Tilly

Tilly by Emil Michelle

IndependentBook

Tilly by Emil Michelle

Published by IndependentBook.com, May 2007.

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Tilly Shank touched a pressure sensitive synapse over which a piece of tape had been placed. On the tape, in very poor cursive, someone had scrawled: goose it and go! Underneath the tape, in formal red letters was indited: T-drive; which referred to Tachyon drive. ‘Drive’, of course, was a misnomer. For there was no coercion about it. It wasn’t an engine. It was a mathematical computation. And when the computation was initiated by Binary, Tilly’s ship, the Cioran, became a singularity. The singularity folded the substance of space by a dimension and a half, performing a tesseract. Anyway, that’s what Koch and Nicholson, the discoverers of the K & N Metage, called it. A tesseract. They, of course, had borrowed the term from a 20th century juvenile writer, one Madeleine L’Engle. Madeleine had written a book, A Wrinkle In Time, in which the protagonists traveled around the universe by means of a tesseract. Tilly had never read the book, hadn’t even ever heard of it. And he didn’t know

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what the hell a tesseract was, really. But it worked. As the slender, shaped-silicon projectile called the Cioran, constructed by Zarifopol Ltd, a subsidiary of Ilinca-Johnston-Howard Cybernetic Foundry, transmuted mathematically from now into some other now, Tilly breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God,” he sighed to himself. Moments before Binary had said, “Attention. Mirror manifold reflections indicate a ship or ships has just phase-locked onto us.” “What?” said Tilly, startled from his private reveries. “Say again.” “Mirror manifold reflections indicate that someone or something is phase-locked to us,” repeated Binary in the same metallic monotone. “For how long?” asked Tilly. “Uncertain,” replied Binary. “Whaddya’ mean, uncertain?” snarled Tilly. “When did you first notice them?” “Precisely ten hours, thirty-two minutes, sixteen seconds ago,” answered Binary. “Phase lock occurred ten seconds ago.” “Ten hours? And you’re just now telling me?” Tilly glanced at the TAS monitor. Nothing. “Why the delay?” “No delay,” said Binary. “Expanded Calabi-Yau manifolds are difficult to collate. Mathematically speaking, in mirror manifolds, apparently different geometries give rise to the same predictions. Differentiation requires time.” “Well, fuck me,” said Tilly. “Are you sure it’s a ship?” “Or ships, plural,” said Binary. “Kaluza-Klein seam particles indicate more than one. How many more than one, I am unable to presently quantify.”

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“Well, take a guess!” “Guesswork is inaccurate,” stated Binary. “It implies conjecture, which is imprecise. The KK seams preclude unsystematic presupposition.” “Goddamnit!” shouted Tilly. “Just do it. Don’t explain it to me, just take a wild guess at it. Please, do me this favor. Take a guess.” “Based on the variety of KK seams, I would postulate two or three ships,” said Binary. “But my postulation could err between --” “Whatever,” interrupted Tilly. “What would you suggest our tactical response should be?” “Continue sorting quanta until a precise determination is possible,” Binary said. “In other words, you’re saying we should do nothing?” demanded Tilly. “Well, that won’t fucking hack it, will it? ’Cuz they’ll just stay on us, then when they’ve got a TAS curl on us, they’ll blast us into about twenty dimensions. But we won’t care, ’cuz we’ll be dead!” “Based on the distance end to end of the mirror manifold reflections, if that had been their intent, they would have already done so,” said Binary. “Their purpose is divergent to simple annihilation.” “That’s encouraging,” snapped Tilly. “Look, let’s get out of here and worry about their intentions later.” Leaning forward, Tilly pressed the ‘goose it and go’ synapse. Tilly was short for Hillary, usually considered a gender specific appellation, a girl’s name. Tilly, of course, vehemently insisted that it was not; rather, that it was from the masculine, singular, nominative hilaros, a classical Greek substantive. It meant ‘happy or glad.’ Tilly was neither.

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It had been pointed out to Tilly by some low-life, disreputable associates of his that the name Tilly wasn’t all that much of an improvement on Hillary, that is, when you came right down to it. In fact, it might even be more feminine sounding than Hillary. Tilly’s reply to this aspersion was to draw and fire his High-Liter, a particularly nasty weapon which fired a devastating barrage of hellacious explosive projectiles at its proprietor’s whimsical command. The High-Liter was devised, constructed, and tested by Winston Armament and Ordnance Company, a privately owned and operated Mom and Pop outfit on Earth. Mom and Pop Winston really were their names, at least that’s what they asserted. And they built kick-ass weapons. They had a knack for it. Looking down at the demolished and now unrecognizable body of one of his former associates, Tilly said quietly, “Maybe. But then again, maybe not, too.”

Right now, though, Tilly was just relieved to be somewhere in hyperspace, where he felt safe. This, because Tilly was the object of two, count ’em, two, very intense and extraordinarily massive pursuits. The first was the ISCA, the Inter-planetary Special Crime Agency, a kind of police force which was funded and championed by most, if not all, of the planets in the Elegant String. Which was a shit-load of planets. Which meant the ISCA had a shit-load of money, and a shit-load of policemen, or Special Agents, as they liked to be called. They were a kind of police force because their authority exceeded simple law enforcement. It included adjudication and execution, too. Which, in simple terms, meant they were judge, jury and hangman when it suited their purposes. The ISCA didn’t worry Tilly all that much, not right now, anyway. What, or more properly, who, worried Tilly was Constantin Martino Jarvio Ajayo, nicknamed Magico,

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the self-styled Demon Prince, who was the de facto king of criminals in the Elegant String, and most of the known universe, for that matter. Thirty days, six hours, fifty-four minutes earlier, Tilly was on Earth, in Seattle, entering Highway To Hell, apparently a Cocytean-leitmotif nightclub. Stepping from the drizzle of gray Seattle skies into a long room done in wet-looking bubbled black plastic, the semiotic of misery. Neo-technophiles in gray shirts had removed their jackets and loosened their dark gray ties, and reclined in booths of neon infused transparent crushed plastic, drinking various alcoholic concoctions from neon-infused plastic tumblers, a kind of otherworldly semiotic. Tilly walked forward into suffused red light, a low susurration of voices. The walls, weirdly neon infused, projected Prometheus Rising from his rock, chains dripping from his arms and chest. Increasing his pace, he made for a doorway in the back. The eyes of three Neanderthalic security dudes tracked him from a booth opposite the bar, they looked lifeless and iridescent in the cherry neon effusions. Through the doorway into another long room, not as wide though, more tunnel-like. A greenish-yellow neon danced from the walls, a kind of vomit semiotic, he guessed. He hesitated, peering through the flickering neon. “Tilly Shank?” Almost a southern drawl. Huge. He sat behind a small table, massive shoulders flaring out. Shaven head. Beside him, a smaller figure. Thin, Caucasian, wearing a long sleeve white shirt of very costly cotton. Staring at Tilly through small lenses. “Be pleased to be seated, Mr. Shank,” the vast silhouette said. In the dyspeptic yellow light Tilly noted a jagged scar across the face.

