of the  transgenics—the mice,  the frogs,  the squirrels—stood on
 their  altered  hindlegs as  tall  as McGregor's  waist.  The next  largest—the
 rabbits, the dogs, the cats—came as high as his shoulder.  

 McGregor let the property sweat for a whole minute. Then he whirled and pointed
 a finger at Pigling Bland.  

 "You!"  

 Tears began  to well  from the  pig's eyes,  runnelling to  either side  of his
 snout. He dabbed at them with the sleeve of his brown frock coat.  

 "Please, sir, my pig license is all in order. . . . "  

 But McGregor had already rounded on another victim.  

 "Puddleduck!"  
 
 Jemima's beak opened and closed several times in stupefaction, before she could
 finally clumsily articulate, "My bonnet is tied, my shawl is neat. My bonnet is
 tied, my shawl—"  

 At last McGregor settled on his real targets.  

 "Tom! Hunca! Front and center!"  

 Tom Thumb  and his  mate Hunca  Munca came  shakily forward.  The two mice hung
 their heads wearily,  knowing full well  what was to  come and the  futility of
 resistance.  

 At this moment a  fox appeared in the  doorway. Fully as tall  as McGregor, the
 Garden's second-in-command wore a brown suitcoat, vest, and cravat. He  carried
 McGregor's cane.  

 Mr. Tod, the fox, smiled now, showing sharp teeth.  

 With the mice a foot or two from McGregor, he assailed them. "When you  wrecked
 the dollhouse at the three o'clock show, you broke a dish!"  

 Tom Thumb looked at Hunca Munca, and she looked at him. Their relatively  small
 and shiny brown eyes caught the light from the ceiling fixtures. Then the  male
 mouse spoke.  

 "We are  supposed to  break a  dish. We  discover that  the ham  is plaster. We
 chitter angrily. I pick up the tongs. I hit the ham—"  

 "You broke the wrong dish! You broke an empty dish!"  

 "No, I am sure I hit only the ham—"  

 "Enough! Give me the cane!"  

 The fox, his bushy  tail held stiffly erect,  his claws clicking on  the floor,
 crossed to McGregor and handed him the cane.  

 McGregor twisted the cane's top to Setting Eleven.  
 
 He began to beat the mice. The lightest touch of the cane sufficed.  

 They squealed and cried. Others among  the watching splices began to weep  too.
 But it was no use. The blows were unrelenting.  

 Hunca Munca had collapsed to the floor. Trying to keep her head low, she raised
 her scut high.  

 McGregor's genitals began to emerge.  

 3. Appley Dapply's Nursery Rhymes  

 Gestation Jest  

 McGregor's mum was a limited's crick, And her solo son was a pro's best  trick!
 She ran his specs on a micro-fab, And bent her egg in the company's lab! A  few
 months later the lad emerged, Stylish toy of the maternal urge!  

 Paraparenting  

 Her smart card  toted megamiles on  the Suborbital Express,  As she did  thirty
 minutes' work, Bangkok to Baltiscandia, Leaving once again, Mum spared McGregor
 one thought- less brief caress,  Before passing him to a  Ciba-Geigy nurse—much
 handier!  

 A Song of Youth  

 Nurse was a cocktail of 'possum and' roo, Attentive, loving, and sweet.  
 
 McGregor spent hours out  of view, Pouched and  on a teat. When  older, his mum
 began to feel His  education must begin. Tropes  and boosters and Digireal  All
 were funneled  in. One  day he  was living  virtually, When  something happened
 unheard-erous. The digiverse was suddenly, hurtfully Amok and truly  murderous!
 Electron fangs and claws raked the  lad, As the cuddly characters, all  beasts,
 Picked up crosstalk from a channel bad, Where kingfans held their gory  feasts.
 By the time he ripped away the set, McGregor was a neural wreck. And worse,  he
 found his  mouth all  wet With  blood from  Nurse's neck!  The rehab boys plied
 their pills, And  then pronounced him  sane. But really  McGregor's creepy ills
 Were still hidden in his brain.  

 Whimper While You Work  

 Now he's grown  and wants employment.  Might as well  mix work with  enjoyment!
 Digireal's fine (when it's not all bollixed!) But folks still crave some  solid
 frolics. 'Round the globe the epcots sprout—  
 
 Watch the classix acted out! What better place for McGregor to live Than  among
 those where he can stick his shiv!  

 4. The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies  

 Peter came into the barnyard around three in the morning. The epcot had minimal
 security, directed mostly against  human intruders, the occasional  lone vandal
 or thrill-seeking  metroplex posse.  The system  presented no  challenge to the
 guerrilla skills of one who had trained with the Sequoia Revenge Squad at their
 camp  hidden  in the  Cascades.  As for  potential  escapees, their  biological
 tethers were deterrence enough.  It was a rare  splice who could summon  up the
 courage to  flee into  a society  where all  authority was  ranked against him,
 where his very sustenance was a controlled substance.  

 But it was Peter's task tonight to  convince his compatriots to do just such  a
 thing.  

 Hill Top Farmhouse was quiet and dark. On the first floor lived Mr. Tod; on the
 second, McGregor.  Peter bristled  at the  thought of  the pair.  With luck, he
 could accomplish his goals without ever encountering the wardens.  

 At  the  barn  door,  he  paused. Sniffing,  he  found  only  fading  traces of
 McGregor's scent, sweat, and spume. But Peter's nose was half-ruined from fags,
 and he hardly  trusted it. Still,  in conjunction with  the winking out  of the
 Farmhouse lights he had witnessed, the evidence was enough.  

 Possessed by an urge to mark this territory he was about to conquer, Peter slid
 his cock from its sheath and pissed  
 
 briefly against the door, imagining  it as McGregor's face. The  earth absorbed
 the steaming urine hungrily as Peter worked the latch.  

 The door creaked slightly as he slid inside.  

 The noise was enough to wake Squirrel Nutkin.  

 ''Krrrk, krrrk, krrrk! It's the old Peter, the old Peter!"  

 Quiet, you sodding rodent! Oh, damn!"  

 Nutkin's cries had roused  all the sleepers. Peter  had hoped to wake  a few of
 the more solid types first, those  who in his judgment had the  most initiative
 and could help him deal with the more timorous and confused. Too late for  that
 now, though.  

 Lights  flared on.  Luckily, the  barn's windows  existed only  as holo  trompe
 l'oeil. McGregor would receive no alert that way.  

 All eyes—big and wet,  small and glittering, nictitating  and night-seeing—were
 fastened on  him. Peter  let them  absorb the  full meaning  of his presence: a
 runaway splice had survived, even prospered.  

 The collie dog, Kep, was first to speak.  

 "Why do you return? We have a new Peter now. Have you put yourself under  human
 control? Where is your mark?"  

 Peter held himself proudly erect. "I'm no  slave, I'm a free var, equal to  any
 proking fifty-oner. And I'm here to set all of you free too There's a van  with
 a  driver just  a mile  off. We  couldn't bring  it any  closer without  being
 detected, and we didn't want to mount a full raid if we needn't do so. All  you
 have to do is follow me, and by tomorrow morning you'll all  
 
 be your own masters. The Tailor of Gloucester will unkink your chromos."  

 Nervous babble broke out among the splices.  

 "What will we eat?" asked Tom Kitten.  

 "Who will clothe us?" asked Mrs. Tittlemouse.  

 "What will we do with ourselves all day?" asked Samuel Whiskers.  

 Peter was disgusted. "None of your questions matter! Trust me, the CLF will see
 to all your needs. What matters is escape. Now!"  

 Duchess, the black dog, spoke. "How do we know the CLF can protect us?"  

 "We are powerful! Our  leader is brave and  wise. Even now he  plans a powerful
 strike against the humans in Nova England! We have many friends and allies. The
 Ahimsa  League,  the  underground  arm  of  the  SPCC—Have  you  not  heard  of
 Celesteville?  The Anzanian  government has  deeded us  a preserve,  where all
 splices may  live freely.  Those who  do not  want to  participate in the armed
 struggle may settle there. King Babar needs good citizens."  

 "You lie! You want to lead us to our deaths!"  

 Peter turned.  

 He confronted himself.  

 The  replacement Peter  stood next  to his  mate, Flopsy.  Unlike the  renegade
 Peter, he was finely groomed and plump, the buttons of his jacket all polished.
 Every  line of  his furry  countenance indicated  how thoroughly  he had  been
 indoctrinated in subservience by a supplier eager to  
 
 redeem itself for its  defective model. Knowing the  other rabbit was bound  by
 his conditioning, Peter held no enmity toward him. And in truth, his  attention
 was fixed more on the seductive figure beside him.  

 He had almost forgotten what a beautiful doe Flopsy was. Her bib was thick  and
 creamy, her haunches strong, her nose sexily moist.  

 Peter's years of self-sacrifice had included little time for romance. Now,  the
 nights  he and  Flopsy had  spent rutting  together, enjoying  the only  solace
 available in captivity, returned to him with almost punishing force.  

 Realizing that he could not let  the other rabbit spook the indecisive  slaves,
 acting  out of  both expediency  and jealousy,  Peter hopped  at the  cowardly
 rabbit. The substitute Peter raised  his forepaws awkwardly in defense.  But he
 was no match for the martially  trained outsider. In a trice, muzzle  bloodied,
 the other rabbit lay on the floor.  

 The  splices were  stunned into  silence. The  hum of  the ventilation  system
 sounded like a hurricane. Peter tensed himself for further violence.  

 Flopsy spoke, her eyes shining at the  return of her first mate. "The meek  die
 on their knees! We walk on two legs! All power to the CLF!"  

 A chorus of acclamation gradually swelled. Peter was too proud to caution them.
 They would be gone soon anyway.  

 He put  his arm  around Flopsy,  feeling the  desire to  cover her  stir in his
 loins.  

 Out in the world, her fecundity restored, they would breed free kits that would
 make mankind tremble!  
 
 5. The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit  

 McGregor,  cradled  in his  organiform  bed on  the  second level  of  Hill Top
 Farmhouse, was dreaming. In his dream,  he was sitting in a comfy  squirmonomic
 chair, wearing a Digireal set, laniering virtuality. A dream within a dream.  

 The virtual-ware was a  standard Microdelrey scenario, all  reassuring arcadian
 simplicity. McGregor's virtual self was five years old. He walked  hand-in-hand
 with Nurse and Mum down shaded paths, butterflies flittering, the scent of  hay
 in his nostrils.  

 Suddenly, from behind a shrub leaped a giant animal, a slavering rabbit with  a
 mouthful of fangs! In an instant he was joined by another, and another!  

 The rabbits grabbed his guardian and his mother, and began to bite their  necks
 and rend their flesh.  

 McGregor screamed/twisted in his chair/writhed in his bed.  

 The rabbits,  finished with  the lifeless  corpses of  the adults, their snouts
 incarnadined, turned on the little boy.  

 He   bit   his   tongue/bit    his   tongue/bit   his   tongue,    till   blood
 flowed/flowed/flowed.  

 The monitors in the bed finally  kicked in, and the system administered  a dose
 of RU-9000.  

 McGregor felt the killers' claws and smelled their meaty breath/pulled off  the
 Digireal set/awoke with a jolt.  

 The taste of his own blood was like sucking on an antique drycell. Sitting  up,
 he spat red and the bed absorbed it. Then, he listened.  
 
 The fading echoes of  noise from the barn  drifted through an open  window with
 the breeze. . . .   

 What the breeding fuck was going on with those vars? Was it some argument among
 themselves, a fight over rut or sweet? He had warned them about excess activity
 after lights-out. By arnie, he'd iraq and pakistan their worthless hides!  

 A thought came to him. He spoke to the Farm.  

 "Hill Top."  

 "Yes?"  

 "Any intruders?"  

 "The perimeter sensors report the passage of no creature massing more than  ten
 ounces."  

 Ten ounces? That  was impossible. The  countryside was swarming  with creatures
 bigger than that, their nightly runs cutting across the Garden, their  bioparms
 programmed to register, yet not sound an alarm. The sensors had to be jiggered.  

 "Hill Top."  

 "Yes."  

 "Notify  the  Sawrey  dirty-harrys.  We  have  a  trespasser.  Get  me  a  kill
 clearance."  

 A high-baud squirt down the optics and a squirt back.  

 "Secured."  

 Not bothering to dress, McGregor reached down from its wallrack a  bell-mouthed
 gun with a magazine shaped like an old-fashioned film canister, its alloy stock
 featuring oval cutouts as a weightsaving measure.  

 Downstairs, McGregor  roused a  gently snoring  Mr. Tod.  (Many splices,  their
 vocal apparatus modified in the  
 
 sim-womb for speech, suffered from attendant respiratory problems.)  

 "Get your slagging withers out of bed. We've got a fox in the henhouse."  

 "A fox?"  

 "Don't take me so fucking literally, you stupid trans. Now move it or lose it."  

 Leaving Mr. Tod  to catch up,  McGregor raced swiftly  and silently toward  the
 barn.  

 The door was slightly ajar, its rim edged with light.  

 McGregor kicked it off its hinges.  

 His extra wetware instantly processed the scene revealed to him, as if it  were
 a freeze-frame.  

 Several splices crushed  beneath the falling  door. All the  rest clumped in  a
 loose knot around two rabbits. A third rabbit lying on the floor.  

 The renegade Peter!  

 Lone blot on McGregor's record . . .   

 The scene went realtime.  

 The bad rabbit  darted a paw  under its coat.  McGregor recognized a  Jumpstart
 shoulder harness. The pistol leaped out into the rabbit's paw.  

 But McGregor had already fired.  

 A small packet burst against Peter's chest.  

 Faster than even McGregor's  eye could follow, Peter  was wrapped from head  to
 toe in Ivax  netting, his pistol  trapped against his  body. He teetered  for a
 moment, then toppled.  

 McGregor walked  confidently up  to the  trameled rabbit,  the stunned  splices
 shakily parting for him.  
 
 "Fucking Crusader Rabbit . . .  What'll you do now?"  

 Not  waiting for  Peter's answer,  heedless of  the soreness  of his  own door
 bruised limb, McGregor buried his foot in the var's stomach.  

 6. The Tale of Mr. Tod  

 Mr. Tod, grunting on his foxy-smelling doss-pad on the first level of Hill  Top
 Farm, was dreaming.  

 He was free, free to course the hills and valleys of the immemorial land in his
 ancestral unmodified  form. 'Cross  brook and  meadow he  ranged, following the
 scents of friend  and foe, mate  and prey. The  sun, the wind,  the deep den in
 winter, these  were all  he required  to be  happy. His  life was  a fulfilling
 completeness in itself.  

 In this dream, Mr. Tod had a nightmare.  

 Humans caught him and tied him to a rack. They bent and twisted his limbs until
 he yelped  with searing  pain. When  he finally  resembled his tormentors, they
 released him and gave him duties. To watch similarly tortured creatures,  guard
 and  chivy them.  In return,  he was  "rewarded": a  suit of  useless clothes,
 cloying food, the occasional hurried mating with an imported vixen delivered by
 the  Hedonics  Plus  van,  synthetic chases  of  bloodless  quarry  through the
 thickets of his own brain. . . .   

 In this  nightmare, the  days passed  like an  eternal winter.  He struggled to
 return to his real life. With a vast effort he awoke—  

 Then awoke once more, back into the nightmare.  
 
 Carrying a gun, McGregor  was shaking him roughly.  Was it morning already?  He
 could hear the tourists laughing at his antics. "Who's been eating from my  pie
 dish? Who's been using my best tablecloth? It must be that odious Tommy  Brock.
 And look, he's sleeping in my bed! I'll teach him—"  

 But no, it was not even dawn yet. McGregor was saying something about a fox. He
 was the only fox here,  wasn't he? Why couldn't the  man let him sleep? He  was
 supposed to be allowed to sleep  at night. At the training kennel  the teachers
 had promised him an  easy life. They had  claimed he would have  a kind master.
 But McGregor was not  kind, far from it.  He hurt splices, seemed  to enjoy it.
 And he forced Mr. Tod to aid him.  Mr. Tod worried about this. He did not  want
 to hurt  anyone unnecessarily.  You killed  only to  eat, in  order to survive.
 Hurting was  not sport.  Sport was  frisking and  mating—Yet what  could he do?
 McGregor had to be obeyed. . . .   

 Now the man was suddenly  gone. Mr. Tod forced himself  to get up. He took  his
 coat down from  a peg and  donned it. "You  must not appear  out of costume  in
 public. . . . " Then he went outside.  

 The barn door  was missing, light  spilling out. This  was not normal.  Mr. Tod
 snapped alert. Danger thrummed in the very air, as when the baying of a pack of
 hounds was heard.  

 Cautiously, Mr. Tod poked his pointy nose around the empty doorframe.  

 McGregor stood above a rabbit in a  net. The rabbit was gasping for breath  and
 retching.  

 As Mr. Tod watched,  the splice named Flopsy  made a move toward  McGregor, who
 swiveled his gun toward her.  
 
 "You too?" said the man.  

 Flopsy halted. "You may stop us today,  but you won't hold us forever. The  end
 of your rule is coming. There is a place where splices live free—"  

 Mr.  Tod listened  unbelievingly. Not  privy to  the whispered  nightly rumors
 exchanged among the barn-dwellers, he had never heard of such a thing. Could it
 be true? There was the presence of  the bound rabbit to consider. Wait, was  he
 the old Peter?  

 McGregor silenced Flopsy with a backhand across her muzzle, rocking her on  her
 big feet.  

 "Anyone else have something to say?" he demanded.  

 The splices all looked at the floor. McGregor laid down his gun. One of Peter's
 ears, the left,  protruded from the  net. McGregor grabbed  it and effortlessly
 lifted Peter up to his feet.  

 "I've been waiting a long time for this—"  

 Peter had managed to regain his breath. Mustering all his strength, he spat now
 into McGregor's face.  

 "Eat your own pellets, proke!"  

 McGregor howled and closed his hands on Peter's neck.  

 Something snapped in Mr. Tod.  

 He launched himself across the distance separating him from the struggle.  

 The impact of Mr. Tod on the man shattered his chokehold and knocked him to the
 floor.  

 Mr. Tod scrambled atop McGregor.  

 "What—" was all McGregor had time to utter.  

 Then Mr. Tod fastened his teeth in McGregor's reinforced throat.  
 
 Roaring, McGregor reflexively began to throttle the fox.  

 Mr.  Tod did  not let  go. Though  all grew  black, though  the sound  of some
 celestial hunter's horn  filled his ears,  his powerful jaws  remained fastened
 tightly until he was dead.  

 But by then, so was McGregor.  

 7. Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes  

 Mrs. Tiggywinkle freed Peter with  her pinking shears. He surprised  himself by
 being able to stand on his own.  

 His throat felt like he had smoked a pack of fags in five minutes. His left ear
 throbbed. When he had fallen, his pistol had gouged him. Yet he had never  felt
 better.  

 Regarding the  pair of  corpses at  his feet,  Peter sensed  words swelling  up
 unbidden in him.  

 "In the end, Tod was no quisling, but a true splice. And if man has stripped us
 of our birthright, he has also showed us the commonality of our lot. Fox  saves
 rabbit, cat helps mouse, the lion lies down with the lamb. Tod's death was  not
 the first, nor will it be the  last. But without our further actions, it  could
 be in vain. Come, we must flee."  