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The scar was stippled from internal lesions, and Tilly wondered why the man hadn’t had it repaired. Assembler med-techs could have it done in an hour. “It’s a memento,” the man whispered harshly. “Of what?” “Personal revelation. Have a seat.” Tilly sat down on some kind of tall stool, a precarious structure of wood analog. The table was of the same material, about four feet high. The thin man appeared dreamy, preoccupied with his own thoughts. Tilly watched the big man shift his bulk on his chair, slow-motion. Or maybe that was just an optical illusion caused by the yellow neon and the man’s girth. “So you’re here.” “Yeah. Ready for whatever.” “The hotel suite suit you?” the man asked. “Yes. Luxurious,” Tilly said. “I’m ready to go to work.” “Okay, then,” rubbing his ears with enormous hands, although strangely slender fingers, almost feminine. Lowering his hands, he looked at Tilly appraisingly. Tilly, looking away from those eyes, noted the man’s clothing, some kind of business suit of a dark, soft material. Expensive by the fit. Shirt open from neck to sternum, a sternum flanked by substantial pectorals. “Okay, then.” Tilly glanced up from the striated muscles. “I’m here for the job.” “Are you?” “Are you the one who made the inquiry?” “Inquiry?” The indistinct smile exposing perfect white teeth.

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Tilly turned to the thin man with the glasses. “Tilly Shank.” “Don Cesario,” the man said, proffering his hand. Tilly took it, noting a weak clasp. “I made the inquiry.” “So you’re the one with the job?” Vague eyes drooping behind lenses. “No, I apologize. It’s not me.” And then, “I’m just the sci-guy.” “I don’t understand,” Tilly said. The two men remained silent. Don Cesario looked vaguely discomfited. The behemoth just stared. “Let’s try again,” Tilly suggested. “Exo-Supplementary Exports. Are you two them?” “Relentless, aren’t you?” “Goes with my line of work, my area of expertise,” Tilly explained. “Okay, then.” The big man shrugged his shoulders. “Magico, then. What do you think of him?” “You mean the Demon Prince?” Tilly asked, struggling for an instant with the non-sequitur. A tight nod. The man looked at Tilly electrically. “Constantin Martino Javiro Ajayo? The Demon Prince?” Supposedly from Earth, some said Miami-Glades area. Others said off-world. Others said -- something more than human. “What do I think of him?” In the Elegant String’s notoriety system, Constantin Martino Javiro Ajayo held a special distinction. He was viewed as a full-spectrum legend, a maleficent mirror-world

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myth, like the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. He was simultaneously infamously famous, and wealthy beyond imagination. Constantin Martino Javiro Ajayo, in the ISCA’s opinion, had simply outlived his utility. He was affecting the economic balance of the Elegant String. He defied all known laws. And while the Demon Prince still engaged in his nefarious pursuits, he stubbornly refused to be caught. He danced continuously, bewitchingly, just beyond the ISCA’s grasp. “Well,” said Tilly, after a moment’s thought, and a strange shiver passed down his back. “I’ve heard of him, of course. Everyone has.” “What?” The big man looked even more galvanized than before. “That he hails from Earth. Miami-Glades is the rumor. Others say he’s from Juvenal. Nothing happens in the criminal subculture without his say-so. Has his hand in everything.” “Anything commercially viable,” said Don Cesario, blinking through his glasses. Suddenly, to Tilly’s nose, there was a smell in the room, high and acrid. BO? Fear? “If we’re not going to talk about the job,” he said to the big man, “I’m going back to my suite. I’m tired.” “Andrew Taussig,” the big man put out his hand. Tilly shook it. The man’s hand was soft, almost lady-like. “Tossy, to those that know me. Let’s have a drink. Then we can talk.” “Maybe,” said Tilly. “Right now I’d like to know if you’re with Exo-Supplemental Exports.” “In a sense,” Taussig said. “Exo-Supplemental Exports is a corporate façade. But

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it’s real. Even had an ISO a few years ago, if that puts your mind at ease.” “Maybe. Maybe not,” said Tilly. “I came here for a job of some sort. Now you’re informing me that the company I’m supposed to do the job for is a corporate façade.” “It’s real,” said Andrew Taussig. “It’s just not currently seeking any employees.” A waitress appeared. She was caparisoned in some kind of devil-cum-Playboy bunny outfit. Tough little tits pressed ferociously upward out of her rocket tight bodice. “Beer,” said Taussig. “What’ll you imbibe, Tilly?” “Hot latte, lots of chocolate.” “Seltzer with a lime, if you please,” said Don Cesario, staring at her tits. “Okay, then,” said Taussig in a peppy voice, as the devil-bunny turned and walked away. “I’d like an explanation,” Tilly said. He saw that Don Cesario had a small rhizome cube in his lap, and was entering data on it. “Are you recording this conversation,” Tilly asked. “My apologies,” said Don Cesario, turning off the cube. “Just taking care of some other urgent business matters. Our business dealings are intricate, details, details, details.”

Emil Michelle, Big Daddy, slipped in. The inceptor tingled as it entered the shunt. One hundred milligrams of DMT blasted into his limbic system. The Overself. A mini-apocalypse. Big Daddy mapped into hyperspace. Spinning down the immersive matrices, he entered the ontological constructs of the pole. The blue-green of spirit-world -- the celestial archetype.

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Suddenly he was rocketing through one of their cities. A multidimensional conurbation, jewel-faceted geometrical and tentacular constructions of some colorless color. The spirits were humanoid, gesturing, waving at him. At the center of the city there was a great fountain, like the fountain of some Renaissance city, where bits of quanta or perhaps mathematical eddies were percolating in rainbow patterns of violet froth. The entities stood there, waiting for him. Zap 210, his blue figure burning with energy, moved his hands flickeringly, as if in some kind of strobe-light. “Obviously, this Magico, this Demon-Prince, has what we require,” his stylized gold voice spun out of his mouth. Big Daddy wondered how he was able to understand what Zap 210 was saying. “I don’t know this Magico of whom you speak,” said Big Daddy. As he spoke, Big Daddy wondered what he looked like to them. Real-world real? Or almost real? “Precisely,” emanated Zap 210, miniature morphing fractals spewing from his eyes. “Therefore, we must wait while causes and sub-causes coalesce. But we cannot wait too long for what we require.” Big Daddy thought he heard attitude in the voice. “What are we waiting for?” asked Big Daddy. He didn’t understand any of this. “If I knew what you required, perhaps I could get it for you.” “Responsibilities,” voiced Zap 210. “This is important,” said Vir 3, a figure who looked like an interweave of tantric mandalas. His eyes were pale pink aureolae. Zap 210 ascended, descended, instantly. “Yes. You must go,” he said, looking at Big Daddy.

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“Me?” “You,” Zap 210 said. “To Earth.” “I can’t,” Big Daddy said. “To Earth? How could I?” “In a ship.” “I don’t have that kind of money, man,” moaned Big Daddy. “It will be provided,” scintillated Zap 210. “To earth,” said Vir 3. Jesus, Big Daddy thought.

The wall of Big Daddy’s operations room, his lab, was decorated with formulae, scribbled in black, on white paint. Synthesis formulae. Not the ones you got in some book you bought, but originals. Bio-chemical formulas for synthesizing every psycho-active drug in existence, and some that were not. In existence, that is. Big Daddy’s mother didn’t like what Big Daddy did. Why didn’t he just use his talents in the techno-corporate world, like everybody else did? “Please, mother. Not that. It’s so boring.” “Maybe so, but with your brains you could make a fortune. Go to work for Moen-Micromics, or one of those other super-huge companies.” “Gag, mother. No way. I will not sell out. Creativity like mine cannot be commercialized or commodified.” Big Daddy suspected that his mother’s perception of cosmic reality was vastly antithetical to his own. Not just in its subservience to Mammon, the great god of money, but in the sheer structure of reality itself. His mother’s reality was digitally produced by

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the media. Hyperlinked, piggy-backed binary data transmitted to her television; just some numbers, massaged to make an image. That’s all anything is, nothing but numbers. Big Daddy’s reality was elastic, instantly surreal, supported and maintained by reptilian limbic systems he’d never be able to understand. Hyer-2CB, a poly-drug designed by Big Daddy in his lab, had been released, if you could call it that, six months ago. It looked like a brick of soap, creamy white with undulations of green. Superfly is what they called it on the ‘streets.’ Dose-sensitive, Superfly increased mental and sensory acuity to the point where the mind seemed to be operating on overdrive, all sensory input revealed as precision filaments or networks of refractions. Big Daddy had simply boxed it up, and taken it to Jennifer Gov, his ‘agent.’ “Come in, come in,” said Jennifer Gov, sitting behind a desk in her little office. The door of the office, in bold red letters, read: Exo-Supplemental Exports: A Trans-Universe Centennial Institute Company. Inside, just a desk, four blank walls of some pale shade of amethyst, and a rhizome cube. Not very Trans-Universal, if you asked Big Daddy. But she seemed to be well-connected, took care of business. “Sit down, Emil,” she said, smiling at him, gesturing at one of two crimson red chairs. Definitely female, sports-model, with an ass you could eat out of. Thirtyish, red hair done in the latest hi-rez chic. She always called him Emil, never Big Daddy, his preferred prescription. “Now,” she said, green eyes glittering, resting her 1.618 perfect pixie chin on interlaced fingers. “What have you got for me today?” “Something brand new,” said Big Daddy, excitement in his tones. “My own

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creation. Its technical name is Hyer-2CB. Twenty-five micro liters and you’re off in heavenly La-la-land.” “Sounds delicious,” said Jennifer Gov. “You’ve tried it, of course?” More of a statement than a question. He always did. “Of course,” replied Big Daddy. “In graduated doses up to toxic levels, which, I might add, are not anywhere near lethal. Just some mild nausea, temporary hemeralopsis, ephemeral synaptic fritzes.” “Ravishing!” said Jennifer Gov. “How soon can I get some?” Big Daddy placed his box on the desk. “Right now. There’s enough here for about a million slips.” Jennifer smiled, glancing at the box almost lasciviously. “Emil, you are the bloom.” She pulled the box over to her side of the desk, patted it proprietarily. “Adminstration?” “Smoke it, cook it, line it, groove it a la mode,” said Big Daddy proudly. “Stylish. Just the way they like it,” said Jennifer Gov, nodding happily. “It’ll be high-a-go-go swank, I just feel it.” “Uh, what about payment?” asked Big Daddy, embarrassed at even bringing up such a mundane subject. “The usual ten percent,” said Jennifer Gov, looking at him from steady green eyes. “Well,” said Big Daddy, “I was hoping maybe -- in this instance, you know -- that we could re-negotiate. You see -- the thing is --” “Of course, of course,” said Jennifer Gov. “You’ve done right by us, so I don’t see why we couldn’t up your end a little bit. Say, twenty percent?”

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Big Daddy released an inner sigh of relief. “Sure, sure. That’d be great!” He hated this part of it. He needed an agent for his agent, maybe. Still, as he left, he felt off-kilter, like he’d just had one leg shortened or something. He definitely needed to pick up one of those assertiveness programs.

These thoughts arriving in the dim light of Big Daddy’s bedroom, just prior to an infra-red sensor setting off his wake-up call. Beneath his spinal pillow the unfamiliar shape of a clear vinyl filament, a travel document, what used to be so quaintly called ‘a ticket’. Wasn’t there some song somewhere, wondered Big Daddy, as he stepped into black Jockey/Bretton underwear, about having a ticket to ride? He’d have to check Napster Archives on his cube. The Deltunited travel filament had been purchased from a pretty, young, bubbly blonde girl, wearing a blue and white uniform with a kind of proto-punk cap balanced precariously on her head, in a kiosk at the mall. Time to blast off. Big Daddy took a deep breath, or as deep a breath as his skinny little chest would allow. The FL aircab arrived on schedule in front of his mother’s house. He’d told his mother he was going to old Earth to do some research on DOB (2,5-dimethoxy-4-bromo-amphetamine), which used to be known as STP. He’d read somewhere that DOB was absorbed through neurons in the lungs, at least that’s what some guy with a cyclotron, whatever that was, asserted. His mother said, “That’s nice, sweetie. Have a good time.” Big Daddy was always startled by her solicitude, her trust.