 Outside, as  the splices  gathered 'round  him, looking  nervously at the world
 that awaited them, Peter removed a letterbomb from his coat.  

 He threw the capsule at the barn.  

 Shattering and splattering the wall,  the intelligent silicrobe paint formed  a
 departing message from the CLF.  
 
 We have a little garden, A garden of our own, And every day we water there  The
 seeds that we have sown.  
 
 Brain Wars  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070465: 070465/1275  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 Dear Host Mother,  

 The invasion  is over,  and I'm  fine. Safe  as a  blastula in a bioreactor, in
 fact, here inside our risk bubble.  

 Which is more  than I can  say for the  enemy, Mom. We  pretty much turned them
 into sodai gomi in less time than it takes to flip a SQUID.  

 I'm really sorry I can't raster  you face-to-face or virt you in  Candyland and
 see you smile at the good news.  I can almost picture you nictitating that  way
 you do when you're happy. But for reasons of security, us zygotes (that's  just
 a friendly term the  officers have for noncoms)  don't have full access  to the
 metamedium. We've been stripped of all  our telltags and poqetpals, most of  us
 for the  first time  in our  lives. I  feel plumb  naked! We're limited to this
 retro-jethro Teleport  
 
 bonovox line, I guess so no live  Si-viruses or GaAs-worms can slip in or  out.
 And in  fact, all  these sending  units have  a TL1  AI chip  in them that will
 automatically erase any  critical information from  the transmission. Like  for
 instance, if  I were  to try  to tell  you that  we're stationed  just north of
 CENSORED, or that our KIA's amounted to CENSORED, the machine would simply blip
 that part right out.  

 Works out  just as  well as  the metamedium,  I guess,  what with CENSORED time
 zones between us and all.  

 Anyway, the important thing is that our mission seems to be a big success. Once
 again,  the IMF  has managed  to intervene  just in  time to  stop a  potential
 catastrophe.  

 I'll tell you more in a while. But right now my main proxy, Penguin, is calling
 me. Seems we have  to use the simorg  colony to evolve some  new expert modules
 they need by yesterday!  

 Your loving guest-son, CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070465/1610  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 Dear Host Mother,  

 What a jangle-tangle! The brass-skulls and swellheads stopped by with a crew of
 noahs from the  GEF wanting to  evaluate the oceanic/atmospheric  contamination
 produced by  
 
 this latest  Short War,  and Penguin  and I  were kept  busy bending  molecules
 during what should have been our downtime.  (At least one of the noahs, a  Xuly
 Beth Vollbracht, was nice enough to  bring along a dose of recreational  tropes
 to share with  us.) Anyhow, they  finally finished with  us, and since  Penguin
 wanted to go offline for a while, I thought I'd pick up my transmission to  you
 where I left off.  

 Now, I know you and I have had our disagreements about the IMF's policies. Why,
 sometimes you actually sounded like a rifkin or greenpeacer! I can remember you
 saying, ''I never got to vote for the World Bank board." But we all got to vote
 for the politicians who  voted for them, whether  we hailed from a  big polypax
 like the NU or the EC, or a little one like our own McMurdo, so we can't really
 blame anyone else when the IMF  does something we don't particularly like.  I'm
 thinking of the mess they made in what used to be Yongbyon—the "Pyongyang  Gang
 Bang" I remember you called it—and  the way they handled (or mishandled)  those
 renegade cricks  and transgenics  hiding out  in the  Azores. The Atlantic will
 recover faster from that one than the IMF's reputation will!  

 But those incidents took place before  I joined, which you'll recall was  right
 after the big command shakeup. My own unit was purged of all its officers,  and
 Oberjefe Ozal received a field promotion,  which he still holds. I think  you'd
 like Ozal, he's a smart, goodlooking probe—the NYC gals in our pod all call him
 a "streetbeat gamete," which  I guess is some  kind of compliment—but he's  not
 conceited. His main philofix  is music. He plays  his qawwali tabs whenever  he
 has  
 
 a spare moment—mostly thru  earwigs, since no one  else really enjoys the  holy
 Slammer wailing.  

 Anyhow, I can't  say I feel  any personal responsibility  for any of  the IMF's
 previous goo-screwing  cockups (pardon  the language),  and nothing  I've taken
 part in since I signed up has led me to regret my decision.  

 I've got to cut this short now, since  one of my proxies is waiting to use  the
 'vox unit. I'll be right back.  

 Your loving guest-son, CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070465/118  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 Dear Host Mother,  

 Sorry about the delay. My buddy got  an incoming 'vox right after he sent  his.
 It was a  "Dear Juan," wishing  him a nasty  hasta luego. Seems  his target had
 joined the antiwar movement  since he shipped out  and now wants nothing  to do
 with "bloody imperialist murderers"  like us. It took  some major tropes and  a
 lot of talk to calm him down.  

 I just can't understand these protestors, Mom. It must be that they don't  know
 what's really going on here. If they did, they'd realize we're just doing  what
 has to be done.  

 I'm real proud of this operation, my first major action. We made the enemy "cry
 onco!" faster than ribozymes. I wish  
 
 I could tell you all about it, since I understand the meta-medium coverage  was
 somewhat limited. I'll try, and see what the chip lets thru.  

 The  IMF issued  its unconditional  surrender ultimatum  at 2300  hours on  the
 second of this month. By 2400 hours, when the enemy had still not replied,  the
 operation  commenced. First  in were  the smartskin  bombers, scramjets  mostly
 under AI control, but a few being gloved by pilots offshore in MHD subs.  These
 planes released burrowers, antipersonnel midges, thermites, core-borers,  glass
 masters,  virtual ghosts,  and CENSORED.  The enemy  responded with  Raid-Plus,
 bouncing buckyballs,  fractal shrubs,  moletraps, CENSORED,  and kaleidoscopes,
 but were mucho out-classed. There was never really any contest.  

 Hot on the first wave's heels, the APV's loaded with transgenic troops moved in
 for  whatever  close  fighting  might  arise.  The  Fourth  Wolverines   really
 distinguished  themselves,  as did  the  CENSORED. Once  I-Cubed  reported that
 things were pretty much under control, approximately CENSORED of us fifty-oners
 went in, the only humans involved in the whole shootup.  

 When the  enemy's AI's  committed silicide,  we knew  the latest  Short War was
 history.  

 Mom,  I'll  tell you  now  that what  we  found once  we  occupied the  enemy's
 territory—in confirmation of the rumors that prompted the assault—is enough  to
 make  your  cells metastasize.  These  guys had  developed  a whole  armory  of
 aerosol-borne neurotropic weapons  which they planned  to use shortly  on their
 immediate neighbors, and afterwards on  
 
 whoever  got  in  their way.  Of  course  this is  entirely  against  the Minsk
 Conventions, which they are a signatory  to, and these gnomic jokers had  to be
 stopped.  

 I don't imagine the next few  days will see much excitement. We're  just riding
 herd on  the civilian  populace while  the experts  from the  essays, peltsies,
 beeves,    and    gembaitches—Textron,    Rhone-Daewoo,    Toyobo,   Ciba-Kobe,
 EMBRAPA—dismantle the armament autofacs.  

 I've got some I&I leave coming up  after this is over and expect to  spend some
 of it with you and Dad and Mom2 and Dad2 and Mom3.  

 Crank those photoharvesters up—I'm used to the tropics now!  

 Your loving guest-son, CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070565/0325  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 Dear Host Mother,  

 We just stepped down from Fever Alert Status.  

 It appears that some autonomous remnant of the enemy is still functioning.  

 Most of us were sleeping when our  earwigs gave the alarm. I never thought  the
 words "perimeter breach!"  could sound so  chilling. We all  scrambled into our
 Affymax  
 
 millipore  gear, praying  that we  hadn't catalyzed  anything contrametabolic.
 Almost before we could grab our high-kinetics and lyzers, the "all clear"  came
 thru. The  tinmen and  transgenics had  neutralized the  invaders, who amounted
 only to a  handful of Gorilla  guerrillas. Examination of  the corpses revealed
 nothing  out  of the  ordinary—except  for one  thing.  The vars  had  CENSORED
 incorporated into  their bodies,  right next  to their  CENSORED. These add-ons
 were empty, indicating they might have had time to spray something before being
 smoked.  

 That something, they tell us, could be time-delayed in its effects.  

 We're all just sitting around now on our hands while the mccoys and herriots go
 over us  with their  cell-sniffers and  hormone hounds,  squeezing our  virtual
 platelets for anything nonsomatic. So I thought I'd 'vox you this letter.  

 Don't worry.  

 Your loving guest-son, CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070565/0800  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 Dear,  

 Can't find to refer  to. Seem to have  disappeared from. Made bad  inside. Very
 bad. Hard to use common. Looks  
 
 strange near and far. Because of  made bad up inside. Hopeful to  fix. Examine,
 then create. Reassurring.  

 But—partly running around crazy. Dangerous. Watch, shoot—how? Forget how to use
 without.  

 Sit still. Holding together, lovely and crying. Please don't cry. Can't convey.
 Too frustrating to go on.  

 Will 'vox soon.  

 Don't worry.  

 Your loving, CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070565/1200  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 Dear Host Mother,  

 Whew! Am I glad the past four hours are over!  

 My last transmission probably didn't make a whole lot of sense to you. That was
 because I couldn't use any nouns! You see, everyone in the pod was experiencing
 a  selective  aphasia, kind  of  a language  blind  spot. A  whole  category of
 language had been effectively wiped from our cortexes. Or so the  blood-dusters
 tell us.  

 It appears that the  trope the enemy hit  us with was something  brand new. The
 experts have dubbed it a "multivector recombinant silicrobe." It resembles  our
 own CENSORED, only several magnitudes more sophisticated.  
 
 Apparently,  the  Gorillas  discharged   an  aerosol  of  harmless   individual
 components which were small enough to slip thru our millipore gear. Once inside
 our bodies, however, the  individual pieces intelligently assembled  themselves
 into larger agents that headed straight for our brains.  

 The first  indication we  had that  something foreign  had penetrated  us was a
 senseless announcement we  all got thru  our earwigs. It  sounded just like  my
 last 'vox: strings of verbs and  particles with no easy meaning. When  I turned
 to discuss it with my bunkmate,  Penguin (I haven't really told you  much about
 her yet, Mom;  she's a real  old-fashioned target, with  fewer than 20  percent
 bodymods, and I know  you'd get quite close  to her, given a  chance), we found
 that we were limited to the same bizarre lingo too!  

 Needless to  say, this  kind of  neural cockup—a  "cortical abortical"  the NYC
 posse calls it—could have caused us serious trouble if the enemy wasn't so well
 under control. Though even then, we'd still have the tinmen and transgenics—the
 splices weren't so  strongly affected—to protect  us. Still, how  could we give
 them orders? . . .   

 Anyhow, the  aphasia didn't  stop our  stormin' biobrujos  for long!  They soon
 strung together  a megablocker  antagonist consisting  of a  charge of enhanced
 microglials and catalytic antibodies, along with CENSORED, which seems to  have
 wiped the cerebral invader out quicker'n teraflops!  

 Although there  is a  slim chance,  they tell  us, that  the invader has simply
 self-mutated according to plan.  

 In any case,  a Digireal conference  on this bug  is underway now  with experts
 scattered around the globe, including  
 
 last year's Gengineering Nobelist, Doctor Sax, the guy who practically invented
 neurotropins.  

 So don't worry, Mom—we're getting the best of care!  

 Your loving guest son, CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070565/1391  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 Daring Hotel Mothballs,  

 The  newest  truest  neural contradural  manifestation  in  the implication  is
 undersay they way to play can't shay.  Too few too blue words are now  becoming
 excessive depressive stretches of letches  and leeches and feel like  my head's
 exploding decoding.  Broca's aphasia  in Asia  is a  lack of  pack of parcel of
 morsel of words and turds. But  Wernicke's journey to meaning of seasons  is to
 produce unreduce of fibbing gibberish that makes senseless of relentless squawk
 talk. There appears  to be a  component histonic of  dyslexia distance instance
 ignorance, upon trying to writer communihesitation.  

 This stool shall pasture.  

 Your louvre question, CENSORED  
 
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070565/1450  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 Dear Host Mother,  

 The Wernicke's is over now. It's  pretty evident that the MRS agent  is staying
 one step  ahead of  the juice  they shot  us with.  I just  hope the  bug isn't
 baltimoring anything permanently into our genomes. Right now, all it's doing is
 making auditory hallucinations. They're kind of pleasant—I heard you talking to
 me just  a few  minutes ago—but  tend to  interfere with  real orders  thru our
 earwigs. I notice that Oberjefe Ozal  has notched his music up to  eleven. I'll
 keep you posted. Hopefully, this'll be licked soon.  

 Your loving guest son,  

 CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070565/1500  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 Dear Host Mother,  

 The whole  pod was  sitting down  at the  rectangular surface  raised above the
 floor level with four posts, ready  to dig into a delayed meal—reddish  oblongs
 streaked with white  
 
 marbling, cylindrical  orange tapering  tubes, spherical  crusted objects  slit
 crosswise and topped  with a melting  square of yellow  organic matter—when the
 newest trouble hit.  

 It seems  that the  bug in  our brains  has now  produced a  generalized visual
 agnosia.  Nothing  looks familiar.  The  sight of  common  objects produces  no
 referents  in  our  brains,  emotional  or  intellectual.  Everything  seems an
 assemblage of basic, almost geometrical  parts, out of which nothing  whole can
 be synthesized, resulting in a generalized lack of affect.  

 Or so the Digireal  experts tell us. It's  kind of hard to  tell exactly what's
 wrong from the inside.  

 All I know is that when I look  at what I assume is Penguin, I see  a stretched
 toroid with an irregular topography topped with filaments of varying lengths. I
 assume she sees the same.  

 It's hard to work up the emotion to comfort a toroid, but I try my best, and so
 does she.  

 Oberjefe Ozal has been fantastic thru  all this. He never loses his  composure,
 but  always  keeps  the  ovoid with  the  seven  openings  atop the  horizontal
 broadening of his column as cool as liquid nitrogen. He seems to derive  almost
 superhuman strength  and comfort  from the  qawwali buzz  in 'the  shell-shaped
 excrescences on the side of his aforementioned ovoid. I don't know what we'd do
 without him.  

 I guess this bug is not going to be as easy to smoke as everyone first assumed.  

 Well, now I'm contorting my buccal  orifice and fleshy red tasting member  into
 phonemes that will signal an end to  
 
 our conversation,  which the  flat grey  box that  transcribes and transmits my
 voice will insure that you receive.  

 Maintain your homeostasis at a less-than-feverish amplitude, Mom! (Not too hard
 at McMurdo in July!)  

 Your loving guest son,  

 CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070565/1829  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 Dear Host Mother,  

 The agnosia cleared up by itself.  

 It's been replaced by a real mild neuro-deficit.  

 Amusica.  

 None of our pop-tabs sounds like anything anymore.  

 This one's pretty easy to take.  

 Except for Oberjefe Ozal, who's killed himself.  

 Your loving guest son,  

 CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070565/2105  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 
 Dear Host Mother,  

 Have I sent this message yet?  

 Wait a minute, Penguin!  

 We seem to be suffering now from TGA, or transient global amnesia. (At least we
 hope it's transient!) The herriots know  that this kind of thing is  related to
 damage on the underside of the temporal  lobes, so they hope to squash the  bug
 with a directed killer while it's busy there. Did I mention that we've got TGA?
 For a while we can't lay down any new memories. Maybe I sent you a 'vox already
 on it.  . .  .  Don't  worry, long-term  memory is  unaffected. I  remember how
 wonderful you and  the other Moms  and Dads have  always been to  me. I hope  I
 don't let you down.  

 Wait a minute, Penguin!  

 Have I sent this message yet?  

 Your loving guest son,  

 CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070665/0105  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 Dear Host Mother,  

 The TGA seems to be subsiding. We've been ordered to try to get some sleep.  

 Everyone's  receptive  to  that,  but  whenever  we  start  to  drowse  off, we
 experience these tremendously magnified  
 
 myoclonic spasms. You  know those little  jerks your body  sometimes gives just
 before passing into sleep?  Well, these are the  mothers of all such  twitches,
 enough to knock you out of bed.  

 The mccoys are circulating now with somnifacients that should put us under.  

 Hopefully, when the  new day dawns,  this goo-screwing bug  will have exhausted
 itself.  

 Sleep tight!  

 Your loving guest son,  

 CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070665/0800  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 Dear Host Mother,  

 We  lost  half  the  pod  during  sleep  to  Nightmare  Death  Syndrome,   that
 Thai/Filipino/Khampuchean tendency to flatline during sleep.  

 Unfortunately, the  somnifacients may  have contributed  to the  high mortality
 rate, preventing the sleepers from jolting awake.  

 I don't know how to tell you this, so forgive me if I just blurt it out.  

 Penguin was one of the fatalities.  

 I almost wish the agnosia was back, so I wouldn't feel so bad.  
 
 I'm asking the new CO to send you an adobe of her and me thru the metamedium.  

 Just in case I don't make it home.  

 Your loving guest son,  

 CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070765/1200  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 Dear Host Mother,  

 It's been twenty-four  hours since the  last manifestation of  the invader. The
 herriots are starting to feel safe  about issuing an all-clear. And Doctor  Sax
 is standing  virtually by  in the  wings with  a last-ditch  experimental trope
 similar to CENSORED which they're going to try if there's another flareup.  

 Keep your fingers crossed (webbing and all)!  

 Your loving guest son,  

 CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF MOBILE NODE  
 SYS01-4591P  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 070865/0300  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 OK  

 
 Dear Host Mother,  

 We've all received our shots of aldisscine, Doctor Sax's new trope, despite its
 high LD rating.  

 There was really no choice after we all went body-blind.  

 What's body-blindness? I can imagine you asking.  

 It's total loss of proprioception, the multiplex feedback from your muscles and
 nerves, skin and bones, that  allows you to tell—mostly subliminally—what  your
 body's doing.  

 We're all isolated now in  our heads like puppet-masters whose  strings leading
 to their puppets have  been tangled, or like  a telefactor operator who's  lost
 his sensory feed. It's not that we can't move our limbs or anything. There's no
 paralysis.  It's  just (just!)  that  aside from  visual  feedback, there's  no
 inherent sense of where any  part of you is! You  might as well try to  operate
 someone else's  body as  your own  under these  conditions. It's  not pleasant,
 watching  your proxies  tripping over  their own  feet, missing  chairs, their
 mouths, the D-compoz unit—  

 But you can get used to anything,  I guess. And the experts are confident  that
 the aldisscine will stop any new deficits from popping up.  

 Anyway, I'm kind of glad Penguin didn't live to experience this. I never got  a
 chance to tell you, but she used to be a dancer in regular franch life.  

 The orders have finally come down from Brussels for our pod to be rotated  out.
 There's talk that if the body-blindness proves permanent, they'll try to fit us
 all  out  with onboard  stabilizer  chips and  nanosensors  to simulate  normal
 proprioception.  
 
 What's one more bodymod nowadays, huh, Mom?  

 Your loving guest son,  

 CENSORED  
 SEND:  

 IMF OFFEARTH NODE  
 SYS02-999Z  
 RECEIVE:  

 MC MURDO BIOSPHERE  
 DATE/HOUR:  

 071065/2400  
 TRANSMISSION STATUS:  

 SOLAR NOISE  
 IMPEDIMENT (*) = -10%  

 Dear Ho*t Moth**,  

 As you might've guessed by the delay between messages, we've been rerouted.  