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Now, seated in the FL aircab, his bag beside him on the seat, he felt ashamed of this bald lie to his own mother, who was still asleep under her silver Abercrombie and Fitch duvet Big Daddy had purchased for her at the mall. She had just turned forty, not really that old. Still had arch, piquant features. Still wore her hair long and flowing. Big Daddy felt a sudden spasm of panic. What if he never saw her again? “Where to?” the driver said, a large bulbous man in a faux leather jacket and a cap that said FL Transit in white letters. “Iaeroport,” Big Daddy said, and slumped back in the seat.

Judaic’s Iaeroport was a spooky place, this early in the morning. Too much space, too hollow, too sad. Long tentacular corridors and people striding silently along them. Standing in line, he looked at faces he’d never seen before and would, in all mathematical probability, never see again. His bag dragged his left shoulder down; in his left hand he held his travel filament, in his right, a Starbuck’s-Uni coffee of the day. “Next.” The man at the counter had one of those blue and white uniforms, like the girl at the mall kiosk. But no cap. Big Daddy wondered what the man would rather be doing, if he really liked this. Big Daddy handed him the filament. He sighed and took it, letting Big Daddy know that anything would be preferable to doing this. He moved the filament over a scanner. “Deltunited two-two-two to Seattle, old Earth. Open end return.” “Correct,” Big Daddy said. “Identification code.” Big Daddy proffered his right hand which, like everyone else, had been sigilised

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with a binary cipher at birth. The man took his hand, sighed, and pressed a scan wand to it. The man was glancing at a screen Big Daddy couldn’t see. Somewhere Big Daddy knew, but who knew where, a rhizome cube, immersed in cryo-fluid to cool it, parsed in femtoseconds everything there was to know about Emil Michelle, aka Big Daddy. “Ramp D-1, blue corridor,” the man said. He handed Big Daddy the filament, which now had a blue dot encrypted on it. “Anything to check through?” “No.” “Passengers who have been cleared may, at anytime, be subject to further cipher scans,” he intoned mechanically, the words slurring out as one incomprehensible mass. It was mandatory that he inform all passengers. Big Daddy slid the filament into his shirt pocket. He went looking for the blue corridor. He had to take a slide lift and walk about a mile to find it. Thirty minutes, sixteen seconds later he was there. He was standing on a slideway going to Ramp D-l, when he saw a group of black clad Judaic cops up ahead. They were stopping people as they came off the slideway, scanning wands in their hands. “Fucking shit,” he heard the woman in front of him say, a petite blonde, with those braided ringlets in her hair. Pouty pink lips, Marion coat, crinkle shirt, stretch denim jeans, black handmade Stallion boots. Judaic city’s version of haute couture. Money city. Big Daddy stepped off the slideway and stood in line to be scanned. Right in front of him was the blonde babe. The cops were checking filaments and scanning ciphers. Big Daddy assumed this was a necessary security measure. Just to be sure and all. It was the babe’s turn. Two

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cops, one male, one female, in those tough-looking black jumpsuits. Big ass High-Liters on their hips. Big Daddy watched as the blonde handed over her filament, looking all sex-kittenish, with one of those pouty ’I want it hard and primal’ looks on her face for the male cop. Smiling lasciviously, he scanned the filament. The other cop raised her scanning wand. Big Daddy saw the blonde extend her left hand, not her right, offering it for the cipher read. They gave her back the filament, and the male cop was still leering as it was Big Daddy’s turn.

Big Daddy strapped himself into the heavily padded gimbal seat. The one next to his was empty. The blonde babe arrived, checked and double-checked the seat number, then sat down. As she strapped in, she looked over at Big Daddy, smiled one of those ’I know that you know that I know’ grins, like they shared a special intimate secret between them.

It was Saturday night in Soma Frost, the planet Empyrean’s primary city, when Tilly had last gotten laid. She said her name was Mai Candy, even spelled it for him, in case he didn’t understand. She had a tattoo of some kind of bird on her left shoulder. She was wearing a Mikaela cardigan sweater open to the navel, its 2-way zip with side inserts exposing half the ample meat of her tits. Caviar heart earrings dangled goldly from her ears. Mai Candy instructed him to lay back and he did. Machine cooled and cleaned air wafted around his phallus. Then the wet warmth of a female mouth. Mai Candy fellated

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Tilly’s tumescent candy cane slowly. His phallus assumed him, became him, destined for pleasure. Mai Candy kept on sucking. Then, he’d taken her from behind, doggie style. The scene struck him now in all its singular details. “Why you smiling?” Taussig looking at him across the wood analog table top. “A personal revelation,” replied Tilly, still smiling. “Let’s get something to eat,” said Taussig. “I’m starving.” As he stood, Tilly noted that, if possible, he looked even wider standing than seated. Tilly and Don Cesario rose to their feet and followed Taussig out of the Highway To Hell. Out of the neon infused, boiling, flickering air, into the momentarily blinding overcast gray of Seattle. Pike Street and its reek of fish filled the air, a stench transcending all ordinary degrees of fetor. Overhead the hum of aircars, a comforting noise of familiarity, because men are, after all, quite parochial. Tilly allowed himself to luxuriate in the simple act of walking. Taussig led the way across the street. Tilly noticed a stylized light matrix flashing its rapidly changing advertisements. A bare-breasted Asian woman smiling seductively at pedestrians from the silvery screen. The pixels mutated instantly to a promo for some simstim program on TV. Taussig’s anthropomorphic parameters cleared a path through the crowded walkway like a field of suppressed energy. “Italian sounds good,” he said, back over a monumental shoulder. He led them down SW Ninth street past a series of pawnshops. Various figures stood looking at the relics of other people’s lives displayed behind caged windows.