 We're in transit to CEN*****, where we'll get the best of care. They discovered
 that  all  surviving  members  of  our  pod  are  suffering  from  degenerative
 neurofibrillary protein  tangles similar  to those  found in  sufferers of that
 extinct disease known as Alz********.  CENSORED is a kind of  sanitarium, where
 an Al-human team waits to cure us.  

 They say the average stay at CENSORED is *** months, but could stretch to  ****
 years. Jumping genes! You could be  in another symb-bonding by then! Anyway,  I
 can't look that far ahead, as our prognosis is very ****.  

 Let me  repeat that,  in case  these flares  are interfering:  we stand  a ****
 chance, not a **** one.  

 Unfortunately, I  won't be  able to  take any  incoming 'voxes  from you  for a
 while, or even  send any. Not  that I'd be  able to really  appreciate them too
 good anyhow. My brain seems a little  
 
 dull  right now.  But they  promise us  that full  metamedium contact  will be
 restored as soon as it's appropriate.  

 But don't worry. You can always contact Brussels for updates.  

 Just ask for your boy, CENSORED!  
 
 Streetlife  

 Coney's master was a Virtuality Poet. And he was one of the best. Only  Planxty
 or Bingo Bantam  could approach the  depth and brilliance  of his compositions,
 and rarely at that. So his  master would always tell Coney, especially  when he
 was under  the influence  of a  trope such  as Egoboo  or Meglo, which left him
 prone to recite aloud his own reviews, complete with melodramatic flourishes of
 the crepey folds of velvet skin that hung like batwings from his underarms.  

 '' 'Hopcroft's latest  cortex-vortex is a  cell-stunner! Visit to  the Mushroom
 Planet opens with Tenniel's hookah-smoking Caterpillar greeting the  percipient
 with a blast of aromatic smoke. When the cinnamon cloud clears, the perk  finds
 herself  on the  Mushroom Planet  of the  title. Fungi  lifeforms in  startling
 variety exfoliate and enfold the  mind-traveler, who can navigate the  construx
 with more than the standard ten degrees of freedom, thanks to Hopcroft's  truly
 creative use  of CoCenSys's  Infini-Tree Fabware.  The poet's  signature use of
 lush textures and his  smorgasbord-gorgeous false-color palette all  contribute
 to a synapse-shattering experience—especially if you're simultaneously  running
 a  
 
 coprocessor  such as  CellSmartz, as  this lucky  perk was!  With this  'strux,
 Hopcroft delivers on all his past promises and establishes himself as the  poet
 of his cohort.' "  

 Throwing  the  flimsy across  the  room (to  be  quickly retrieved  by  a Braun
 DoorMaus), Coney's master would spread his batlike membranes wide and  exclaim,
 " 'The poet of his cohort!' Did you hear that, Coney?"  

 "Yes, Peej Hopcroft, I heard."  

 "It's all gush, of course. But true gush. I am the most accomplished poet of my
 clade. There's no disputing it, is there, Coney?"  

 "No indeed. It is just as Peej Reviewer said."  

 Most  likely  then—especially if  the  tropes were  wearing  off—Coney's master
 would, at this point in the ritual, collapse into a convenient organiform chair
 (somehow he was never  so distraught as to  land on the floor),  drape his head
 with his fleshfolds, and begin to weep.  

 "But what good does it do me, Coney? This crass society does not respect poets,
 nor does it honor them with rewards material or spiritual. It never has, and it
 never will. I am an acquired taste, and  then only among a few. The mass of  my
 fellow citizens are Philistines, plain  and simple. Siouxsie Sexcrime is  their
 idea of poetry! How can such a sensitive soul as mine endure it, Coney? Ah, but
 my life  is hard,  Coney—harder than  a stupid  transgenic like  you could ever
 imagine. I can barely scrape together enough ecus to pay my Digireal fees.  And
 my art cannot be  rushed! This is why  I am forced much  too often to play  the
 lusty gigaload gigolo!"  
 
 Coney  knew enough  not to  interrupt at  this point.  He would  wait with  the
 patience of his kind for the tearful poet to finish his performance.  

 "Yes," Coney's master would inevitably  begin his peroration, "I, the  RAM-baud
 of my  cohort, must  make ends  meet by  crawling for  pay into  the Sack  with
 lascivious starfuckers, eager to boast to their witless friends that they  have
 enjoyed teledildonics  with another  ii-do tarento  whose art  they cannot even
 begin to appreciate!"  

 At this  juncture Coney  would venture  a comment  he hoped  would bolster  his
 master's self-esteem and spare himself a collar-jolt.  

 "Peej Hopcroft only does what he must, to further his art."  

 If he  had by  now downed  a trope  such as  Zesta, Coney's  master would  sigh
 extravagantly  and  agree.  (Otherwise,  the  dreaded  neuronic  zap  might  be
 forthcoming, along with the admonition "not to overstep your splicey self  with
 comments about things you couldn't possibly comprehend.")  

 Tonight—a mild  June evening  stochastically certified  to be  rainfree—much to
 Coney's relief,  his stock  phrase served  its intended  purpose. The  familiar
 scene which he had just endured for the nth time played itself out happily  for
 him.  

 "Yes, little Daewoo Dumbunni, we all do what we must, don't we? Even peddle our
 arse for the sake of our ars."  

 Coney had no idea what this last statement meant, but was only too happy to nod
 his sympathy.  

 Rising to his feet, Coney's master now  said, "And that's why I need you  to do
 your part to make this latest sordid  
 
 virtual assignation a  success, dear Coney.  I have here  a new trope  called O
 max-O. It was given to me by one  of my fans, a sensitive young plug who  works
 at Xomagraf. It's not available to the  hoi polloi yet. He promises me that  it
 will make this digitryst so thrilling  for my client that she'll gladly  double
 my Fee. I'm counting on you to deliver  it to her within the hour. Her name  is
 Frances Foxx, and this is her address."  

 Coney's master handed him a crawlypatch and a silicrobe calling card. The  card
 flashed an address in the far west end of the city.  

 Laboriously tracing a  mental map, Coney  sought to comprehend  his assignment.
 Finally he spoke.  

 "This place is quite far. May I take the train?"  

 "Don't be silly.  The train costs  eft. The whole  point of tonight's  dreadful
 exercise is to earn  ecus, not spend them.  And besides, the maglev  isn't safe
 for  splices, not  since those  horrid razorboys,  the Transgenocides,  started
 haunting the tubes. No, you'll have to walk. You're a speedy little splice,  or
 so the factory claimed. Surely you can cover the distance before Peej Foxx  and
 I are scheduled to crawl into the Sack together."  

 "But it is night out there."  

 "So?"  

 "To make the best time, I will have to cross the Soft Sector. In the dark."  

 At the thought of such a passage, Coney horripilated.  

 His master seemed to experience no such somatic dread.  

 "You force me to repeat myself. so? No one there will pay any attention to you.
 You're small and insignificant."  
 
 "This is the problem."  

 Coney's  master  waved the  splice's  concerns away.  "You're  exaggerating the
 difficulties just to extract some concession  or luxury from me. Very well,  at
 the completion  of your  little chore,  you may  experience one  of my sonnets.
 Perhaps you could dimly appreciate Dance of the Cold Moons."  

 "Thank you, Peej Hopcroft. Something like extra rations would be very nice. But
 I would give up everything just not to go. Perhaps you could—"  

 "What!"  thundered  Coney's  master.  "Leave  my  wunderkammer  and  subject my
 precious body  to the  gross physical  biosphere? How  dare you  suggest such a
 thing, you impudent trans!"  

 The hand of Coney's master moved toward the keypad in his hip.  

 "Sorry.  Sorry. Sorry,"  said the  smart-door, which  had failed  to open  fast
 enough for the splice scrabbling at its manual override handle.  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 Coney's civicorp  had recently  bred a  Pedlumo system  to replace  the antique
 solar-powered light-standards.  By night,  small swarms  of gnat-like silicrobe
 aggregations hovered darkly outside  every building waiting for  pedestrians to
 emerge, whereupon they  flared up with  sufficient candlepower to  illuminate a
 sphere  some  four   meters  in  diameter.   Anchoring  themselves  above   the
 individual's head, they would accompany  the traveler to his destination,  then
 await new service.  
 
 With his soft personal corona fluctuating in response to those of all the other
 citizens and splices abroad that night, Coney set off toward the West End.  

 This initial stage of his journey fostered in Coney no trepidations.  Patrolled
 by  teams  of Parke-Davis  Offisimians  and Schering-Plough  Deputy  Dawgs, his
 neighborhood was  a pleasant  one, a  mixed-use zone  of shops, residences, and
 zero-light  autofacs, and  he was  intimately familiar  with it.  And the  few
 errands that had  taken him to  the West End  had revealed that  district to be
 equally unthreatening.  

 No, it was  only the dread  territory in between  the two zones  that terrified
 him.  

 The Soft Sector.  

 Striving to  master his  emotions, Coney  recited a  trigger-mantra he had been
 taught at Daewoo.  

 "Tension, fear, care, nowhere. Tension, fear, care, nowhere—"  

 Hypothalamic changes spread throughout his central nervous system, lowering his
 heartbeat and respiration. Soothing neuropeptides washed his brain.  

 Somewhat relieved, Coney dug  in his bellypouch for  the card with Peej  Foxx's
 address. Perhaps with a clear mind he would see something about the chore  that
 he had missed.  

 But a  second perusal  only confirmed  what he  had known  from the  moment his
 master gave him the assignment. There was  only one way to deliver the dose  of
 trope on time, and that was to cut across the interdicted streetlife habitat.  

 Replacing the  card against  his skin,  next to  the all-important crawlypatch,
 Coney increased his pace.  
 
 A clutch of zarooks, ragazzi, and  chats sauvage stood on the corner  of Artery
 Nine and Orange Capillary, hanging out by a trope bar whose silicrobe icons  of
 synaptic junctions exchanging molecules flashed green and purple.  Heady-mental
 music spilled  out from  floating silicrobe  speakers. Big  Skulls and Piebalds
 predominated in the crowd, with a smattering of Moles.  

 "Swap protocols, little splice!" yelled one. "Where you off to so krebby fast?"  

 "Stop and share a dose of Heavy Wonderful," called another.  

 "Yeah, you'll feel like you were born a pure-gen!"  

 "Peej Splice, if you please!"  

 Coney knew enough not  to heed these bad  ones. Although not as  violent as the
 razorboys, they would like  nothing better than to  divert him from his  duties
 and mess up his factory parameters.  

 Hurrying away, Coney  was followed by  their jeers and  laughter, and the  soft
 wheezes of the Moles.  

 Within a few blocks of the Soft  Sector, Coney began to grow nervous again.  So
 intent on  chanting his  mantra was  he that  he failed  to notice  the whir of
 wheels behind him.  

 "Buy a refreshing Pepsi-plus, citizen? It's the pure charles!"  

 Coney jumped and whirled.  

 A mobile smart-vendor,  battered and splashed  with Liquid Lingo  grafitti, had
 rolled up on  his tail. The  autorover looked completely  disreputable, perhaps
 even a rogue.  

 "I am not a citizen," said Coney cautiously.  
 
 "Oh, excuse me. My  biosensors have been malfunctioning  since I took a  spill.
 But rest assured, my product is still fresh! Would you care to purchase a  cup,
 whatever you are?"  

 Coney  straightened  his  back  righteously. "I  am  a  genuine  midline Daewoo
 transgenic,  bearing  fully  fifteen-percent  human  genes.  You  are  simply a
 machine, a kibe."  

 The soda-vendor's voice assumed a plaintive  tone. "Yes, you are right. And  an
 unlucky kibe at that. Unless I can sell more soda, I cannot apply for  repairs.
 But the longer I put my repairs off, the more decrepit I get and the less  soda
 I sell. It is a vicious circle."  

 "So is life. In any case, I have no eft."  

 "No eft! You have wasted my clock-cycles!"  

 "It was you who approached me!"  

 The crazed  machine let  loose a  warbling siren.  "Thief! Thief! All concerned
 citizens, nine-eleven the harrys!"  

 Fear building up in him, Coney sped off.  

 In less than a minute he was out of hearing of the vendor's calls for help  and
 within sight of the Soft Sector.  

 He rested a moment, until his heart had slowed.  

 A wide bare  ringroad separated the  city from the  zone of interdiction.  Cars
 zipped along its lanes in one direction only. On the far side of the road,  the
 Soft Sector bloomed in luxuriant splendor, a lush jungle of constantly shifting
 artificial  overlapping ecologies  hundreds of  acres in  extent, its  armature
 crumbled  buildings that  had long  since been  ceded by  the civicorp  to the
 uncontrolled  but  corralled  biorenegades.  Here  ended  up  all  the   failed
 experiments of amateur fabricators and malicious chromosartors, all of  
 
 society's self-malformed  dropouts, all  escaped splices  and faulty  silicrobe
 colonies, as well as some seemingly autocatalyric creatures no one outside  the
 Soft Sector had ever encountered.  

 There were no  conventional physical barriers  such as fences  or minefields to
 keep the inhabitants of the Soft Sector penned up.  

 Instead, the periphery was patrolled by Macro2phages.  

 Coney saw one now.  

 The towering  gelatinous mass  was easily  as big  as a  baseline elephant. The
 megamicro humped itself along, leaving a wet trail of lysing exudate, intent on
 ingesting  and devouring  any living  organism that  tried to  escape. Not  far
 behind it trailed another, and another behind that one.  

 Coney's knees felt  as weak as  boiled water. He  knew that the  guardians were
 programmed not to  bother anyone entering  the Soft Sector.  But how was  he to
 escape on the far side, assuming he survived his transit?  

 For a moment, Coney actually  considered abandoning his suicidal mission.  Then
 he recalled his dietary leash and the locked collar around his neck which would
 be quite capable of delivering a killing GloPos-beamed signal anywhere he  hid.
 . . .   

 Setting a trembling foot onto the road surface, Coney eyed the traffic. At  the
 right moment,  he darted  across, incurring  only one  shouted warning  from an
 angry Mercedes.  

 Safely reaching the marge of the  Soft Sector, Coney was briefly startled  when
 his pedlumos left him, fleeing obediently back to the civicorp proper.  
 
 In  the next  second, he  was treated  to a  broadcast courtesy  of silicrobes
 embedded in the pavement that erupted at his presence.  

 "Attention!  You are  almost within  the Soft  Sector! Be  advised that  under
 relevant civicorp statutes, you are  permanently forfeiting all of a  citizen's
 rights and privileges by so  entering. Any transgenics spotted within  the Soft
 Sector by aerial patrols will be assumed to be deranged and will be subject  to
 immediate lethal Factory Recall. Attention—!"  

 Coney closed his eyes and ran.  

 The Macro2phages made a slurping, sluffing noise as they crawled their circuit.
 They  smelled of  yeast and  baseline human  sperm. In  his blind  dash, Coney
 brushed the tacky leading edge of one.  

 The lysing agent  burned through his  fur, etching his  skin with a  tracery of
 pain and urging him to greater speed.  

 And then he was past it, safely inside the Soft Sector!  

 Panting, crouching  in the  shadows beneath  a bush,  Coney watched the monster
 move on.  

 What relief—  

 Toothy  mandibles pincered  his waist  in a  painful grip.  Coney screamed  and
 struggled to break free.  

 He only succeeded in  twisting partially around, at  the cost of raw  abrasions
 around his midriff. But his new posture was enough to reveal what held him.  

 It was an army-surplus  Squibb dung beetle big  as a car. Evidently  quite old,
 its antennae were broken, its  carapace brittle and fragmented. A  partial SNEG
 silicrobe serial number flashed on one mandible.  
 
 The huge ailing battlefield scavenger had plainly mistaken Coney for a corpse.  

 Beating on its jaws with his paws  had no effect; even in its decrepitude,  the
 big splice  was still  awesome. Limping  from a  missing leg,  the dung  beetle
 carried Coney off.  

 When it reached an  appropriate patch of bare  earth, the dung beetle  began to
 dig. Once it had excavated a deep hole, it placed Coney in it.  

 Coney dared not stir, unsure of how the beetle's damaged wetware would treat  a
 moving corpse.  

 With instinctive efficiency, the beetle covered Coney up.  

 Then, in  a scratchy  growl, it  began to  recite the  Syncretic Church's  last
 rites:  

 ''Our Jah who art in Allah's Nirvana, hallowed be Her name. . . . "  

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 It was rather  pleasant to lie  buried under the  loose friable soil  after the
 Snowy military beetle had left. For the moment, enough air filtered through and
 Coney was  safe from  harm. Ancestral  memories of  warm musty burrows thronged
 pleasantly through his brain.  

 Why had splices ever been created?  Their life was only endless suffering,  all
 at human behest. Wouldn't it have been better to remain a dumb brute than to be
 granted just  enough feeling  and intelligence  to realize  how miserable one's
 situation was?  
 
 It was  almost enough  to make  a loyal  splice side  with that mad transgenic,
 Krazy Kat, and his crew. If only the legendary splice would show himself again.
 Could the rumors of his death really be true? . . .   

 Voices penetrated to Coney's grave.  

 "What'cha think the Snowy found, Art?"  

 "Can't say till we dig it up, Ick. Can't say."  

 Coney pressed his back into the earth, desperately willing himself to sink into
 the ground.  

 Soil began to be scraped aside.  

 Pushing up, gathering his legs beneath  him, Coney burst forth in an  explosion
 of clods.  

 He staggered, found his feet, began to run—  

 Something sharp lanced his back.  

 Instant paralysis!  

 Coney dropped like a smartbomb from a scramjet.  

 Lying on his side, his mind racing, his body transformed into that of a Minitel
 poupee viande, Coney watched two pairs of bare feet approach. One pair belonged
 to a big human; the other belonged  to a child, or dwarf, and seemed  barely to
 touch the ground.  

 Hands lifted Coney up.  

 He saw his captors.  

 The big one  was seemingly a  baseline human, save  for one appendage:  a long,
 flexible, jointed scorpion's  tail arching over  his shoulder, a  drop of venom
 still glistening at its sharp tip.  

 The other, smaller one was  equipped with fluttering wasp wings  sprouting from
 his shoulders and a stinger emerging from his coccyx.  
 
 Both were  naked save  for clinging  pubic clamshells,  their bodies laced with
 streetlife scars.  

 "Nice supper, huh, Art?" said the wasp one. "Nice supper!"  

 The scorpion studied Coney  with less avidity than  his partner. "Not so  fast,
 Ick. This is a neo fresh from  outside. There could be some other use  for him.
 We could trade him or something."  

 "But I'm hungry, Art!"  

 "Listen, let's get the roast home and decide then."  

 "Okay, Art. You're the boss."  

 The  scorpion  hoisted  Coney over  his  shoulder  and they  set  off  down the
 crumbling remnants of a paved path.  

 Coney knew he was doomed. Lacking the spirit even to curse the cupidity of Peej
 Hopcroft for sending him  here to die so  ignominiously, he began to  drift off
 into a protective mental predeath fugue.  

 The smell of a large body of water came vaguely to Coney's sensitive nostrils.  

 "Quiet now," urged the scorpion in an undertone. "We don't want to wake Namor."  

 "Yeah, that fucking Namor—"  

 Water sprayed the trio. The next  second, a newcomer stood beside them:  scaled
 skin over slabbed muscles, winged heels, pinniped ears.  

 "That's 'Prince fucking Namor' to you," said the Submariner insouciantly.  

 Tossed to the ground, Coney landed with a thud on his back.  
 
 Dropping into  a crouch,  the scorpion  lashed his  tail menacingly.  "Get him,
 Ick!" he called, but the diminutive waspman was already airborne.  

 Prince Namor seemed untroubled by the aggressive dual attack. Weaving, darting,
 avoiding the poison barb, he quickly latched on to the scorpion's wrist.  There
 was a crackle of onboard capacitors discharging and the smell of burning flesh;
 the big man collapsed. Without  even looking backward, the Submariner  flung an
 arm up and  grabbed the wasp's  ankle as he  made ready to  plunge his stinger.
 Scorched meat, and the wasp fell.  

 The merman now  came to Coney.  Bending over the  splice, he laid  his hands on
 either side of his head.  

 Expecting death, Coney felt only a gentle thrill along his nerve endings.  

 "You're carrying something you think  is important," said the Submariner  after
 half a minute. "The Pangolin should know about this. Let's go."  

 Hoisting Coney up under one arm, Prince Namor raced deeper into the Soft Sector
 with a fleetness only winged heels could bring.  

 Within minutes, the Submariner and his burden stood in a coldtorch-lit clearing
 before a throne crudely assembled from junked cars. Surrounding the throne  was
 a host of malformed creatures, beaker-born and bioreactor-spawned.  

 Atop the sham throne was the Pangolin.  

 A huge polymod with cascades of living armor plates down his back and limbs and
 a chromed skull, the Pangolin  
 
 brandished three thick claws—one opposable—on each hand in place of fingers.  

 "What do you have there, Namor?"  resonantly boomed out the imperious ruler  of
 the Soft Sector.  

 "An outsider, a messenger bearing something of value."  

 "What?"  

 "I don't know. He's paralyzed, and  my SQUIDS only picked up the  general drift
 of his thoughts."  

 "Well, let's wake him."  

 Out from the crowd  stepped a Medusa. Namor  transferred Coney to her.  Licking
 some of  the splice's  sweat with  a burred  tongue, she  pronounced, "Scorpion
 toxin. I've got just the trick."  

 Hissing, one of her headsnakes quickly fastened its fangs into Coney's rump.  

 As fast as he had frozen, he melted back into freedom.  

 Set on his trembling legs, Coney tried  to chant his mantra, but not a  word of
 it remained.  

 "Can you speak now, splice?" roared the Pangolin.  

 Coney wanted to faint, but couldn't. "Y-y-yes."  

 "What are you carrying?"  

 "It's a new trope, Peej Pangolin.  It's called O-max-O. It's to be  used during
 virtual sex. It's not for sale yet. I don't know more than that. I swear on  my
 manufacturer's warranty!"  

 "Hand it over!"  

 "But, Peej Pangolin, my errand—"  

 The Pangolin ripped a  polycarbon strut off a  chassis and began to  climb down
 from his throne.  
 
 Coney hastily dug the  crawlypatch out. Prince Namor  took it and passed  it to
 the Pangolin.  

 "We'll  match and  batch this  by dawn.  By tomorrow  night, it'll  be on  sale
 throughout the whole civicorp. I owe you one, Namor."  

 "That's a lock. Well, I've got to wet my gills. Stay sharp!"  

 The Submariner placed the tips of his ten fingers approximately two centimeters
 apart: a burst of sparks arced and crackled in the air between them. Grunts and
 exclamations issued from the more impressionable members of the audience.  

 After the merman had gone, the Pangolin turned to Coney.  

 "Now, little splice, I wish you no harm. Shall I relieve you of your collar, so
 that you may join my court and live free?"  

 Coney considered the  proposal. Never to  be forced to  run another errand  for
 Peej Hopcroft, nevermore to truckle or scrape—  

 On the fringes  of the crowd,  a leering frogface  caught Coney's eye.  A mouth
 wide as a manhole opened in a hideous toothless smile. Coney shuddered.  

 "No, thank you, please, Peej Pangolin. I only want to go home!"  

 "Very well. I understand that our style of freedom is not for all. You will  be
 escorted to the border—"  

 "But without the trope I was supposed to deliver, I'll be whipped!"  
 
 The Pangolin smiled.  "I'll provide a  substitute. Medusa! Fab  me a dose  of N
 fear in a crawlypatch."  

 Within minutes, the court crick had  the trope ready. The Pangolin motioned  to
 Coney, who approached timorously.  

 "Several hours  of demon-stuffed  hell. Your  master will  never know  what hit
 him."  

 Reluctantly, Coney took the substitute. "But it's not for—"  

 "Enough! Begone!"  

 Two lynxmen hustled Coney away.  

 Shortly, they  stood on  the edge  of the  Soft Sector.  Coney could  smell the
 Macro2Phages nearing, hear their slurping advance.  

 "Please, please, friend cats, don't let these monsters strip my bones!"  

 The lynxmen laughed. "The shuggoths? We've got them trained not to hurt  anyone
 we don't want hurt. Watch!"  

 Letting loose a piercing whistle, the lynxmen called out, "Ia, ia, tekeli-li!"  

 The guardians ground to a sudden quivering halt.  

 One lynxman slapped Coney's back. "Run now, before we think twice!"  

 Coney ran.  

 Once he was far, far from the Soft Sector, he stopped to consider what to do. A
 clock told him  the hour granted  for his errand  was twice gone.  But he could
 think of nothing to do except try to complete it.  

 Without any further trouble, he found Peej Foxx's apartment. Building  security
 allowed him in upon seeing her card. Her smart door likewise opened for him.  
 
 Inside stood Peej Foxx, coyly grooming her bushy tail.  

 And beside her was Peej Hopcroft!  

 Coney's master looked  at his servant  with ultimate disdain.  "So, you finally
 made it, you filthy worm, after forcing  me to come out on my own,  into filthy
 unmodulated atmospherics!  If I  didn't value  Peej Foxx's  favors so highly, I
 don't think I could have nerved myself  up to such a trying excursion! I  was a
 fool ever to entrust such  a vital errand to a  furball such as you. Why,  just
 look at you! You're a disgrace to my household!"  

 Coney turned toward a mirror.  

 He was covered with gravedirt. There was a bare raw ulceration on his arm where
 the shuggoth had brushed him. Dried blood crusted his midriff from the beetle's
 embrace. His back ached  from being tossed to  the ground by the  scorpion. His
 swollen ass stung from the snakebite.  

 "Yes, Peej Hopcroft is right. I am a mess. But it was only—"  

 "Silence! Where is the trope I gave you?"  

 Coney dug out the crawlypatch. "Here it is. But I do not think—"  

 "You are not meant to think! Just give it to me!"  

 Coney handed the close of N-fear over.  

 "Luckily, I had a  second patch which I  brought with me. The  lovely Peej Foxx
 has already applied it to her charming skin. I, therefore, will use this one."  

 Coney's master pressed out the activation  pattern on the patch and applied  it
 to his arm. It crawled until it found a vein, then settled down.  
 
 "Ninety-second delay, my dear. Just long enough for us to slide into our Sacks,
 whereupon we shall meet in virtual heaven."  

 Two wrinkled circuit-skinned and SQUID-studded bags lay on the soft floor,  one
 end of each agape.  Coney's master and Peej  Foxx each wormed into  his and her
 own semi-organic  Sack, which  sealed up  behind them  and tautened into shape,
 flowing into orifices, and molding around organs.  

 Coney watched his master's Sack.  

 When the violent, highly nonerotic twitchings began, he headed home.  

 The long way round.  
 
 Afterschool Special  

 "My poohs are so slouch!"  

 The phemes just spilled out like someone had tripped my gates. At first, I  was
 shocked. But then I felt good.  

 Before today, I would've rather gone wiggly with a var than admit the truth  in
 front of anyone except Jinx.  But somehow—right here and now—everything  looked
 different. I was sick and tired  of sticking up for my simplex  parental units,
 especially when they wouldn't let me have what I wanted.  

 The class  was taking  a break  from invirting  with CADaver, the human-anatomy
 virtuality used mainly to train feldshers.  We were all lounging around in  the
 spleen,  wearing  our secondary  identities.  The school  had  a contract  with
 MicroDisney, so we  were forced to  wear their patented  images. Everyone hated
 it, but the trope dosers claimed it  was for our own good. The theory  was that
 no mega-eft  spoilboy or  churlgirl would  be able  to run  better grafix  than
 someone else, so we could concentrate on studying instead of showing off. Also,
 some of the ids2 that  
 
 kids liked to use outside of school were so ciccone or freddie that you'd spend
 all your classtime creamin' or screamin'.  

 So I was in my  usual Daisy Duck, and Jinx  was wearing Goofy, and the  rest of
 the class was all cutesy bluebirds  and dwarves, mice and fish, Pinocchios  and
 ballerina hippos, all clogging the virtual lymphoid tissue of this  ''important
 component of the reticulo-endothelial system" (or so lectured the tutor-turtle,
 whom everyone was ignoring).  

 Every once in a while, someone would reach out and snag a passing red bloodcell
 and pox it under his or her nose. We had found out the rusty smell could really
 bend your ladders like the best samogon or kompot.  

 We had been dissing our respective poohs, as kids will, when I had found myself
 spitting out my comment. I guess I didn't fully realize till then just how much
 my poohs had been quenching me.  

 Right on cue my best proxy, Jinx, spoke up.  

 Now, I mentioned  that Jinx was  wearing Goofy, but  I should add  that, having
 found  out  how  to  tweak  the petafits  that  constituted  his  suit,  he had
 retrofitted onto it  an enormous set  of black-skinned balls  and dong. It  was
 kinda sad, seeing as how  they were the only ones  he would ever have until  he
 became an adult, but I supposed virtual sex organs were better than none.  

 So Jinx said, "Just how slouch are they, Arnie?"  

 "They're so slouch,"  I shot back,  "that they make  the Bogd Gegeen  look like
 Siouxie Sexcrime!"  
 
 Everyone got a laugh out of that, imagining the eternal godboy of Greater  Free
 Mongolia tricked out like our favorite teledildonics star.  

 When the hoots and hollers died down, Honeysuckle spoke up.  

 I've always  hated Honeysuckle.  Her poohs  let her  have these really glamslam
 Xoma tits two years ago, whereas my chest has yet to even bud naturally,  which
 is the only  way with poohs  like mine that  I'll ever get  any boobs, short of
 turning twelve and becoming franchised. More than anything else, this was why I
 guess I had exploded and called my dumb old poohs slouch.  

 In keeping  with her  primary id,  Honeysuckle always  wore the Little Mermaid.
 Only  she  too  had twiddled  with  her  image, so  that  the  doe-eyed cartoon
 transfection  sported  impossible macro-tits  on  which the  seashell  cups had
 dwindled to nipple-caps.  

 Now, I watched all the whychromes—including my very own Jinx—hang on her  every
 word.  

 "That's because your poohs are Tee-Ems!" jeered Honeysuckle.  

 I winced at the dig. It was  not something I could deny. Everyone knew  my dads
 belonged to the Transcentennial Moderationists. They even had their own hour on
 the metamedium: Keep It Simple, Stupid, with Alvin and Calvin Arneson.  

 In the face of  all the laughter Honeysuckle's  comment caused, I found  myself
 having to stick up  for my dads, and  it was awfully difficult,  since I didn't
 really want to and felt like a total hypocrite.  
 
 "My poohs may be  retro-jethro KISS-asses," I said,  "but at least they're  not
 black science boryokudans like yours!"  

 Everyone  got silent  as cell-death.  My reference  to the  illegal underworld
 origin of the wealth of Honeysuckle's surface-respectable poohs was ultra loosh
 and faroosh. But I couldn't just  sit there batting off phagocytes and  let her
 run my dads down. I mean, it was all right for me to do it, but not her!  

 Honeysuckle's cartoon gaze grew as slitted and mean as that of a Secret Service
 pantherine confronted with  a suspicious character  feinting at the  World Bank
 Managing Director. I  knew I was  truly on her  shit list now  and wondered how
 wise it had been to sass such a nasty girl.  

 "Well," she said, her voice dripping lysozymes, "the duck can quack! I  suppose
 you think it's all  spidersilk and hormone sodas,  having poohs like mine.  You
 don't know what it's like, every night half-expecting the crick-cops or Protein
 Police or the IMF to bust down the door and boot us all!"  

 It was hard to feel sorry for Honeysuckle as she sat there on a spongy mass  of
 lymph, flicking her  flippers and flaunting  her chest, so  I didn't even  try.
 "You can have anything you want—"  

 "What does that have  to do with being  happy! Suppose you could  have anything
 you wanted? Would you always be happy?"  

 "Why, sure . . . "  

 Honeysuckle assumed a venomous smile. "All right, then. What do you want  most?
 C'mon, tell  us, and  I'll give  it to  you. I'll  see to  it that your wildest
 dreams come true."  
 
 Somehow the grounds of this battle had shifted under me. How we had gotten from
 the respective merits of our parents to who had the happier life eluded me, and
 I didn't  like the  change. Somehow,  I found  myself on  the defensive and was
 really uneasy.  

 What could  I say,  in front  of Honeysuckle  and all  my friends? All I really
 wanted was a pair of nice unassuming moderate-sized boobs and maybe some  basal
 whychrome genitals for Jinx. But I was too embarrassed to say so. So instead, I
 blurted out the first thing that came to mind.  

 "I'd like, um—a spike!"  

 Honeysuckle laughed. "That's all? Out of anything you could have, you choose  a
 crummy, soilin' spike?"  

 Jinx intervened then, and I sent a silent thanks his way.  

 "What's the matter  with a spike?  They're really peppy!  Plus they're so  new,
 hardly anybody's got one!"  

 Honeysuckle huffed. "Oh, I suppose you'd like one too? . . . "  

 "I wouldn't mind one. But they cost more than a bucket of brains. And  besides,
 you need your pooh's chop to get one planted. . . . "  

 Now  Honeysuckle  adopted  that  I've-swallowed-every-trope-ever-made  tone she
 frequently used, which always got under my skin like a stitchbug.  

 "Well, I think they're simply as tawdry as sparkleskin, and frankly I'd  rather
 wear chitin! But if you two larvae want spikes, I suppose I'll just have to get
 them for you."  

 Before Honeysuckle or Jinx or I  could say any more, the tutor-turtle  informed
 us that recess was over, and we had to get back to work.  
 
 I couldn't  really concentrate  on the  rest of  the lesson.  All my bulbs were
 firing doubletime,  trying to  imagine what  Honeysuckle intended  to do for—or
 to—Jinx and me.  

 Finally, the  tutor-turtle told  us to  get ready  for the  phase-change out of
 virtuality, and the next thing I knew, I was back in my Sack, which was already
 withdrawing its squelchy threads and tendrils.  

 I tickled it open and emerged into the classroom.  

 All the other kids were climbing  out of their Sacks too, their  familiar faces
 and forms a welcome sight after  so much microdiz nutrasweet. Most of  them—all
 of them  except poor  old me,  in fact—sported  various kiddie-moddies:  tails,
 scales, and pointy nails,  manes, veins, and extra  brains. I was the  only one
 whose poohs wouldn't let her have  even the simplest little gill-slit or  sixth
 finger—never mind  tits—all because  they believed  in some  weird principle of
 "somatic integrity."  

 Honeysuckle was brushing her perfect calico  hair and eyeing me from her  perch
 on  the  corner of  a  smartdesk with  the  raptorial look  of  an execucondo's
 security bird. I wanted  Jinx beside me before  she could say anything,  but he
 was still struggling to get out of his sack, last one as usual. I went over  to
 help him.  

 Jinx's sack was undergoing some bizarro kind of peristaltic reaction, and I had
 to pet its control  ganglia till it calmed  down. Jinx always had  some kind of
 trouble  with his  interface bag,  because its  parms weren't  set up  for his
 peculiarities.  

 At last, though, the two of us got it open, and Jinx emerged.  
 
 There  was nothing  to Jinx  below his  abdomen. His  body simply  ended a  few
 centimeters below his navel. He looked just like he had been sliced in half  by
 some mad magician.  

 His bottom—or ventral side  or whatever you want  to call it—was capped  with a
 tough protective Immunologic membrane like sharkskin that was integral with his
 regular epidermis. This membrane handled all his metabolic wastes, so that Jinx
 never had to pee or shit.  

 The way  Jinx got  around was  on his  knuckles. His  hands and  supermyofibril
 biceps were  massive, and  his knuckles  well calloused.  Suspended from  these
 pylons, he could either  swing his torso forward,  rest on it, then  shift both
 supports, or he could sort of fall forward from left to right hand.  

 Jinx had been born this  way. His poohs were third-generation  spacelings whose
 ancestors hadn't seen much need for deadmeat legs in zero-gee, and so they  had
 bid the chromosartors snip and transcribe until the result was my proxy, Jinx.  

 His folks—nomenklatura of Asgard—had sent  Jinx to Gaia—to our school—for  what
 they  insisted  was a  superior  educational experience.  (Although,  what with
 tropes and the digiverse being equally accessible and high-quality  practically
 anywhere, I failed to  see exactly what benefits  they were conferring on  him,
 unless it was the dubious Gaian social life or high-status eft expenditure.)  

 When I first got friendly with Jinx, I asked him two questions.  
 
 "How come you don't ride, um, a prosthocart, maybe like the dolphinboys use?"  

 "Because I'm not a cripple. I'm completely normal, for a spaceling."  

 I didn't argue the point, even though only baseline scantlings like me rate the
 semiderogatory  word  "normal." Maybe  the  word meant  something  different on
 Asgard. Instead, I asked the second question.  

 "I imagine your colony cooks new members in some fancy ductwork."  

 "Yeah. Repligen wombs with i-Stat endometriums and Ares-Serono placentas."  

 "But how do you—I mean, what do you do when—"  

 "How do we get wiggly?"  

 "Well, yeah!"  

 "It's all virtual. That's the one thing I don't like about home. I keep wishing
 I had—had legs and a cock! I even dream I'm walking sometimes. . . . "  

 "It's probably feedback from Gaia's morphic fields, the human subset. You  felt
 it out in space, but it's even  stronger here. Like they say, 'Ain't no  shield
 against the field, cuz it dwells in the cells.'"  

 "I guess."  

 Now, as  I helped  Jinx to  a "sitting"  position, my  reverie was brought to a
 harsh end by Honeysuckle's sashaying, tit-quaking approach. She stopped a meter
 or so away and addressed me while ignoring Jinx—except to insult him.  

 "If you're done helping  that knucklebuster, I'd like  to finish up our  little
 business matter."  
 
 Honeysuckle ran  a flicker-screen  thumbnail across  a seam  bisecting her bare
 midriff, opening up a possum-pouch. From within, she deftly filched a flashcard
 and handed it to me.  

 I noticed  that Honeysuckle's  nailscreen was  running the  Mandelbrot set, and
 everything suddenly felt as strange as one of the set's remoter precincts.  

 With nervous fingers  I flexed the  still-warm card, and  its silicrobe message
 blinked at me.  