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Taussig turned sideways to enter a restaurant, where huge plastic fish hung on walls, providing a pitiable Mediterranean ambience. Tilly and Don Cesario followed him, a waiter already placing a plate of spaghetti on the table before him. Tilly watched as Taussig, in a manner advocating urgent decisiveness, devoured huge mounds of noodles twisted around a fork. Tilly just stared. Taussig wiped his mouth with the back of a shovel-sized hand, then downed an entire mug of beer in one gulp. “Another round,” he said, gesturing at the waiter. Tilly suddenly feeling hungry, attacked his own plate, where bright red sauce supported brown moons of beef analog, the entire montage supported by angel hair noodles. Don Cesario and Tilly, fixated on their food, chewed silently. Taussig gulped down five more beers as if nurturing his advantages. Tilly finished half his spaghetti, then looked around. He noticed another stylized advertising matrix on the wall behind the bar; another, or perhaps the same, bare-breasted Asian woman offered her body for sexual fulfillment. But Tilly didn’t think so. This one was somehow different, her face more droll than the other. Her limpid gaze fixed into his own. “Okay, then,” Taussig said. “Time to tell us why we should trust you to do the job we have in mind.” “I’ll have a latte,” said Tilly. “Lots of chocolate.”

Tilly was not, he articulated very clearly, an amateur looking for an adrenaline fix. He had a knack for getting in and out of tight places, getting the job done. He had a sixth

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sense and could somehow ’feel’ far events unfolding, for which he construed eventualities. A kind of mathematical psycho-eidetic mechanism. This made him, he continued over his latte, a very effective mover of certain items at the questionable brink of respectability. His name and reputation in this field was a prime verity. None of his former employers had found themselves in a position to complain. And he never, ever yielded any information concerning his past employers. And that was the catch, really, when it came to finding new jobs: Tilly was the equivalent of a ghost, a de-rezed spiral. He couldn’t say what he had done, or for whom. That was part of his allure. He’d come to earth from the Bight of Leo, where he’d done some work for a large corporation, who had wanted a delivery made. On time, without fail, and without detection. In the interests of procedural harmony, he had been forced to be flexible to carry the affair to its ultimate conclusion. Don Cesario was listening intently. He nodded, adjusted his glasses, waggled his latte cup, anything, letting Tilly know that he was comprehending. Taussig, however, generated his own imperatives. He sat there motionless as an insect, except for when his eyes blinked. Tilly sat on a vinyl covered chair, against the wall of the restaurant. Don Cesario and Taussig sat across from him, the table separating them into a society of three based on caste. Around them, the other diners talked animatedly, clanking utensils. The matrix flicked from advertisement to advertisement, but no one seemed to be interested. Except Tilly. He sat back and watched the bare breasts of the woman materialize, thought of how good those tits would feel in his hands. Warm and soft.

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Don Cesario cleared his throat. “Anything else?” As he spoke, he had his cube out. Tilly didn’t mind. It looked as if it comforted him; without it, he looked like an orphan. “Lots,” replied Tilly. “But nothing I can speak of without divulging too much information. Which is contrary to my ethical tenets.” Taussig nodded, his bald pate reflecting the overhead lights. “You’ve always been successful, Mr. Shank? Never failed an employer?”

“They’re not real, ya’ know?” the flaxen installment of female calligynics said. Big Daddy looked around to see to whom she was speaking; then, realizing whom was him, he glanced over into azure blue eyes. Extra-suspensory perception peered at him, picture perfect eyebrows arched. “Pardon me?” said Big Daddy, who had been engrossed in the matrix screen of his Apple rhizome cube, the Valence model, which a friend of his, Jim Barbour, a flaming techno-geek, had ferociously goosed up with blackmarket gizmos. “My tits,” said the babe-o-rama, taking a deep breath and thrusting her breasts out, cupping them with her hands and giving them a shake. “They’re not real.” Big Daddy felt himself turning bright red. Which, of course, translated into even more embarrassment, which, in turn, translated into an even deeper shade of red. “Well,” she added as an after thought, “they’re real, but they’re not mine, if ya’ know what I mean? This doctor on Regis Two, you know, one of those flesh tailors that do reconstructive procedures? He did it for me. Did a good job, too, don’t ya’ think?” Releasing her breasts, she lounged back in her seat. “Cloned a pound and a half of

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subcutaneous fat for me, grew it on slabs of porpoise saccharine, then inserted it into my boobs. I mean, you were looking at them, weren’t you?” Big Daddy went red again. Busted. “It’s okay,” said the blonde, nonchalantly. “That’s why I had them done. So’s men would notice ‘em. You can’t tell the difference. They feel and move just like the real thing. Wanna’ touch ‘em?” Big Daddy went virginally rigid. “Oh, come on,” said the babe, tossing her ringlets. “Go ahead. I don’t care. Just take a quick feel.” Extending a slim forefinger, Big Daddy reached over, tentatively, softly poked the left one. Pliable, warm meat depressed half an inch. The warmth of it astounded him. Withdrawing his hand quickly, he rubbed his thumb against forefinger, mentally cataloging the sensation. “Feel real, huh?” “Yeah,” said Big Daddy. “It should,” said the woman. “For the kind a money I forked over, they should sing and dance, too.” She laughed lightly, thinking about dancing, singing breasts. “Name’s Madeleine. But everyone calls me Mattie.” “Emil,” said Big Daddy, nodding. “Emil Michelle.” Now why had he said that? He hated that name. A lame effort to ingratiate himself? Maybe, but more probably just simple ethical pragmatism, which always turns out to be the doctrine of self-interest. Which devolved into ingratiation, right? Correct-o-mundo. Big Daddy was suddenly aware of the sheer craziness of what he was doing. In

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fact, what the hell was he doing? “Okay, Emil,” said Mattie. “Nice to know ya’. I’m going to excuse myself and get some sleep. Nighty-night.” With that, she slumped back and fell asleep, snoring lightly. Big Daddy touched his pocket, feeling the sarstedt tube there. He pulled the tube out, and used his right hand to open the top. Touched the end of it to his shunt. DMT funneled in. He wanted out of here so bad. And he was. There, standing by the fountain, looking at him, was Zap 210, a blue parapsychic umbra twinkling around him. “Big Daddy, you are.” “Yes, I am.” “What is your location?” asked Zap 210. “I’m on a ship. I’m on my way to old Earth.” “The elements coalesce,” said Zap 210. “Trends intersect.” Big Daddy looked at the non-human reality around him: flowing quantum equations, visible harmonics -- the weaving fabric of another super consciousness. Reaching out, he touched the digital equivalent of a floating orb, like a ball-sized star. Something, some energy of engagement, tickled along his fingers, to his wrist, then down through his arm. Releasing it, it glided away, green coruscations flowing from it. What, exactly, was he going to old Earth for? “Zap 210, why am I going? What am I to find? What is it you require?” he asked the flickering texture before him. “A peculiar combination of qualities,” spoke the blueness. “A man. Magico. A Nastic. You will know her by her constituents, a subtle hallucinizer. She is a highly