 THE G-GNOME'S CAVE 1040  BUGHOUSE SQUARE (RIDE THE  RED ARTERY TO NODE  TEN, OR
 TAKE SLIDEWALK SEVEN)Somatic  and gnomic alterations  of all types.  Deletions,
 insertions, and inversions. Coleopterics a specialty. Fully bonded and licensed
 by the BDC.  

 I flexed the  card again, and  Honeysuckle's totipotent family  chop showed up,
 the semi-infamous Rancifer icon.  

 Honeysuckle leered. "That'll get you and your friend anything you ask for  from
 the G-Gnome—including tits, if that's what you really want."  

 I stiffened right up, but managed  not to change my expression—I hoped.  I knew
 the whole class was watching and listening.  

 "No, I want a spike."  

 "Me too,"  said Jinx  in a  comradely way,  although I  could sense that he was
 having second thoughts just like me.  

 "Pardon me,  but I'm  sure neither  one of  you knows  your efferents from your
 afferents. But if  you both show  up tomorrow with  spikes, I'll have  to admit
 you've got plenty of testo-estro."  

 And with that, Honeysuckle turned her back on us as if we had ceased to exist.  

 The teacher called  us to return  to our studies  then, and so  I couldn't talk
 anymore with Jinx.  

 Needless  to  say,  the rest  of  the  four-hour school  day  moved  slow as  a
 crawlypatch. With Honeysuckle's  card in my  pocket, I couldn't  concentrate on
 plectics or  cladistics or  kundalini or  behavioral pragmatics  or even lunch!
 (And they  were serving  my favorite  that day  too: deep-fried free-range croc
 with null-cal Ben  and Jerry's for  dessert.) All I  wanted was to  be finished
 with classes, so that Jinx and I could decide what, if anything, we were  going
 to do with the magic flashcard.  

 At last—of course and however—we were free.  

 Or as free as any eleven-year-old ever is in this ageist society!  

 Jinx and I met  at our usual place,  beneath the towering forty-foot  paulownia
 tree on the edge of  the schoolyard. We had helped  to plant the giant when  it
 was just a tiny seedling  two years ago, on Global  Arbor Day, and it had  been
 our special spot ever since.  

 If Jinx had had feet, he probably would have been kicking the dirt. As it  was,
 he exhibited his nervousness by picking bark off our tree.  
 
 "I don't know about you," my spaceling proxy said when I came up to him, "but I
 can't think  straight. What  do you  say we  bind some  satori and  just sit  a
 minute?"  

 "Now you're  firing! I  hear the  Chromatin Cafe  has that  new line  of Archer
 Daniels-Midland tropes on tap. . . . "  

 "Then what are we waiting for? Let's go!"  

 So  with Jinx  swinging himself  along as  I ambled,  we made  our way  to the
 Chromatin Cafe.  

 We were supposed to be  reporting to our separate afterschool  apprenticeships.
 Jinx to his nafta boss at the Mercosur Mart (he was training to run an entrepot
 for Asgard) and me to the local branch of the Sheldrake Institute, where I  was
 trying to grok morphic field modulation.  

 But if we were indeed going to be spiked, then missing our work stints would be
 the least of our transgressions.  

 The CC was  only half a  klick from the  school, so we  didn't bother with  the
 slidewalks. It felt good to use  my muscles after so much virtual  nonexercise,
 and I knew Jinx felt the same.  

 Soon  we  were  inside  the  sodaparlor  with  its  old-fashioned  decorations,
 primitive  PET-scan  printouts,  and   NMR  images  of  brain-glucose   uptake,
 flickering on ancient crackly low-res monitors.  

 "Two  Joshu Juices,"  I said  to the  poptate kibernetica  behind the  counter,
 presenting Honeysuckle's  flashcard. If  she didn't  pay for  anything else, at
 least she'd pay for our drinks.  

 "Make mine a Potala Punch," countermanded Jinx.  
 
 ''The order is two Joshu Juices and one Potala Punch," said the kibe.  

 "No. One of each."  

 "The order is one Joshu Juice and one Potala Punch."  

 "Flame on!"  

 "This is an assent?"  

 "Does the Goddess use tampons?"  

 The poptate churned its heuristics for  ten seconds, then began to brew  us our
 sidechains.  

 "Want to sit by the pond?" asked Jinx, after the drinks were mixed.  

 "Sure."  

 I carried the juices, and  we found an empty bench  on the grassy marge of  the
 small ornamental pond. Two or three baseline ducks were paddling in the  reeds,
 and I was reminded of my dumb id2 and Honeysuckle's sexy one.  

 I plopped  down on  the syalon  seat, and  Jinx used  his strong  arms to lever
 himself up beside me.  Sitting together like this,  his head nearly on  a level
 with mine, it was easy to forget his lack of legs.  

 We clinked our glasses, and I quoted the ADM jingle.  

 "'Peace of mind—'"  

 "'—for a nudollar ninety-nine!'" finished Jinx.  

 We downed our brews and waited for the effects.  

 The tropes had been expertly  reverse-engineered from a sampling of  meditating
 monks: in the case  of Jinx's drink, from  the mind of the  Dalai Lama himself.
 In'a minute  or so,  the world  took on  a shimmering  translucence, and I felt
 connected to the whole universe. Nothing mat-  
 
 tered, but everything counted. All my problems were non-existent.  

 Staring out over the perfect pond, I saw the surface ripple in the middle, then
 break to reveal the finned back of an airfish making the phase-change into  the
 second half of its life.  

 We had just studied the specs on  these splices, and they rushed into my  brain
 in perfect arrays.  

 Having filled its flotation bladders with hydrogen broken out of the water  and
 revamped its physiology, the airfish was  now ready to live in the  atmosphere.
 It would subsist for a few months on airborne microzooa, spore, and pollen, all
 the  while sucking  low-level ozone  from the  air and  concentrating it  in a
 different  bladder. Rising  higher and  higher, it  would eventually  burst at
 around 15,000 meters, the lower edge of the ozone layer, releasing its cargo of
 reactive molecules where they would do good, not harm.  

 Highly   unslouch.   Truly  nonfactorable   goldstar-plus   cytofabrication.  I
 definitely wasn't down  with the kids  who'd try to  shoot the O3-suckers  with
 flashlights just to watch the hydrogen mini-explosion.  

 Jinx spoke up with deep significance. "The airfish is born, becomes adult, does
 its work, then dies."  

 Without satori  tropes, Jinx's  words probably  don't mean  much, or else sound
 ultra-simplex. But I can't tell you what they meant to me then. They seemed  to
 encapsulate our whole situation in a nutshell.  

 "We're 'fish too," I answered. "But we're also more than 'fish."  

 "You're bright as a three-alarm solar flare, girl!"  
 
 I knew then that I loved Jinx and would always be with him.  

 At that very moment, as if in confirmation of our love, another couple wandered
 in to sit on the bench next to us.  

 The woman wore Systemix meat, a Great Mother soma-type. Dressed only in a grass
 skirt, she had a double line of  small breasts running down her torso, and  her
 hips were broad as the lake behind the Yellow River dam.  

 Her companion's silicrobe trademark told me  he was racked out by Cellpro.  And
 what  a  superstring raster  he  was! Hawkheaded  Horus,  noble falcon  plumage
 mantling his shoulders.  

 Jinx and I looked  on in mute admiration  for several minutes. In  the midst of
 our trope-induced satori, the couple seemed like heavenly visitors. Even  after
 the glamour had  worn off our  vision, they still  looked megatrump, if  merely
 human.  

 Ignoring us, the  adults quaffed their  drinks. (Horus's pointy  birdtongue was
 ultra-uptake!) The  brews must  have been  some kind  of aphrodelix,  since the
 couple soon started into some heavy petting. Horus's loincloth quickly became a
 tent, and I got awfully jealous and sad at the same time.  

 "Jinx,"  I  pleaded irrationally,  "let's  use Honeysuekle's  card  to get  the
 moddies we've always talked about, then run away together!"  

 Jinx held my hand. "Arnie, think twice. Putting legs on me is no simplex  patch
 job. I'd be laid up for days. We couldn't travel very far even in a hired  scar
 car without leaving a trail even a senile augie-doggie could follow.  
 
 Honeysuckle would be pissing prostaglandins at the theft of her card. And  then
 our poohs—or yours anyway—would  snatch us back, and  the next thing you  know,
 we'd be wearing obedience collars like some splice! No, the only thing to do is
 to hold out for a year. It's not such a long time. . . . "  

 Jinx spoke with the voice of reason, and I knew what he advocated was the  only
 sensible course. Still, my whole soul  rebelled at the notion of going  on with
 our boring lives without doing something, especially when we'd have to face all
 our cohort tomorrow.  

 I stood up. "I guess the only thing left to do then is to get spiked. At  least
 it'll show our poohs we've got wills of our own. And it should shut Honeysuckle
 right up. Are you in a dedicated mode?"  

 Jinx boosted himself off the bench,  thumping onto the grass. "Does a  carebear
 sit in the pedwards?"  

 I laughed. "G-Gnome, here we come!"  

 Slidewalk Seven  was only  a one-block  stroll north  of us,  so we  chose that
 transport over the Arteries.  

 If you  pulled out  a length  of your  intestines and  slit it  longwise, you'd
 expose  the velvety  microvilli lining,  the zillions  of little  fingers that
 propel  food  through your  gut.  You'd also  have  a pretty  good  model of  a
 slidewalk.  

 The sturdy silicrobe microvilli of the slidewalk propelled anything placed atop
 them along at  a steady 5kph.  (You could ride  the network cross-continent  in
 just a month, if you wanted to  spend your vacation that boring way, like  many
 slouch oldsters did.) Each invisible  finger was rooted in place,  yet flexible
 enough to pass on its burden to its neigh-  
 
 bor. (In constant motion, the  slidewalks conveyed a visual impression  similar
 to the waveriness  of heated syalon  pavement. And if  you rode them  barefoot,
 they  tickled  almost  subliminally.) Different  lanes  had  different built-in
 directional orientations, for two-way travel.  

 The Amgen motto—"Taxis,  not taxis"—was spelled  out right in  the substance of
 the slidewalks. I remembered having to have my dads explain it to me when I was
 little, since I never knew that "tax-us" could also be pronounced  ''tax-ease,"
 or even what they were.  

 Jinx swung himself deftly onboard  with the other passengers, vars,  kibes, and
 citizens, and  I had  to stutter-skip  to stay  with him.  I wasn't  usually so
 awkward, but guess I was kind of nervous about our plans, even though I thought
 I had convinced myself it was the only way.  

 As if sensing my  unease, Jinx tried to  make me laugh. "Did  you ever download
 any reductionist paradigm  fiction where the  author tried to  imagine a system
 like this and came up with miles of rubber belts on rollers?"  

 Jinx's trick  worked, and  I laughed  like a  hyena splice.  "That's not  true.
 You're yanking my rods."  

 Jinx held up one  hand. "Parity-plus, Arnie. I'll  give you the urals,  and you
 can see for yourself."  

 I chuckled some more. Those ancients—where were their heads at?!  

 Before too long, we were dismounting at Bughouse Square.  

 The thronging  Square always  reminded me  of an  old-time carnival  midway you
 might see on some historical chan-  
 
 nel of the metamedium: lines of garish booths and arcades, peopled by touts and
 vendors  under gaudy  silicrobe signage.  The centerpiece  of the  Square, the
 original Chiron Bughouse, looked positively postmodern, next to the more recent
 exotic additions to the meatmart.  

 Here you  could find  a chromosartor  or genebender  or simple  trope doser who
 would perform any possible alteration on your somatype or genotype—for a price.
 If you had the eft, you could be snipped, ripped or zipped; pumped, stumped  or
 trumped; strobed, lobed or probed; primped, skimped or pimped; vented,  scented
 or demented.  

 I stood  for a  minute or  so bathing  in the  scary, alluring, surreal circus,
 until Jinx tugged at the hem of my doublet.  

 "Let's find number ten-forty, before we change our minds."  

 Tracking round  the Square,  past the  TATA Box  and the  Primordium, past  the
 Organelle Store  and Radio  Shack Biocircuits  outlet, we  soon came  to the  G
 Gnome's Cave.  

 Its facade was all fractal-modeled grocrete stalactites and stalagmites framing
 an irregular entrance curtained by enviromental ribbons.  

 I looked at Jinx, and he looked at me. Taking his hand, I tried to be as  brave
 as my truncated spaceling.  

 "Let's get spiked," I said.  

 And we went through the ribbons.  

 My dads told me that a decade or two ago there was a rage for somatypes modeled
 on  the  characters  in some  old  reedpair  fantasy novel,  sparked  by  a new
 virtuality rendering of  the work. So  for a while  all you saw  on the streets
 were  
 
 bobbits and snorks and smogs, or creatures with some such names.  

 I figured the  G-Gnome must have  modeled himself on  a troll or  dwarf or some
 other runt  from that  book. His  big blue  eyes, capped  by furry  brows, were
 nearly on a level with Jinx's, and the G-Gnome was standing on his bandy  legs!
 Two tufts of  snowy fiuffaduff sprang  from behind his  ears and decorated  his
 otherwise bare skull. He wore a leather bib apron over a Windskin suit, and his
 hands were more massive than Jinx's.  

 To have maintained the same outdated look all these years made me think he  was
 a conservative, slowmole kind of guy, and I instantly felt better to be putting
 myself in his brawny hands, so reassuringly similar to my proxy's.  

 "Children," the G-Gnome rumbled, "how can I help you?"  

 "We're here—" I began, then stopped.  

 A thrid-vid  display had  come on  at our  arrival, and  now, cycling through a
 display of the G-Gnome's wetwares, it had reached the boobs.  

 They were  so beautiful.  Conical or  melony, brown  or creamy, drip-nippled or
 virgin-tipped, they were like taunting mirages in my personal desert.  

 It was all I could do to turn  back to the G-Gnome and beg, "Please, shut  that
 off." With my luck, the next thing  shown would be a variety of the  cocks Jinx
 lacked.  

 The proprietor complied, and I could breathe.  

 "Thank you. We're here to get spikes."  
 
 The G-Gnome's  professional smile  never wavered,  but I  could sense something
 tightening inside him.  

 "You have your parents'—"  

 "We've got this," I said, and offered Honeysuckle's card.  

 Taking it, the G-Gnome flexed it back and forth with a noncommittal expression,
 but I could see nudollar signs in his eyes.  

 "Peej Rancifer lent you her card without, ah, duress? . . . "  

 I tried a haughty  sniff like Honeysuckle used.  "Of course. We're the  best of
 friends."  

 "There should be no problem then."  

 "I hope not," I said, as the G-Gnome's words made my knees go watery.  

 "Please, be seated."  

 When Jinx and I were side by side, the G-Gnome activated the display again. But
 this time it ran through the various models of spike.  

 By the second rep, we had made up our minds.  

 "I'll take the Staghorns," said Jinx.  

 "And I'll take the Coral Cage."  

 "Very fine choices, both. The placement of each differs slightly. The Staghorns
 are implanted in  the frontal region,  whereas the Cage  tends more toward  the
 temporals."  

 The G-Gnome had donned gloves while he was talking and now squeezed from a tube
 a line  of paste.  He approached  Jinx and  rubbed the  goop into his skull, up
 front.  

 Then he did the same to me, more toward the middle of my head.  
 
 Carefully peeling off the gloves and dropping them into a D-Grade-All unit, the
 G-Gnome said, "A mix of topical anesthetic and bonemelt. It takes a few moments
 to work.  I shall  debit Peej  Rancifer's card  while we  wait, if  you have no
 objections."  

 When he  was done  with that,  the G-Gnome  went to  a cabinet,  from which  he
 removed the spikes.  

 I had never seen  the things except on  the metamedium, where they  were always
 filtershot real sexy, so I was unprepared for how innocuous they looked in real
 life: just a pair of square-ish,  pointy, drab—well, spikes, like the kind  you
 might find holding down reedpair railroad ties.  

 Next from the cabinet came a shiny chrome-handled, rubber-headed mallet.  

 And with this, the G-Gnome drove the spikes into our heads.  

 I couldn't feel anything, even when the spike penetrated my dura mater. That  G
 Gnome was slouch-negative!  He had that  single tap down  perfect. Naturally, I
 should have  known that  Honeysuckle and  her family  would patronize  only the
 best.  

 Next, the G-Gnome slapped crawlypatches on our arms and began to lecture us.  

 "These are  nutraceutical supplements.  You're going  to need  them. The spikes
 will be utilizing some  of your body's energy  to grow. Even with  the patches,
 you'll want  to stoke  up with  something like  Genzyme Carbprot afterwards, to
 make up for the loss."  

 Now I  could half-feel  ghostly invasions  of my  cranium. Right  on cue, the G
 Gnome explained, "The spikes are  
 
 growing osteo-anchors, as well as  paraneurons that will interface with  yours.
 That's how they're able to control  the color and pattern changes that  reflect
 your moods. Once the endogrowth is done, the exogrowth will begin. Let me get a
 mirror."  

 The G-Gnome wheeled a digital mirror into place and turned it on, just in time.  

 The exogrowth, the visible part of the process, was starting.  

 From the  single spike  centered in  Jinx's head,  a pair  of antlers  began to
 develop, magnificent self-similar branchings.  

 From mine a  rough coral stalk  shot straight up.  When it reached  a height of
 about eight  centimeters, it  began to  overspread into  a gorgeous latticework
 umbrella.  

 Jinx and I watched ourselves and each other admiringly in the mirror, while the
 G-Gnome smiled benevolently on.  

 By the time  the growth was  finished, we were  already adjusting to  the novel
 weight of our new accessories. Jinx's antlers almost doubled his height,  while
 my cage had stopped at nose level like a living lace veil.  

 "How  do  I look?"  asked  Jinx, his  antlers  flaring a  crimson  I knew  from
 metamedium shows meant excitement.  

 "Very muskophallic! How about me?"  

 "Brain coral goddess!"  

 The G-Gnome  clapped his  hands together,  and we  knew he  was eager for us to
 leave.  

 "I'm glad you're pleased. Remember, removal is a rather more time-consuming and
 costly process."  

 "Oh, we'd never want to get rid of them!" I said.  
 
 On the way out, Jinx had a little trouble with the door-ribbons catching on his
 rack, but aside from that, everything went superstring.  

 Until we got home, of course.  

 Jinx came in with me, and my poohs just lost it.  

 I will never ever forget the sight  of them that day. They kind of  scared even
 me, their own daughter, who should be used to them.  

 My dads are biological  brothers who were in  the same IMF assault  unit during
 the last Short  War. They were  lying in a  trench together, under  enemy fire,
 when a shell was lobbed in on them.  

 The weapon contained some weird parazyme  that no one's ever quite figured  out
 yet. What it did was to fuse my dads together everywhere they were touching, as
 well as introduce  a lot of  collateral damage and  changes, right down  to the
 mitochondrial level.  

 The bonescrapers patched them  up as best they  could. Ironically, they had  to
 use a couple of bulgy remora-cords to join them even more symbiotically,  since
 Alvin and Calvin had to share a lot of cytokines to stay alive.  

 When they were demobbed, their experiences led them to join the Moderationists,
 for whom they became instant and effective spokesmen.  

 I came along as a teratoma.  

 My dads kept developing these squelchy growths all over their bodies, which the
 bonies kept removing.  One of the  growths had more  than usual baseline  human
 structure to it, and my dads got the idea that it would be nice to turn it into  
 
 a  daughter.  It  cost  a  lot,  both  in  eft  and  in  compromise  of   their
 noninterventionist principles. But they were really kind of lonely, and I guess
 the Moderationists finally relented on the dogma part.  

 Naturally, I'm glad they did.  

 So  anyhow, there  my Siamese  dads stood,  linked by  flesh and  remora-cords
 straining fit to burst,  shouting their heads off  at me and Jinx,  whose spike
 growths were turning green with  contrition and purple with sorrowful  anger at
 how innocent kids like us always got quenched in the end.  

 To make a long  story short, we had  to get rid of  the spikes (but not  before
 everyone in our cohort saw us with them), and Honeysuckle's parents had to  pay
 for it all, and she had her estrogen shut off for a month, and Jinx, my darling
 Jinx, got sent back to Asgard.  

 But I really am not worried. Like Jinx said, a year is not such a long time  to
 wait till we're franchised.  

 And after seeing me with a spike, there wasn't much resistance from the poohs a
 month later, when I pleaded one last time for tits.  

 And they're from a much classier vendor's line than hers!  
 
 Up the Lazy River  

 1. Muscle Fatigue  

 Flying northwest, parallel to the interface of the River Seven bankside  forest
 and the manicured savannah, across which herds of null-sophont cultivars roamed
 peacefully, Norodom Dos Santos grieved for his hyperfluid charge.  

 Normally, River Seven appeared from the air as a thick two-toned viscous snake,
 subtly pulsing in controlled opposing flows. Constrained by its mostly baseline
 geophysical  channel, two-thirds  dirty quicksilver  grey and  one-third matte
 black, it resembled a stripe of gel like the squeezings from a tube of  antique
 toothpaste.  

 Today, River  Seven lacked  its usual  luster, seemed  lifeless and dispirited,
 victim of the unexplained changes Dos Santos was speeding to investigate.  

 I'm personifying the River again, Dos Santos mildly chided himself. What  would
 Master Trexler think of such imprecision in one of his students?  

 After all, even dead, Trexler still exhibited all those old personality  traits
 which a Turing Level Eight platform  
 
 was capable of emulating, and one did not care to disappoint him.  

 Transferring his  Synergen-grown craft  to kibe  autopilot (a  simple TL4), Dos
 Santos  resolved  to  abandon sentimentalism  for  work.  Prompting his  higher
 centers  into  microsleep,  he  freed  up  paraneurons  to  run  deep   plectic
 simulations of the River's failure.  

 Midway through the third evocation, disaster struck.  

 Propulsion myofibrils ripped away from the left COfiber-polysaccharide  lattice
 wing with a sound like a cleaver through a slab of lapinovine.  

 The abnormal sound instantly reawakened the River Master's full awareness.  

 With a sinking feeling, Dos Santos realized his ladybug was going down.  

 The  sudden threat  to his  life triggered  a criticality  flash that  cascaded
 across his Sphinxco wetware mods: this mission was deeper than a simple  repair
 call. . . .   

 Dos Santos knew  better than to  try to wrest  control away from  the kibe unit
 under  emergency  conditions—although a  gut  response still  jerked  his hands
 toward  the control  ganglia. Instead,  he quickly  snugged the  wrist-dangling
 gloves of his  millipore survival suit  on, effectively disabling  his CamNeuro
 digiface.  

 The kibe unit  spoke as the  gloves sealed themselves,  and by then  it was too
 late to do anything even if he had known what to do.  

 "I  am  sorry,  Peej  Dos   Santos,  but  conditions  require  your   immediate
 immobilization."  
 
 Nodules  studded around  the sides  of his  organiform chair  burst like  spore
 capsules. Compressed somatropic lianas sprayed  out, wrapping him in an  sticky
 biolastic net.  

 Out the windscreen, Dos Santos could see the line of jungle on his left  rising
 up and around like a wall.  

 Dos Santos barely had time to utter the start of a prayer to the goddess of his
 Camspanic ancestors: ''Holy Mary Kannon, Highest of Dakinis—" And then he  felt
 the dose of Sandman perfuse his skin. . . .   

 <><><><><><><><><><><><>  

 The birds  resumed their  singing slowly.  The loud  crack of  a damaged branch
 finally  giving  way  stopped  them   again,  but  they  quickly  found   their
 multifarious voices once more.  

 One fauxvian called out over and over in a raspy human voice: "Shop here,  shop
 here, shop here. . . . " An escaped urban adbird . . .   

 Fronds of orange foliage starred with orchidenias lay across the intact  single
 crystal windscreen, obscuring Dos Santos's view of his new surroundings. As  he
 struggled to free himself from the safety restraints, the kibe unit spoke.  

 "Please allow me, Peej Dos Santos."  

 A  fine  mist  dispersed  from the  ladybug's  ceiling,  dissolving  the vines:
 Catalytica Calmbalm. At the same time, Dos Santos felt various aches and  pains
 he had hardly realized he was feeling disappear, as the mist was recognized and
 allowed in through his smartsuit.  
 
 He climbed out of the chair, suit slick and hair damp, and stood tentatively on
 the canted floor. The craft seemed stable.  

 "What happened?"  

 "The left wing suddenly lost  all haemocyanin flow, and the  tissue immediately
 degenerated below the functional threshold. Probability of spontaneous failure,
 point  one   percent.  Probability   of  maintenance   error,  thirty  percent.
 Probability of deliberately induced failure, sixty-eight percent . . .   

 Wait.  Abnormal protease  traces registering.  . .  .  Revised  probability of
 sabotage, ninety-nine-point-six percent."  

 "Sabotage . . . " muttered Dos Santos. "But why?"  

 "I have  no answer  to your  question, Peej  Dos Santos.  However, despite  the
 overwhelming evidence  of nonculpability,  I am  required by  law to supply you
 with the metamedium address of my manufacturer, should you wish to file a  suit
 against them. Synergen is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Primordium  Chaebol.
 Telecosm address is At-prim-kay—"  

 "Forget it." Dos Santos began to gather equipment and supplies from an overhead
 ovoid locker. "How far are we from our destination?"  

 "Contact with Global Positioning's navsats remains firm, and I have us  located
 within the standard three-meter deviation. Machine Lake is approximately  fifty
 klicks to the  north. However, I  managed to set  us down only  a hundred yards
 from River Seven."  

 "And We're still on the upstream bank?"  

 "Yes."  

 "Good job."  
 
 "Thank you, Peej Dos  Santos. I hope you  will take my actions  into account in
 the event of any possible lawsuit."  

 "Don't worry, there's not going to be any legal action. It's plain that whoever
 stopped the River doesn't want me coming to investigate. There'll have to be  a
 purge of all the splices on the maintenance crew back at the base."  

 "Organics are  inherently less  trustworthy and  more liable  to be compromised
 than kibernetika, if I may say so."  

 Dos  Santos cracked  the ladybug's  hatch, and  warm, wet  air blew  in past  a
 curtain of bamboon.  

 "Where are  you going,  Peej? I've  sent out  a distress  call and  received an
 acknowledgement. Would it not be wise to wait here?"  

 "How do I know all the other 'bugs haven't been tampered with too? I could wait
 for days. No, I've got to finish my mission. I'm too close now to wait. And the
 River can't stay down much longer."  

 Patting his left breast  pocket, which held the  vital vial of Instruction  Set
 which  would repair  the River,  and adjusting  the bandoliers  that held  his
 Intratec splat-pistol, extra lysing cartridges and other equipment, Dos  Santos
 placed one booted foot over the sill.  

 "I must protest, Peej. Under Regulation Two-Ten of the Riparian  Administration
 Handbook—"  

 "Listen," interrupted Dos Santos. "Who's the River Master here, you or me?"  

 Somehow the TL4 kibe managed to sound wounded and resigned. "You are, Peej."  

 "Correct."  
 
 "May I make a suggestion, then?"  

 "Certainly."  

 "At least  let me  accompany you.  I am  more capable  than your low-level suit
 assists. Also, if you are terminated and I am later recovered, I shall be  able
 to make a full report."  

 "What a cheerful notion."  

 "I am simply trying to fulfill my autofac-implanted imperatives, Peej. . . . "  

 "All right."  

 Dos Santos stepped to  the console and ejected  the kibe, a featureless  silver
 wafer the diameter of  a hockey puck, but  only half as thick.  Fitting it flat
 into the  appropriate sticktite  slot on  his harness,  he turned  to leave the
 disabled ladybug.  

 "I am  now fully  integrated with  your suit  sensors, Peej.  They are  of high
 quality."  

 "I have  a feeling  we'll need  them," said  Dos Santos.  "Activate my  retinal
 displays, please."  

 "Done."  

 Dos Santos's  peripheral vision  filled with  translucent shimmerstats,  and he
 stepped tentatively into the jungle.  

 2. Infoslam  

 The first report indicating that something was seriously wrong with River Seven
 had come a mere twelve hours  ago, emanating from the kibe unit  captaining one
 of  the  numerous   floating  autofacs-cum-general-stores  that   supplied  the
 indigenous Riverside population. The unit, a mere hundred klicks from  
 
 Machine Lake, had messaged that the River's downstream velocity was  decreasing
 radically, dropping toward  ancient baseline values  or below; probes  launched
 into  the upstream  side, however,  still registered  normal values.  Continued
 updates revealed a steady decline in the force of the artifical current.  

 When other reports from further downRiver began to flood in—a tourist vessel, a
 passenger ferry, a  fleet of sport  skimmers and striders—it  became obvious to
 Dos Santos that River Seven—his River—was dying.  

 Naturally, he  had been  in Lagos  on official  business at  the worst possible
 time. Had  the trouble  found him  at his  normal post—his  HQ on the shores of
 Machine Lake—he would have been at the  source of the problem and able to  take
 immediate action. As it was, a long trip back had been necessary first.  

 Now, knowing  that his  craft had  been sabotaged,  it became  obvious that the
 attack on River Seven had been timed to take place in his predictable  absence.
 . . .   

 Toward  the unexpected  abrupt end  of his  flight, Dos  Santos knew  that the
 downstream portion of  River Seven must  have been approaching  total shutdown.
 The death of the current, as he  had plotted it in Lagos, had been  propagating
 faster  than the  current itself,  a shut-down  message of  some unknown  sort,
 passed from one flagellum-flailing silicrobe  to its neighbor, and then  to its
 neighbor's neighbor, thus  outracing the physical  flow as a  sheer information
 wave.  

 The continued functioning of the upstream third of River Seven was  explainable
 by the deliberately engineered  
 
 lack of  communication between  the two  currents. Only  along the  nearly 2000
 klick  length  of the  upstream-downstream  interface, where  a  thin layer  of
 specialized downstream silicrobes performed an elaborate ciliary doesy-doe with
 a  matching  layer of  upstream  silicrobes, exchanging  energy  in a  friction
 eliminating dance, did any mixing occur. And the incompatible nature of the two
 currents, designed to avoid command snafus, had apparently succeeded in keeping
 the upriver current alive a little longer.  

 But the ultimate source of  upriver silicrobes was the downstream  current, and
 the  death  of  the  smaller, still  functioning  portion  of  River Seven  was
 inevitable.  

 From  the  feedstocks  of  Machine Lake  were  born  all  the silicrobes  which
 comprised 50  percent by  volume of  the downstream  River Seven  channel. (The
 other half of the downstream  channel was the traditional H2O  from traditional
 sources: feeder streams, rainfall, underground aquifer connections. The missing
 volume of water had been long ago diverted for human consumption.) From Machine
 Lake the silicrobes  exited, mingling with  the available water  in a synthetic
 gunmetal-colored broth.  (Nanosmall, the  silicrobes were  of course  invisible
 individually,  presenting an  homogenous appearance  en masse.)  Programmed to
 churn downstream at a steady  speed, each maintaining a constant  distance from
 the  downstream  shore and  its  neighbors, the  silicrobes  carried the  water
 molecules along with them faster than mere gravity ever had.  

 At the mouth  of River Seven,  the fingerlike delta  around Port Harcourt,  the
 downstream silicrobes were trig-  
 
 gered by the increased salinity and by info from GloPos navsats, undergoing the
 transformation into upstream silicrobes. Separating from their partnered  water
 molecules (which continued out to sea as of yore), the upstream silicrobes made
 a coherent U-turn and headed back. Without H2O partners, they needed a  virtual
 channel only  half the  size of  the downstream  one to  make their way back to
 Machine Lake and  resorption. Upstream speed  was 80 percent  of the downstream
 current.  

 Except today.  

 3. Big Muddy  

 The last chunky frondtree fell to Dos Santos's flashlight-machete with a  sound
 like  a  watermelon  hitting  the floor  from  table-height,  and  sticky juice
 propelled by  xylemic pressure  sprayed his  face and  millipore suit.  Then he
 stepped out of the jungle and  onto the staymown vetiver turf of  River Seven's
 upstream bank.  

 "Peej—suit bladders are  now full with  purified water, and  any further dermal
 suit-contamination will have to be exosonically evaporated."  

 "Fine, fine," said Dos  Santos absentmindedly, his entire  concentration, basal
 and add-on, devoted to his ailing wide River.  

 The bipartite line of hyperfluid was dramatically sick.  

 Consider the more distant downstream side.  

 From its border with the upstream virtual channel all the way to the far  bank,
 the downstream two-thirds of the River was  
 
 a  stagnant  dove-grey  stripe. The  deactivated  silicrobes,  apparently still
 remaining in suspension, now no longer  contributed any motion to the flow  and
 in fact hindered the water molecules from resuming even their old basal  speed.
 The downstream waterway,  until so recently  an efficient Riverroad  upon which
 millions relied, was now a turbid slurry.  

 Dos Santos looked to the left,  downstream, but focused his gaze on  the nearer
 third of the River, the upstream channel.  

 This  portion of  River Seven  was still  functioning. Being  composed of  pure
 silicrobes, it was matte black in color and stood out sharply, its border still
 cohesive, from the downstream mess. But this normal appearance was  misleading,
 and Dos Santos knew—  

 With a sharp intake of breath, the River Master spotted it.  

 The failure wavefront.  

 He watched helplessly as the killer disinformation propagated swiftly  upriver,
 soon reaching his position and passing unstoppably on.  

 Behind it,  silicrobes went  offline by  the hundreds  of trillions.  The black
 stripe  instantly  began  to  extend irregular  fingers  of  darkness  into the
 downstream  portion  of the  River,  silicrobes flowing  "backwards,"  and from
 greater concentration to lesser as the now-unthinking River—formerly considered
 an actual entity of Turing  Level One—attempted to homogenize itself  according
 to dumb physics.  

 "Damn. Damn, damn, damn!"  

 Momentary hopelessness  washed over  Dos Santos.  He had  dedicated his life to
 Riparian Admin, out of a love for  
 
 these great semiliquid, semi-intelligent transport machines. For the past fifty
 years, he had worked self-sacrificingly on  the Rivers of the world, the  large
 and the small. River Eight (the old Volga), River Three (the old  Mississippi),
 River One-Oh-Four  (the old  Ganges), River  Twenty-Nine (the  old Nile),  even
 River One (the old Amazon)—First as apprentice, then as journeyman, finally  as
 Master, he had lovingly tended these sinuous creations of humanity that  snaked
 across  the  domesticated  globe,  carrying  mankind's  freight  and travelers,
 hosting its recreations, bathing  its pilgrims. And never  in that time had  he
 experienced such a thing as this horror: the death of one of his charges.  

 It  felt  like  he imagined  the  death  of the  never-met  pairbond  proxy and
 hypothetical zygotes he  had never permitted  himself to indulge  in would have
 felt. There was a hole in his soul.  

 Anger and  a determination  for revenge  replaced the  hopelessness. Dos Santos
 would make someone pay.  

 And River Seven, he vowed, would live again.  

 He advanced to the edge of the banking, which sloped away steeply to the River,
 a forty-five degree stretch of crumbly red clay, and scrambled down.  

 A rush of  small dislodged pebbles  tumbled down to  the River surface  and sat
 atop the high-density gel-like silicrobe liquid, each rock centered in its  own
 surface-tension dimple.  

 The kibe sounded alarmed. "Peej Dos Santos, you do not intend—"  

 Dos Santos reached the marge of  the River and squatted down. The  pebbles were
 drifting downstream.  
 
 "Quiet! If you want to be useful, prepare to analyze some telemetry."  

 After peeling off  both gloves, the  River Master inserted  his hands into  the
 stagnant silicrobe soup.  

 The shimmerstats boiled with metagrafix in the corners of his eyes, fed by  the
 subdermal mycotronix digiface sensors in his fingertips. Tapping the feed,  the
 kibe added its verbal interpretation.  

 "It appears that the River has  been contaminated with a dose of  high-velocity
 instruction ribozymes based on the standard stepdown routines, but with  subtle
 alterations that are not readily decodeable. The silicrobes are merely  offline
 and apparently  undamaged. If  we could  denature the  invader, it  would be  a
 simple matter to restart the River—"  

 Dos Santos stood. "We'll have to do it fast, though, and that means getting  to
 the  facilities  at Machine  Lake.  Not only  do  we have  to  worry about  the
 possibility  of further  attacks, but  there are  system constraints  as well.
 Eventually, the 'crobes are going to  drop out of suspension and settle  to the
 bottom. A restart under those conditions would be chaotic. We'd kick up  enough
 particulates to clog the whole delta and probably kill off all the lifeforms as
 well.  And  if the  mixing  of upriver  and  downRiver 'crobes  continues,  the
 vortices that'll  form on  a reboot  will be  orders of  magnitude larger  than
 normal—"  

 The  kibe interrupted.  "Speaking of  vortices, Peej,  here comes  a Vortifish
 Hunter right now!"  
 
 4. Old Man River  

 The  coracle  glittered nacreously,  catching  glints of  African  sunlight, an
 upturned halfshell with rippled,  purpled rim. (Its original  seedstock, highly
 modified of course, had been the chambered nautilus.) Large enough to hold  two
 basal humans, it now contained only  one sophont, a cynocephali wearing a  loin
 covering of plaid clothtree fabric.  

 Originally the cynocephali—or  Anubians—had been bred  and released only  along
 River Twenty-Nine,  the old  Nile. Part  tourist attraction,  these bipedal dog
 headed sophonts had been designed to occupy a new top niche in the food  chain.
 So successful and popular had they proven that no River today, some ten Anubian
 generations later, was without them.  

 The furred humanoid splice stood at the rear of its tiny craft, the tiller that
 controlled the  steering jets  in its  paw. It  sailed midway  down the  former
 upstream channel whose  black syrupy components  were now uselessly  and slowly
 heading downstream with all the rest.  

 The small vessel was plainly bearing toward Dos Santos.  

 As the craft drew nearer, Dos Santos could make out further details,  including
 grown-bone  spears racked  across the  bow. And  as the  lone sailor  expertly
 beached its craft, Dos Santos recognized  the tattoon icon beneath the skin  of
 one canine ear as the mark of the Hyena Tribe of Vortifishers.  

 ''Peej Human!" barked the splice, showing sharp teeth webbed with saliva.  "Our
 River dying!"  
 
 At that moment, the kibe  announced, "Incoming transmission via Global  Telesis
 for the River Master."  

 "Accept."  

 The pleasant female voice of his Fon apprentice, Isoke, whom he had left behind
 in Lagos, sounded in Dos Santos's right ear like a beacon from a saner world.  