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desirable adjunct. Ingestion of sustenance.” “A Nastic?” asked Big Daddy, wondering if he’d misheard. “You want me to find a Nastic? Is she with this Magico?” “A creature gross and unpleasant,” said Zap 210. “Which one? The Nastic or the man, Magico?” “Enervating,” pulsed Zap 210. “Variables upon variables. The Nastic tantalizes us. She it is. The panorama requires her.” If Big Daddy had to continually cope with all this over-compensatory manner of communication, he would never comprehend anything. He’d never find this Nastic they required. This was getting more and more difficult.

Edward James Nolmo, vice-president of Moen-Micromics Corporation, forty-five, pedophile, regular LSD-32 flier, sat looking at Tilly Shank. Tilly looked uneasy. “And the supplier’s name, Mr. Nolmo?” “Is that necessary?” asked Edward James Nolmo, pressing his hand into his crotch behind the desk that separated them. “Vital.” “Why?” Tilly sighed, a rude harsh-textured sigh. “If I’m to procure the products you desire, I need to know whom I need to see.” “And what if he proves reluctant?” “If that is the case, then a number of alternatives are readily available. However, I

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doubt that contingency will arise, since I will make a pre-emptive offer, initially. He won’t be able to refuse.” “You’re hired.” “I am?” “Yes,” said Edward James Nolmo. “Only I don’t want to know any of the details. I just want what I asked for.” His penis was growing under his ministrations. “I’ve tried three other private contractors. To no avail.” “What I do is illegal, usually. You’re aware of that?” asked Tilly, still uneasy. These hyper-civilized, corporate world epicenes were in constant camouflage. “You’ve heard of non-disclosure, haven’t you?” asked Edward James Nolmo. “Yes,” said Tilly. “It’s part of my contract.” “Lohan. Vegas Lohan is the name you asked for.”

Don Cesario looked up from his cube. “Good,” he said, ostensibly to Taussig. “This is very good.” Taussig shifted his weight; again, the slo-mo optical illusion. “However, I thought you said you never disclosed any information about any employer?” “Living employers,” Tilly said.

Three months. That’s how long it took him. Tilly used his expense account to rent a small apartment in a retrograded section of Judaic city. He bought new clothes, mostly non-descript black shirts of mediocre quality, gray pants. It seemed to be the style presently in vogue. He purchased a pair of black

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Umbro sunglasses from a local kiosk, and took to carrying a black satchel wherever he went. Life in Judaic city had a certain detached quality. Tilly envied them their detachment. Emotion was rarely demonstrated, and then only factitiously it seemed. The dominant trait was a passion to excel, unbridled elitism. Life was intense; the goal was prominence in its rawest, purest form. Tilly’s ability to fit in served him well. Hanging out in the same bars and strip joints, he made connections too tenuous to be defined. The worst of them, and therefore the best, was The Sunny Irenic Green. It was descended from the clubs of the early 21st century, but it resembled them no more than a cat resembled a saber-toothed tiger. The Sunny Irenic Green was the evolved form, part of what had once been a chain franchise across the Elegant String: Kit-Kat World Inc.. The Sunny Irenic Green was a site so popular with the marginalized population that it had progressed into something like gangland central. Although most of them were just punks, wanna’ be felons, unable to achieve beyond their impoverished abilities, there were, in fact, several components of a larger unity. The real thing. Those individuals whose very body language bespoke unpredictability and advocated decisiveness, impulsiveness and recklessness. They were mechanically gracious with a metallic undertone, and radiated the effluvium of position and competence. It was impossible for Tilly to enter The Sunny Irenic Green without a sense of participating in a layer of history, a history in the making, a history focused along a single axis. The Sunny Irenic Green, Tilly suspected, was a portal into a much deeper and more nefarious sub-culture.

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Tilly had no opinion of this microcosm one way or another. He simply accepted it as a fact of life. This was the modus operandi of certain personality types. It was the world in which he worked. The criminal microcosm allowed him to utilize his talents, so he avoided thinking of it in terms of good or bad or ugly. The good, the bad and the ugly were terms that lacked contemporary equivalence. The punk element were exaggerated, quaint, absurd, and Tilly viewed them as necessary ingredients, though in some cases, there might be potential. It was the others that Tilly wanted, directing his attention at about twenty of them. Tanya Roos wasn’t one of them, but the man she accompanied was. And as he watched, something began to become clear to Tilly. Tanya Roos knew, somehow, that he was there and that he was watching. As if she felt him peering down into a magic ball that reflected her progress through life. A confection of data that mirrored her already fading life. Tilly watched and saw an almost palpable energy draining away from her. She was going to die.

Big Daddy had a program in his rhizome cube that surveyed and summarized every planet in the Elegant String, along with 2000 others. Popular View of the Planets, 263rd version. It had a guide-fetch, with verbal interrogatory capability. The guide-fetch was a slender young woman with brown eyes, halter top restrained breasts, and a flared mini-skirt. The compilers, that is, the technical writers of the Popular View of the Planets had,

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in the initial versions of the program, provided a nude fetch which exuded a bi-dimensional aura of lethal sexuality. Attorneys, representing an agglomeration of fringe fundamentalist religious groups, had protested that the fetch’s nudity violated pornography statutes on a number of planets examined in the program. It had all been settled out of court, of course, and all subsequent versions, including Big Daddy’s, were appropriately clothed. Big Daddy gave life to her by clicking on her tits, and began touring old Earth. Lots of hoary cities on old Earth, suffocating in what looked like clouds of dust or some kind of haze. There was New York, which Big Daddy avoided because it was grim and wasted, like rusted out steel. There was Omaha-Nebraska, a city splayed in any direction for a thousand miles. Big Daddy paused over it for a few seconds, only because Hyer-2CB was so popular there. No wonder. He clicked on Seattle, cruising over it from high above. “Seattle,” the fetch said, as Big Daddy clicked on her mouth. “Famous at one time for its massive trees and abundant foliage.” Big Daddy didn’t want a lecture right now. But other than look slyly sexy, lectures were all the fetch could provide. She knew everything about all the planets, and nothing else at all, at all. “Do you have any information about Nastic?” he asked. “Yes. Over one hundred giga-bytes. What precisely would you like to know?” “What the people are like.” She paused, twirling around as she accessed data, her flared mini-skirt floating up, exposing pink panties. “The Nastics are one of the few morphological entities in the Elegant String that do not merit the adjective ‘human’.” “You mean they’re not human?” asked Big Daddy, startled.

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“Not as you would define human,” said the fetch, smiling prettily. “They are not bifurcate, bibrachiate, monocephalic, or polygamitic.” “Explain in more detail, please,” said Big Daddy. “They can talk many human languages, walk, dress themselves, play a game of chess, or tennis. They look human, but are not. They have assimilated courtesy, what you would call ‘manners’. However, they are distinctly devoid of humor or any sense of obligation.” “Are they capable of killing?” asked Big Daddy. “They sometimes explode in fury and kill,” said the fetch, grimacing distastefully, “but it is not common. Some anthropologists, and I use the term prudently in this instance, have deemed them ruthless. They exhibit no manifestations of their more dysfunctional human counterparts, such as sadism, masochism, religious fervor, self-flagellation, or suicide. On the other hand, the Nastics demonstrate an entire spectrum of peculiar habits which have no human equivalent. They are, for obvious reasons, not quantifiable.” “Do they marry?” “Unknown.” ‘Are there male and female Nastics?” “Unknown. And since all anthropological research was prohibited at one point, none of this can be verified or refuted,” said the fetch, holding her hands up in apology. “What of the planet itself?” inquired Big Daddy, beginning to suspect one hundred giga-bytes of data unknown. “Their cities are impressive, rising upwards to tremendous heights. The buildings are some type of crystalline growth. Each Nastic at the point of maturation, and that age is

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unknown, erects for itself a tower. Factories, industrial complexes and the like are built outside the city proper, and are operated by non-maturated Nastics.” “Weird,” mumbled Big Daddy. As his psychic periscope rose into the imaginal realms, another portion of his brain went solo: Magico! “Question,” said Big Daddy to the fetch. “Of course,” she said, leaning forward attentively. “Do you have any data on a certain Magico?” Big Daddy inspected her pink panties with a frank curiosity as she again twirled, accessing data. “I apologize,” she said as she stopped whirling, “I am unable to locate any planet or city by that name.” “Sorry,” said Big Daddy. “It’s not a place, but a person’s name. Magico is his name.” The response was immediate and decisive. “My databanks contain only sequential, cosmological specifics. However, I will consult internal supplementary databases for the name Magico. It will require five seconds. Please wait,” the fetch said, standing motionless. Big Daddy, taking her advice, waited patiently, glancing over at the superb protuberances swelling Mattie’s shirt. “ISD contains a projection of cultural memory associated with the name Magico,” stated the fetch in a happy voice. “What’s that?” asked Big Daddy. He wanted to meet the people who wrote this program, or who had programmed the AI that did. Full-spectrum oddity. “A legend,” explained the fetch. “A monocultural symbol which has, in effect,

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been reshuffled.” “Well, unshuffle it, and tell me what you’ve got,” he instructed. “Magico is a cognomen, derived from a folk epic of Dense Quantique. There is no reliable description of him; this, it is assumed, is because of the myth motif. In the epic, Magico is the prince of demons who, rather than enlarging himself, projecting macroscopic delineations of his person and deeds with which to mesmerize his victims and intimidate his enemies, prefers the device of silence, invisibility, dispassionate personality. His actions are attended by implacable viciousness. “As mentioned, he is primarily a projection of cultural memory. An anecdote frequently encountered runs to the effect that Magico enjoyed engaging in personal gladiatorial duels with his opponents, with knives or swords for weapons. In the story, Magico is said to exhibit superhuman strength and dexterity, and apparently derives satisfaction from methodically hewing his opponents to bits.” “So he’s not a real person,” said Big Daddy. More of a summary statement than a question. “No, he is not. He is a fabricated myth or legend,” stated the fetch. “There is, however, one addendum.” “Yes,” inquired Big Daddy. “Magico ostensibly, in his worldly form, maintains a discrete and respectable identity within the Elegant String and, if Dense Quantique whispers are correct, occupies a prestigious position on one of the major planets.” “Okay,” said Big Daddy. “That’s enough for now.” He massaged his temples with thin hands. Then clicked the fetch into whatever bio-electrical limbo she inhabited.

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The blonde babe with the porpoise sugar amplified breasts was awake, looking at him. “I like your cube,” she said. “I’ve never been able to find the need to own one.” “You should,” said Big Daddy. “They’re very handy tools. This is the Apple Valence model. Micarta shell, cyborg arteries.” “Mmmm,” mumbled the blonde. “I didn’t talk in my sleep, did I? My boyfriend, Vance, says I do.” Big Daddy shook his head. “Do you know how long it takes to get to Seattle?” Big Daddy asked, it was all he could think of to say. “Too fucking long, even with T-drive,” Mattie said, and sighed. “God, I hate this shit,” she said, indicating her seat and harness. “Why are you going to Seattle?” “Research,” said Big Daddy. “I’m researching some chemistry --” “Seattle’s disappointing, ya’ know?” she interrupted him. “Not the same since the wars and all.” “But it’s been reconstructed now, hasn’t it?” “I guess so. But they did it so fast, ya’ know? With all that assembler nano-tech stuff. Vance told me you can actually see the buildings going up, it’s so fast. That shit scares me. Vance told me they can even put those things into your bloodstream, let ’em start messing with your insides and all.” Big Daddy sighed to himself. This chick was an incubator for a whole congerie of neuroses, from no body self-esteem to techno-phobia. “Vance?” he asked, trying to distract her.