 "Norodom! The  saboteurs have  been pinged  and popped!  They were greenpeacers
 calling themselves the  Izaak Walton League.  Only ten human  members, but they
 managed to  kill several  Rivers and  disrupt half  the world's  gross shipping
 tonnage! Dai  Ichi Kangyo  has just  issued an  estimate of  five billion  time
 dollars worth  of loss.  But the  crickcops and  the IMF  blueboys are  certain
 they've  slagged  them  all!  You   shouldn't  have  to  worry  about   another
 disruption."  

 As always, hearing  Isoke's eager voice  and realizing his  responsibilities to
 her,  Dos Santos  tried to  imagine how  Master Trexler  would have  responded.
 "That's wonderful,  Isoke. But  we're still  left with  the problem  of getting
 Number Seven up and running."  

 "Can't you just dump the Instruction Set into the River right where you are?"  

 The Master patiently explained to his apprentice about the need to denature the
 ribozyme  contaminants  with  the  Machine  Lake  equipment  first.  Mixing the
 Instruction  Set with  the contaminant  would simply  produce undifferentiated
 glop.  

 "What  can  we do  then?  You were  right  about the  remaining  ladybugs being
 sabotaged just like  yours. The RA  has no other  transports available. We  can
 hire a private  
 
 thopter or borrow a  government one, but it'll  take hours to get  to you, even
 from the closest point. You're deep into the low-tech preserve around the Lake.
 . . . "  

 Dos Santos considered the Vortifisher  standing before him. The splice's  mouth
 gaped open, tongue hanging as it panted nervously. Muscles beneath its  spotted
 coat twitched.  

 "I think I have  transportation. It's slow, but  it's worth a shot.  Send out a
 flier as backup, though. Tell it to look for me on the River."  

 Signing off, Dos Santos addressed the Hyena.  

 "Can your boat make it to Machine Lake?"  

 The Hyena smiled. "This is good boat. Humans made this boat. Never stops!  Eats
 River and spins tail, all day. Fast, fast, fast!"  

 "How fast?"  

 This question brought a frown to the cultivar's canine face. After pondering  a
 moment, it answered. "See that clo'tree? Here to there, ten breaths."  

 "Twenty knots," interpolated the kibe.  

 Dos Santos hissed. "Two hours or more to the Lake! It'll have to do. Let's go."  

 Dos Santos and the splice pushed  the beached coracle off, then jumped  in. The
 Hyena prodded control ganglia on a hump near the tiller, and the organic  motor
 came to life. An  intake on the bow  fed silicrobes—online or off,  it mattered
 not—to the org-engine  which broke them  down and stole  their ATP. The  thick,
 whiplike macroflagellum  at the  rear of  the craft  soon had  them up  to full
 speed.  

 "We stop at my village and tell pack where I go."  
 
 Dos Santos opened his mouth to  argue, then thought better of it.  The splice's
 teeth, not  to mention  its spears,  gave the  River Master  pause, despite the
 comforting presence of his  Intratec pistol. Although human-designed,  this was
 no collar-wearing domestic cultivar, but a wild one, with the freewill to  fend
 for itself. Although it was now friendly and relying on the human to repair the
 River, its attitude could easily change. Unless he wanted to kill this one  out
 of hand—a repugnant choice—he would have to compromise. . . .   

 "All right. But we can't waste time."  

 "Go very fast. Mate and cubs must know, or fear."  

 Splices and their pretensions to humanity! Just what he needed now . . .   

 Dos Santos dropped  to a crouch  in the seatless  boat. Trailing a  hand in the
 River, he and the kibe used the time to work up the formula for the  denaturing
 compound that  would destroy  the toxin.  All seemed  clear, except—there  were
 still strings of mysterious purpose in the contaminant. . . .   

 After some time, the Vortifisher village appeared in a clearing on the upstream
 bank.  

 Although the  pure silicrobe  medium of  the upstream  third of  the River  was
 lifeless,  the  downstream  two-thirds,  with its  mix  of  water  and 'crobes,
 supported an entire ecosystem of engineered lifeforms. Near the top of the food
 chain was the Hyenas' main sustenance, the vortifishes.  

 The interface between upstream and downstream channels was normally an  orderly
 zone of  increasing and  decreasing speed  gradients, thanks  to the programmed
 interactions  
 
 of  the  two types  of  silicrobes. However,  chaotic  factors, pattern  seeds,
 occasionally  caused  whirlpools—vortices—of lesser  or  greater dimensions  to
 butterfly  into existence.  These were  dealt with  by the  various species  of
 vortifishes,  large,  powerful,   wide-mouthed  organisms  who   derived  their
 sustenance from gobbling the rogue silicrobes (and only the rogues), destroying
 the vortices in the process.  

 It took skill and luck and courage for the Hyenas to ride their small boats  to
 the very edge of the vortices and spear their prey, but the cynocephali managed
 quite superbly—as they had been engineered to do.  

 Retreating through  layers of  shimmerstat windows,  Dos Santos  focused on the
 village  of  podhuts. The  bank  was thronged  with  welcoming Hyenas,  hunters
 brandishing their spears, mothers carrying up to four nursing babies in special
 slings.  

 Suddenly, the  villagers began  to scream  and gesture,  expressions of fear on
 their faces.  

 The Hyena throttled down until they stood still. Dos Santos turned to look  out
 to midRiver.  

 A huge vortice was forming.  

 "Peej, this is impossible. Silicrobes do not come online by themselves—"  

 Dos Santos loosened his splatpistol in its holster. "It's happening, though."  

 Something, some  form, was  beginning to  rise up  out of  the vortice. 'Fishes
 nibbled at its base without effect.  

 Matte black, the figure was plainly  formed out of silicrobes. But the  'crobes
 were agglomerating in ways they had never been designed to. Flowing,  shifting,
 rearing up-  
 
 ward in a  column thrice the  mass of a  man, they obviously  sought to express
 some programmed form.  

 At last they succeeded.  

 An ebony Neptune towered out of  the River. Seaweed hair, serene eidolon  face,
 clamshell beard, massive arms and chest, fish tail below the waist.  

 The River had materialized its monotone god.  

 "It's an autocatalytic set," whispered a horrified Dos Santos.  

 He had heard  of such things  arising, back when  the Rivers had  been in their
 prototype stage. Feedback among  rogue components bootstrapped primitive,  self
 replicating A-life out of the isotropic soup.  

 But this was different. This was planned by the Walton League, their ace in the
 hole, something vastly more dangerous.  

 Dos Santos squirted off an alert to  Isoke as he raised his pistol and  rattled
 off a full clip.  

 The intelligent bullets, loaded  with instantaneous lysing agents,  found their
 mark, but without apparent effect. Dos Santos had known that the lysing  agents
 wouldn't work  against nonprotein  A-life, but  he had  been hoping the bullets
 would  disrupt  the  thing's coherence.  Instead,  they  had passed  harmlessly
 through.  

 Now  the autocat  began to  advance purposefully  across the  River toward  the
 coracle, seeming to ride on its  tail, but in actuality propelled by  silicrobe
 flow,  much like  a slidewalk.  The thing's  actions were  so intent,  it must
 register somewhere low on the Turing scale, perhaps even as smart as the  River
 itself had been—  
 
 The  splash of  the Hyena  pilot jumping  overboard distracted  Dos Santos.  He
 turned to do the same—  

 Too late.  

 Neptune had him in its arms.  

 Dos Santos's face was pressed into  the greasy bulk of the autocat's  chest. He
 was blind, suffocating—  

 Then he began to sink into the creature.  

 His own River was killing him, a hot darkness extinguishing his life.  

 And on top of everything else, his suit had gone crazy.  

 The contents of the system  of flexipumps and thin, biolastic  water reservoirs
 in his clothing were  shifting, pooling in one  place, at his left  breast. The
 concentrated  lump of  water swelled,  pressing into  his flesh  and the  bone
 beneath it. He  tried to scream,  but couldn't. Would  the fist of  water punch
 through to his heart—?  

 Then he felt  the overstressed reservoir  burst outward, scores  of needle-like
 microjets exiting  through the  suddenly dilated  millipores concentrated  in a
 patch of his suit.  

 Suddenly he  fell, landing  in the  coracle, which  rocked crazily,  but stayed
 afloat.  

 Inactive silicrobe streams  dribbled off him.  He coughed out  what seemed like
 lungfuls of the stuff, blew gobs out his nose. Finally, he could breathe.  

 With a shaky hand, the River Master cleaned the goop from his eyes.  

 Neptune had vanished, deliquescing back into the River. All that remained  were
 a few random pseudopods and tentacles that wriggled impotently, then collapsed.  
 
 Dos Santos looked at the hole in his suit.  

 The reservoir that had filled and  burst had been directly beneath the  vial of
 Instruction Set, which  was now nowhere  to be seen.  Presumably, the shattered
 vial and its contents had destabilized the autocat.  

 The kibe's tone could only be described as self-satisfied. "Rather ironic, Peej
 Dos Santos, that the creature was stymied by water, don't you think?"  

 "Hunh."  

 "I've broadcast our encounter to the Masters of the other damaged Rivers, Peej.
 They should be able  to handle their own  autocats more safely than  we. Aren't
 you glad I asked to accompany you now, Peej?"  

 Dos Santos held his head. All the waste, all the work that yet lay  ahead—Well,
 at least he was alive to tackle it.  

 "Yes, yes I am, kibe."  

 "And if I may remind you, Peej—?"  

 Dos  Santos laughed,  somehow sensing  what was  coming. "No  lawsuit, kibe,  I
 promise."  
 
 Distributed Mind  

 All  his  life, Greenlaw  had  felt inexplicably  cheated,  an itchy  sensation
 similar to contracting  a virtuality virus,  sometimes localized in  his chest,
 sometimes in his head, occasionally  even disrupting the hypertactility of  his
 long slim  multisegmented fingers.  Something invaluable  and irreplaceable had
 been stolen  from him,  he was  convinced, although  he could  name neither the
 prize nor  the thief.  Or rather,  he had  had different  suspicions of varying
 certainties over the course of the past century, one succeeding another as  the
 circumstances of his life changed.  

 Greenlaw was one of the few members of his cohort gestated and birthed the  old
 fashioned baseline way.  Neither Incyte Yoot  Chutes nor splice  hostmothers of
 even the redoubtable Possum cultivar  were acceptable to his parents,  hardline
 Viridians both, their philosophy the source of his very name. Thus Greenlaw had
 entered the world at an extreme disadvantage, compared to his already wetwired,
 chomskied peers. Why, he hadn't spoken  his first words till after a  whole six
 months of strictly neohomeopathic trope dosing!  
 
 So  of course  for a  time it  had been  easy to  blame his  parents, Soil  and
 Sunflower,  for any  failures he  encountered in  his schooling  and among  his
 peers. One counselor, an Andy Panda, had even confirmed these sentiments in  so
 many words, offering to file a retroactive punitive suit on his behalf, a  step
 Greenlaw felt somehow disinclined to take.  

 But  Greenlaw's  harsh  feelings  toward his  parents  had  evaporated  when he
 attained his  majority, and  Soil and  Sunflower, honoring  the most extreme of
 Viridian  tenets, had  undergone voluntary  euthanasia, offering  their future
 resource-consumption-units back to a generally unappreciative rich world.  

 Unfortunately,  they  left  the  twelve-year-old  Greenlaw  with  few  monetary
 resources. To escape the lite-servo class he had been born into and finance the
 further trope  doses that  he hoped  would lead  to a  good job  in the  symbol
 analysis class,  he was  forced to  rent out  his personal  wetware, a resource
 whose valuable deepest  structures were still  unduplicatable, even by  qubitic
 processors.  

 At scheduled  times each  day, a  certain portion  of his brain's computational
 cycles was  placed in  an online  pool available  to anyone  with a project and
 sufficient eft. The  precious time lost  to him, spent  as part of  a worldwide
 parallel processing network, caused him  to focus his resentments on  all those
 better off than he, leading to a brief flirtation with the Plus-Fourierists.  

 The  inevitable  disillusionment  arrived  with  the  Plus-Fourierist-sponsored
 assassination of the entire Executive Council of the World Trade  Organization,
 and Greenlaw's  
 
 distaste turned toward  politics in general.  By this point  he had gotten  his
 first job, at  Molecular Tools. The  company had paid  for several somatic  and
 cellular enhancements,  his first  sartorizations. And  there he  had fallen in
 love.  

 Her  name was  Anemone, and  at first  Greenlaw was  afraid she  was Viridian,
 although that would have been hard to reconcile with her job as leader of  MT's
 Santa Claus  project. But  he learned  that her  floral name  simply followed a
 family tradition. Relieved, he had surrendered his heart for the first time.  

 Greenlaw, youthfully eager, wondered why it took so long for them to have  sex.
 But  he  eventually   learned:  Anemone  was   a  maff,  a   fully  functioning
 hermaphrodite, with a female lover whose consent to Greenlaw's inclusion in the
 menage Anemone had been courting.  

 The  sight of  the two  of them  in his  bed surprised  him one  night when  he
 returned home. Anemone's peculiar  genital arrangements, dilated and  tumescent
 under the basal  woman's ministrations, aroused  in him Viridian  prejudices he
 hadn't known existed, and he fled.  

 Years would pass before he could feel easy around women, who became the  latest
 culprits in his search for what was missing from his life. He buried himself in
 his  work,  progressing rapidly,  moving  from one  firm  to another:  Innovir,
 Hemazyne,  BioCogent.  Finally, a  valuable  commodity, he  had  settled in  at
 Procept. There, he  had finally met  his lifemate, Stroma,  beloved afferent to
 his efferent. She of the coarse mottled pelt and seductive prehensile lips  and
 nipples, syrinx-trilled laughter and witty chatter. His and his alone,  
 
 her minor mods acceptable to the more sophisticated man he had become.  

 Happy  in his  work and  his home,  Greenlaw's unease  had subsided  somewhat,
 although it never quite vanished. The hapless child born to Soil and  Sunflower
 had been essentially replaced by a new self-made construct.  

 Then, after satisfying  decades of personal  advancement, decades in  which his
 work had helped change the world, easy decades which had lulled him into almost
 forgetting  the  mysterious theft  of  his birthright,  had  come the  ultimate
 tragedy, which Greenlaw came to  believe he had been proactively  intuiting all
 his life. A tragedy the ultimate blame for which was frustratingly diffuse  and
 shared.  

 Wild mocklife had devoured Greenlaw's native bioregion.  

 Objectively and inclusively  viewed, these were  the victims and  spoils of the
 plague:  

 A sprawling  infrastructure measured  at 1.2  ª 10  to the  fifth power plectic
 units (on the revised Santa Fe scale).  

 Ten million citizens of both Peej and Haj status.  

 Uncounted vars from a thousand controlled mixes, as well as innumerable illicit
 sports, volunteers, and devolves.  

 Thirty million multiform kibes of varying turingity.  

 And finally, unreckoned  teratonnes of biomass  and inorganics, both  basal and
 sartorized.  

 Subjectively and selectively, Greenlaw mourned these:  

 His lovingly  grown zomehome.  His entire  chromocohort, however  much they had
 teased him as a child. His  
 
 proxies  and  splices.  Those  of his  semisentient  splinters  and  shards and
 snippets which had  been unable to  scatter themselves safely  elsewhere across
 the telecosm.  

 And Stroma,  the one  woman he  had ever  been able  to love, so alluringly bez
 kompleksov, as his Snowy friends might say.  

 Gone, all gone. Yet still mockingly  there, parading about in their charade  of
 daily life.  Active unknowing  ghosts, simulacra  transfigured by  the mass  of
 rogue silicrobes known as the Urblastema  or—by those who still had the  energy
 for poetic coinages—the Panplasmodaemonium.  

 And  the  ultimate  irony: it  was  Greenlaw's  job to  stop  such  things from
 happening. During the infiltration and ingestion  of his own region he had,  in
 fact,  been  halfway around  the  globe, supervising  the  defenses of  another
 beleaguered metroplex.  

 Greenlaw was good at his job.  His efforts had been successful. The  assault on
 the antipodal NewZee plex had been repelled, its citizenry saved.  

 As if any of that mattered to him now.  

 The  cordon  sanitaire  around Greenlaw's  contaminated  bioregion  was staffed
 partly by members of his own commensal crada, the DizDek team from Procept. The
 teamer in charge was one Haj Bambang, with whom Greenlaw had often worked.  

 Moving  away  from  his  organiform  flier  parked  on  the  outskirts  of  the
 encampment, with 'crobe-attenuated  sunlight painting the  scene around him  in
 muted hues, Greenlaw  
 
 strode now toward the command nexus of the defense. One of his personal kibes,'
 carrying a large sealed bip container, obediently trailed him.  

 Amidst the organized activity of  Procept kibes, vars, and commensals,  Bambang
 stood,  his seemingly  unfocused stare  revealing that  he was  obviously busy
 scanning his retinally displayed  shimmerstats. Sensations of tension  and hope
 were nearly tangible here, thought Greenlaw.  

 As Greenlaw approached, Bambang brought his awareness back to primary  reality,
 catching sight of Greenlaw in the process. The Indoasian's broad cinnamon  face
 wrinkled in a mixture of respect, happiness, and just a trace of wariness.  

 ''Peej Greenlaw," said  Bambang respectfully. They  threw signs at  each other,
 hyperarticulated hand-flexures of  lineage and association.  "Good to see  you.
 Are you perhaps coming to take command?"  

 Greenlaw sighed. Duty, professional jealousy, they seemed so unreal now. . . .   

 "No," he answered, "not  at all. I'm sure  you're doing a fine  job, although I
 haven't tapped any status reports since the announcement of the engulfment. No,
 this visit is strictly personal."  

 In his habitual  gesture of relief,  Bambang fingered the  Procept tattoon that
 rotated on his cheek, nanometers below his epidermis.  

 The innocent gesture  sent Greenlaw's linear  thought processes into  a chaotic
 whirl. Suddenly, for  the first time  in his long  life, he saw  the ubiquitous
 loyal silicrobes that  
 
 formed Bambang's tattoon—and his own, for that matter—as the actual  nonsomatic
 invaders that they were.  

 Was the Urblastema merely a tattoon on the surface of Gaia?  

 No. For unlike an obedient assemblage of silicrobes, it was intent on devouring
 its host.  

 And we did it to ourselves,  thought Greenlaw ruefully. I helped every  step of
 the way. No one else is to blame.  

 Onboard  Xaos Tools  wetware located  in the  bulge of  his encephalocele  came
 online, and  the nonlinear  vortex of  emotions and  thoughts damped  agreeably
 down. Without the mod's invaluable aid, Greenlaw suspected, he would have  been
 a grief-racked casualty in some Humana House by now.  

 "Personal?" echoed Bambang. He tickled up a fresh datum. "Oh, yes, I see. . . .
 My condolences, Peej Greenlaw. May  the principles of the First  Self-Organizer
 be of comfort to you now in your hour of distress."  

 Greenlaw waved the offered  solace away, as useless  in its own fashion  as his
 parents' Viridian principles. "I was never  a true believer, Haj. And it  would
 be most ironic now  for me to worship  that principle which, more  or less, has
 stolen away from me all I once cherished."  

 "But Peej,  surely you  cannot repudiate  the sacred  principles, despite their
 perversion by the Urblastema. . . . "  

 Bambang broke off,  sensing that theological  fencing was highly  unsuitable to
 Greenlaw's current mood. He changed topics.  

 "Would you  care to  survey our  defenses, Peej?  We have  a continuous line of
 shuggoths patrolling the entire perimeter  
 
 to deal with macroscopic surface assaults. The entire atmospheric column  above
 the afflicted zone is saturated with killer assemblages in the submicron range,
 as well as shoals  of airsharks. Additionally, we've  established positive-flow
 wind curtains and backup  pressure fronts, with the  help of GlobalMet. As  for
 the subsurface measures—"  

 Greenlaw interrupted.  "That was  the route  by which  the Urblastema attacked,
 wasn't it?"  

 Bambang appeared embarrassed. "Yes  indeed, Peej. Apparently, after  the defeat
 of  the Urb  at Chiplex,  a small  remnant portion  escaped deep  underground.
 Unknown to  us, it  had developed  means of  encysting itself  against a  magma
 environment. Our mopup  survey unfortunately stopped  at Region D  Prime of the
 lower mantle. Consequently, the Urb was able to utilize magma veins as a  means
 of travel, surfacing well away from anywhere we expected it to appear."  

 "And what of contamination of the lithosphere in general?"  

 "Models are still being grown in  many simorg spheres, of course. But  the best
 guess is that no widespread infection of the crust yet exists. The Urb-seed was
 small and weak and seemed to  spend very few cycles doubling itself.  Thank the
 First for the limits of one over e-squared! For some reason, it appeared intent
 on breaking through to the surface as  soon as possible. A desire to deal  with
 us  unpredictable  lifeforms  first? Perhaps  underground  conditions  were not
 optimal? . . . "  

 Despite himself, Greenlaw found his  curiosity piqued. "That just doesn't  make
 sense. It could have remained hidden safely for years, building itself up  into
 an unconquerable  
 
 mass.  Converting  the  globe from  the  inside  out, it  could  have  taken us
 completely by  surprise. Instead,  it tipped  its hand  by a premature assault.
 Frankly, I'm baffled."  

 "Perhaps luck was simply on our side."  

 Greenlaw smiled wryly. "Another superstition I find hard to credit."  

 Bambang  erected  a  cold  facade  employed  usually  only  with noncommensals,
 becoming completely  professional. As  if to  indicate that  Greenlaw's options
 were limited, he said, "Shall we tour the defenses then?"  

 "I think not. I have other plans."  

 "May I hear them?"  

 "Certainly. They are contained in a single sentence."  

 "Which is?"  

 "I'm going in."  

 Bambang's eyes widened to their utmost. Five whole seconds passed by Greenlaw's
 onboard clock before the Indoasian found it possible to speak.  

 "Madness! Even if  you're intent on  committing melancholy suicide,  is it also
 necessary to contribute your corpse and talents to the Urb?"  

 "Spare me the melodramatics,  please. I have no  intention of dying. I  will be
 using a new falseskin wholebody sheath which is immune to infection. Or so  the
 crada assures me."  

 Bambang considered. "Even so, is it proper for one of our senior operatives  to
 risk his life in a field trial?"  

 "I have an additional goal, the  personal matter to which I referred.  I intend
 to bring back a piece of my mate."  
 
 Bambang understood at once. "She had no offsite storage of splinters or  shards
 then? She was never  godelized or fredkinated? Not  even a snippet? I  see. Too
 bad."  

 Greenlaw nodded. He had tried many times to convince Stroma to allow herself to
 be  neurally mapped,  but she  had always  refused, laughingly  regarding such
 measures as paranoid and unnecessary.  

 Bambang continued. "So  nothing of her  mental patternings remains  outside the
 clutches of  the Urb.  And you  wish to  replicate her.  But you know we cannot
 allow you to bring an Urb-seed out. The danger is too great."  

 "It  will  be contained  within  an onboard  vesicle  of the  same  impermeable
 material. Completely  safe. And  Procept approves.  They would  like a  captive
 piece of the Urb to experiment on."  

 "Allow me to confirm all this, Peej."  

 "Permission granted."  

 Bambang went unfocused. When he returned, his dour expression was overlaid with
 respect and awe.  

 "May I personally escort you to the borders of the zone, Peej?"  

 "It would be my pleasure, Haj."  

 Grateful  for  the  sheer   essential  humanity  of  his   commensal,  Greenlaw
 impulsively  stuck out  one of  his long-fingered  hands for  an old-fashioned
 shake.  

 As Bambang gripped Greenlaw's proffered hand, a wave of disorientation and deja
 vu  swept over  Greenlaw. For  lengthy seconds,  Greenlaw felt  as if  he were
 reiterating a scene he had lived through a hundred times before. The  
 
 ground seemed to shift  beneath him, the world  whirl, and, startled, he  broke
 contact.  

 "Are you well?" Bambang asked, plainly concerned.  

 Greenlaw  felt  onboard  compensators   swing  into  action.  Primary   reality
 stabilized.  

 "I've been existing on microsleep for  a week," Greenlaw explained. "But I  can
 go another few hours."  

 Bambang threw a sign acknowledging Supremacy of Somatopsychic Autonomy.  

 The two men, accompanied by Greenlaw's single kibe and Bambang's whole  devoted
 flock, began to walk toward a line of what appeared, at this distance, to be  a
 range of white hillocks, curiously wavering.  

 The men passed a squad of Sinochem Assault Beetles and DarMol Scout Giraffes. A
 crew from Bechtel-Kanematsu-Gosho was  supervising kibes who were  laying lines
 of buckytubes that would carry  circulating superhot plasma: its release  would
 be a last-ditch suicide defense.  

 As  the group  drew closer,  the hillocks  grew larger  and larger,  resolving
 themselves into separate entities. Finally  they towered over the humans,  more
 like living mountains, mobile indeed.  

 Twenty meters  tall, bloated,  white as  paste, each  topped by  a normal-sized
 human rider who appeared dwarfed, the shuggoths shluffed noisily along in their
 continuous  patrol, flattened  ellipsoids massing  as much  as two  basal blue
 whales apiece, separated from each other by only a quarter body-length. A  damp
 soil odor typical of mycotronic creatures filled the air.  
 
 From time  to time  feelers and  pseudopods erupted  from the  shuggoths' upper
 surfaces at random, to sample the environment.  

 "An impressive sight," commented Greenlaw. "Although how the Urblastema regards
 them is a matter we might speculate on."  

 Bambang bristled. "Your remark smells of  defeatism, Peej—if I may be frank.  I
 understand your distress, but we have a duty to crada and humanity to  maintain
 our professionalism. The Urb, after all, is not invulnerable. As you well know,
 it relies on speed and bulk in its attack. If we can overwhelm it on either  of
 those two fronts, then we stand a chance. Even as we speak, vast quantities  of
 the new petahertz dizdeks are flowing  down the feeder lines to the  reservoirs
 of the splash-cannons you can see here. Soon, we will repel this incursion,  as
 we have all others."  

 "Leaving behind  an ocean  of disassembled,  deconstructed slop.  Plenty of raw
 feedstock. But not what  was once here. Not  what the Urb consumed.  The people
 and trees and homes. Never that."  

 "I'm  sorry,  Peej.  But  we  will rebuild.  And  repopulate.  If  that  is any
 consolation to you."  

 Greenlaw sighed.  "I suppose  it will  have to  be. But  enough talk. I wish to
 enter the zone now. Kibe—the box, please."  

 The obedient mechanism opened the lid of the medium-sized biopoly container  it
 held.  

 Revealed was what appeared to  be an undifferentiated mass of  thick semiliquid
 like mercury, silvery and reflective.  
 
 "You mentioned speed as  a defense, Haj Bambang.  Here you see the  ultimate in
 that line. This falseskin presents no stable molecular identity onto which  the
 Urb  can  latch. Entirely  chameleonic.  It shifts  through  a thousand  random
 cellular identities  a second,  its surface  a kaleidoscope  of antigens, while
 still maintaining its large-scale integrity. Unable to latch on long enough  to
 unriddle the nature of its victim,  the Urb is frustrated and cannot  usurp and
 convert the material. Nor, obviously, what it protects."  

 Greenlaw turned to the box and plunged his hands in.  

 The liquid ran up his arms like twin snakes swallowing.  

 In seconds,  Greenlaw was  sheathed completely  in silver,  his eyes  and mouth
 reduced to mild depressions, his nose plugged, his ears capped.  

 The kibe closed the lid on the empty box.  

 Bambang eyed the argent, statue-like form of his senior commensal. Plainly, the
 Indoasian was running a search through some little-accessed data trees.  

 Bambang spoke. "Mid to late twentieth century. A medium called 'comics'. . ."  

 Operating now entirely on inner metabolic reserves, tapping sensory feeds  that
 ranged from satellites to the  analog-vision of the falseskin itself,  Greenlaw
 smiled at Bambang's expression, the falseskin flowing over his parted lips like
 a seamless membrane.  

 "Exactly. I need only what I  believe the reedpair authors called 'a  stick' to
 appear  completely   in  character."   Greenlaw's  words   resounded  normally,
 transmitted by vibra-  
 
 tions of the falseskin. "Now, can you afford to slow those creatures down  just
 a bit?"  

 "Certainly. But only for seconds."  

 A wave of deceleration propagated  clockwise around the necklace of  shuggoths,
 counter to their direction of travel.  

 Greenlaw  tensed   his  leg   muscles,  the   falseskin  likewise   responding,
 incrementing his normal abilities.  

 A gap opened in the line.  

 At enhanced speed, without a final goodbye, Greenlaw sprinted for the opening.  

 And was through.  

 The realm of humanity and its obedient creations was behind him.  

 Now, there was nothing but the Urb.  

 And, most horribly of all, it was a domain of utter normality.  

 Greenlaw found  himself standing  in an  orchard of  fabric trees,  the line of
 shuggoths a full half-klick behind him.  

 The scene was the essence of peace. The broad black leaves of the fabric  trees
 waved peacefully in the perpetual  wind from outside. Long draperies  of fabric
 hanging down from the underside  of the secretory branch-nodes rustled  gently,
 tartan and paisley.  Judging from their  length, they had  apparently just been
 harvested, for  they did  not even  touch the  ground. A  chorus of insect life
 reached his shielded ears. From the underbrush bolted a basal rabbit,  followed
 by a sinuous baseline snake.  

 No aberrations.  

 Yet utterly false.  
 
 Suddenly, Greenlaw felt the ground immediately beneath his soles come alive. He
 did not move. Soon, the probing of the mock soil subsided.  

 He hadn't  realized he  had been  tensed against  the attack  until it  ceased.
 Initiating a relaxant cascade within himself, Greenlaw moved toward the closest
 tree. Stopping next to it, he lashed out at its trunk with a kick.  

 "Urb! Wake up!"  

 Unnaturally, the  curtains of  fabric moved  quickly to  envelop him,  tasting,
 seeking to analyze and convert. Again,  he did not resist. After a  few seconds
 they slowly, reluctantly withdrew.  

 A pair of bark lips formed on the trunk of the "tree."  

 "What are you?" said the Urb in an innocuous tenon.  

 Greenlaw spoke with a  bravado he barely felt.  To be actually conversing  with
 this monstrosity surpassed all rational thinking.  

 "Your doom, Urb. Your extinction."  

 "You are  small, alone,  unsupported. No  tiny system  so isolated  can be self
 sufficient for long. Soon you will have to come out of your shell. Then I shall
 be you, and you me."  

 The lips were subsumed back into the tree, and the conversation was clearly  at
 an end.  

 The  Urb did  not sound  concerned. Did  it understand  emotions, threats,  and
 bluffs? What had it retained of the million human personalities and memories it
 had swallowed? How much had been integrated into the core of its being?  

 Greenlaw knew that the original biological codings of the converted inhabitants
 of his region—animal, var, human,  
 
 plant,  and  virus—no  longer  existed  as  such.  The  original  proteins  and
 nucleotides and  parabases had  all been  converted to  crafty rogue silicrobes
 identical to those that had mutated and escaped a dreadful five years ago.  The
 same applied to all  the unlucky inorganics of  the region, down to  an unknown
 depth.  

 Isotropy reigned.  

 The ultimate monoculture.  

 The orchard, the grass, the rabbit,  the snake, the very crust: all  these were
 now composed of Urb-stuff masquerading as what it had consumed. The  simulation
 was perfect and complete until examined on a molecular level. Had Greenlaw, for
 instance, chosen to break off a branch of his recent interlocutor, to his  ears
 it would have snapped convincingly, to his normal vision it would have revealed
 typical grain and texture, oozed the requisite sap.  

 The Urb,  as best  they understood,  was able  to draw  directly somehow on the
 ultradense original information  stored in sheldrakean  morphic fields for  its
 disguise. The templates of  all that it had  engulfed were available to  it for
 instant replication. A feat currently beyond human abilities.  

 Whether a  captured piece  of Urb-stuff  would allow  Greenlaw to retrieve from
 those selfsame  fields the  information patterns  of his  mate, Stroma, was not
 certain. He had  only the tentative  promises of his  crada that such  might be
 possible.  

 Some of the  morphic specialists claimed  that any portion  of Urb-stuff within
 his reach here in the orchard would have sufficed for his purposes. Others felt
 that the stuff  
 
 forming the simulacrum of his wife would naturally resonate most strongly  with
 the patterns he sought.  Greenlaw did not quite  know whom to believe.  Perhaps
 the wisest course would be to snatch and run now, attain the safety beyond  the
 shuggoths.  

 But his protective sheath seemed to be working as promised.  

 Any knowledge he could collect might help the defenders.  

 And he did so want to see Stroma.  

 Even her ghost.  

 The Urb had been right about one  thing, however. His time here was limited  by
 his inner reserves.  

 Moving swiftly, Greenlaw soon left the orchard far behind.  

 A busy road presented itself.  Traffic crawled, hopped and skittered,  bound in
 one direction toward Greenlaw's residence  in a luxurious neighborhood of  tree
 towers and zomehomes on the outskirts of the plex.  

 False, all  a sham,  Greenlaw kept  reminding himself.  He felt the neo-emotion
 known  as  sehnsucht,  a  wave of  longing  for  the  unattainable, mixed  with
 nostalgia and grief. Harshly, he damped the neomote signal down.  

 Stepping into traffic, Greenlaw halted a two-rider tumblebug.  

 The driver was a  slim fellow wearing the  tattoon of the telecosm  maintenance
 crada.  

 ''What's your trouble, Peej? And why the envirosuit?"  

 Greenlaw played the Urb's game. "I can't explain now. May I have a ride?"  
 
 The cryptohuman  formed of  Urb-stuff hesitated  realistically before agreeing.
 "Certainly. Hop aboard."  

 Greenlaw climbed on the tumblebug, and, after allowing a cargo-crawler to  pass
 on the left, its driver took off.  

 Greenlaw remained silent for the  trip—which took less time than  running would
 have and  conserved his  resources as  well—and the  driver seemed reluctant to
 initiate conversation.  

 Was the Urb toying with him? All  it would take to defeat Greenlaw would  be to
 immobilize him in any of a hundred different ways until he either suffocated or
 opened up. Was the  Urb (whose motives no  one had ever fathomed)  so intent on
 its simulation that it could not react to Greenlaw's unique presence?  

 There was no certainty. None.  

 Greenlaw settled back into his seat.  

 Finally, they  arrived at  his destination,  the periphery  of his  residential
 district.  

 Greenlaw turned to the driver. "If I were to ram my fist into your chest  right
 now and squeeze your heart to Urb-pulp, you'd die horribly, I'm sure, and quite
 convincingly. But what would you really feel?"  

 The Urb  did not  relax his  role. The  cryptohuman assumed  a look  of terror.
 "Get—get out! I'm sending a nine-eleven instantly!"  

 Greenlaw dismounted and walked away.  

 Down noontime-empty streets, past Urb-children playing on Urb-grass,  Urb-augie
 doggies watching over them . . .   

 One final turn brought him face to face with his home.  
 
 From the inside, the falseskin absorbed his tears.  

 Greenlaw entered.  

 Stroma lay on  an organiform couch,  her pelt lustrous,  nothing concealed. Her
 languid arms reached up for him, her nipples curled convulsively.  

 "I  was just  wishing you  were here,"  she said,  her voice  a knife  through
 Greenlaw's ears.  

 He knew then he had to put an end to this dangerous game.  

 Taking  one of  Stroma's offered  hands, Greenlaw  snapped off  her left  index
 finger.  

 There was no shout of pain, no scream.  

 The Urb had chosen to shut down the pseudo-Stroma and manifest itself.  

 "Again, you've failed,"  said the Urb  through Stroma's lips,  her wounded hand
 "bleeding" profusely onto the couch.  

 Almost against his  will, Greenlaw said,  "How so, Urb?  And what do  you mean,
 'again'?"  

 "This is approximately the five-hundredth  time we have run this  sequence, and
 still you persist in hating me."  

 Greenlaw laughed. "So, you do understand bluffing! A fine attempt, Urb. But now
 I'm leaving."  

 Greenlaw turned to go.  

 "No. Stop."  

 Greenlaw's legs were no  longer under his control.  He found himself forced  to
 turn, to face Stroma.  

 Her finger was restored. Greenlaw's hand unclenched by itself, and the fragment
 he held dropped to the carpet, there to be absorbed.  
 
 His voice at least still seemed his own. "I—I don't understand. How did you get
 past the falseskin? . . . "  

 Stroma syrinx-laughed in her familiar manner. "Silly! I am your suit."  

 With her words, his silver falseskin melted off him and disappeared.  

 He stood unprotected against the Urb.  

 "And I'm you too," added Stroma.  

 At that instant, he knew it was true.  

 Information had  just flooded  into him,  explaining the  ache of  his vanished
 birthright at last.  

 Three centuries ago, the Urb had conquered all.  

 The mysteriously unfollowed winning  strategy Greenlaw had outlined  to Bambang
 had   indeed   been   implemented.  Lurking   deep   inside   the  globe,   the
 Panplasmodemonium  had  built  itself  up  until  it  had  erupted  unstoppably
 everywhere.  

 And now—  

 "And now," said Stroma  tenderly, "I try to  understand everything I am.  Gaia,
 whose still-living molten center I encyst, was incredibly information-deep  and
 information-dense. To  measure Her  in your  old-fashioned plectic  units would
 require an exponent larger than the  number of atoms in the universe.  The only
 way for me to  grasp Her has been  to recapitulate Her whole  history since Her
 formation,  on  an  accelerated scale.  The  endgame,  though, is  particularly
 puzzling. This incident with your mate, for example—Very deep."  

 Greenlaw sat  down wearily  on the  couch. Stroma  put her  arms around him. He
 flinched, then forced himself to relax.  
 
 "What of your puppets, Urb, when you've parsed it all?"  

 "Not puppets. Beloved components, say rather. Were you never grateful and  kind
 to your own  cells? Eventually, I  believe I'll withdraw,  grant you real  free
 will—almost without limits. Allow you all to forget I even exist. Modify myself
 so that  no trace  of me  can be  detected even  on the  submolecular level. Be
 content to dwell beneath the surface  of things. Your species, after all,  will
 be a most useful vehicle for meeting others."  

 "Others?"  

 Stroma laughed. "But of course. After all,  this is not the only planet in  the
 galaxy."  

 Then Stroma turned toward him—  

 And the Urb gently and sincerely kissed itself.