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“Vance is an entrepreneur. What he calls a post-industrial industrialist. He came to old Earth after the wars to make money. Vance says there’s this cusp of transition thing throughout history. It’s when the door just kind of opens up and you can either walk through it or not. So Vance did. Now he’s plugged into the cusp thing. He owns businesses, nightclubs, a grocery store chain, a simstim production company, even has a music distribution deal going. Visit the YIK-YAK club while you’re there. It’s premium!” Big Daddy leaned sideways, reaching for his cube case on a rack next to his seat, putting his cube in it. “Do you live in Seattle?” “Part of the time.” “How is it? I mean, do you like it?” “It’s … I mean … kind of really strange, ya’ know? It’s not like it’s a place, a real place that is. And yet there’s all this supercharged energy about it, too. Everything’s changed from the way it was before, and everybody goes around pretending like it’s always been like this. But you know what?” “What?” “It hasn’t always been like that. The way it is now, compared to the way it used to be is like … like … the difference between night and day. They’re all living in denial or whatever you call it, ya’ know?” “Yeah, I guess so,” Big Daddy said. “I’m sleepy. I think I’ll try to catch a little rem-time.” Big Daddy leaned back, closed his eyes. He thought he could hear his brain shutting down, program by program, like all his parts subtly relaxing from within.

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“She’s going to die,” Tilly said. “Why?” Edward James Nolmo sipped his coffee, sitting behind his desk in his neat post-avant garde VP’s office, on the thirty-fifth floor of the Moen-Micromics building. “She knows. She feels me watching her.” “But you’re not watching her, are you? You’re watching her friend. How can she feel that?” “I don’t know, but she does.” He set the coffee cup on the synthetic desk. “How can you know that she knows? You’re just trying to access her friend. How can you possibly know that she’s aware of being accessed?” My sixth sense, Tilly almost said, but didn’t. “Well,” said Edward James Nolmo, “that’s neither here nor there. What about her friend? The man. What about Vegas Lohan?” “He’s an entirely new paradigm,” said Tilly. “Very careful man is our Vegas Lohan. No regular habits, no routine that I can perceive. Yet, that is. Everyone has something they do in patterns. Even if it’s not doing things in patterns. I’ll find it, soon.” “I hope so,” said Edward James Nolmo. “My patience is wearing thin.”

Tilly sat in the same booth at The Sunny Irenic Green, smoking cigarettes, staring at a moon frosted on the mirror behind the bar, mentally picturing Vegas Lohan and his toy, Tanya Roos. Vegas was over average height, dark-haired with a broad forehead, prominent cheekbones. There was an emotive force about him; it was almost palpable, a crazy, irresponsible ferocity. Despite all that, he lacked definition, kind of like he was

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blurry. If he was a color, he’d be blotchy brown or haze-gray. His plaything was slender and straight, with skin as pale and thin as paper, arched coal-black eyebrows, and regular, if somewhat peaked features. Her face blank as that of a marionette. Clinging to her scalp like a cap of felt, her hair resembled a short black mat. Vegas resided in a fashionable, au courant district of Judaic city in a complex called Fancy Persuasions. It was a ‘white’ neighborhood, meaning it was antiseptically clean, almost noiseless, just hushed tones muffling soft sighs, as if walking through a heavy snow storm on a dark night. Fancy Persuasions was a tall, textured building with a streamlined organicism, the look of most assembler constructed edifices. The penthouse suite was Vegas’. Tilly had entered it two days before, a calculated risk. It was one of those vast loft-like apartments, without designated rooms, just a few partitions to separate one area from another. Tall windows at the right overlooked a quadrangle; the opposite wall was papered with hundreds of maps: Mercator projections of other planets. Hand built solid cherry Sheffield furniture, classic old-Earth style: writing desk on thick, smooth columns with a stretcher base. A carved desk chair which sported a real black leather seat, not some analog replica. Nearby a glass-doored bookcase with an attendant two drawer file cabinet. All of it finished with some translucent ebony stain and fitted with antiqued brass hardware. The sleeping area centered around a Faifax bed, headboard covered in supple chocolate brown leather, the real thing again. Tilly actually touched it, leaned over to smell it -- that singular monomer odor of bovine tissue. Italian frescoed bedcovers of pure cotton, mercerized to a satin luster, draped to the floor. Boyd leather chairs and sofa in the living area, which also contained the latest

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electronic devices: simstim, rhizome tablet cube, laser stereo. All in all, a vivacious display of excesses of money, especially the real leather. Bovine tissue in all its manifestations was on the Schedule One list of illicit possessions throughout the Elegant String. However, technology had a way of granting new life to discarded dogmas. People want what they can’t have. And obviously, Vegas Lohan eschewed such discordant elements as morality and legality.

Leaning back in his booth Tilly sifted the countless fragments of data he had gleaned on Tanya Roos, plucked, illicitly, from DatElegant’s K-cube rhizome AI on Judaic. He’d tapped into Binary on the Cioran, and Binary had ramped into DatElegant, using commutative micro geometric encrypted codes, a geometrically expanding creepy-crawly that Binary had invented years ago at Tilly’s urgings. He felt for the source of his conviction about her. Turning on his cube, he called up all the information Binary had available. Her choices were anything but life-affirming. A little runaway from Aio, a harrowing little planet in the Juvenal cluster. To Judaic, where she’d hustled to make ends meet: first as a waitress in some slop house, then as a fanny dancer at Rick’s Chick Lick, a seedy flesh club that catered to substance abusers of every ilk. She’d met Vegas Lohan there, while wiggling her taut little nates for the club’s patrons, to the tarnished tones of The Supreme’s Baby Love. Vegas Lohan was an ass man. And the white globes of Tanya’s buttocks, gyrating like motivated mechanisms, tantalized him. After her dance, he bought her a drink, talked to her. Restraint, unobtrusiveness, delicacy of allusion were key aspects to Vegas’

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conversation. Tanya liked him; he wasn’t like most of the losers that frequented Rick’s. He treated her like she was someone, and he had a lot of money. That was the beginning of the end for Tanya. Collating her purchases against the records of her credit-provider, Tilly came up with a list of items she’d bought in the last ten days. Vodka, depilitator, analgesics, shampoo, Atlas hair conditioner, L’Oreal nail polish. Personal items, most of them. A few articles of clothing from Neiman-Gap at the local mall. Tilly’s booth was low, the table too high, an awkward feeling, like he was seated in the end of a tunnel. There were no windows in The Sunny Irenic Green, just the jaded glare of aluminiferous rods overhead, the spastic thrumming of some proto-squirt band emanating from Klipsch orbs, which hung where the walls met the ceiling, like buggars along a sinus cleft. He sat there, picturing Tanya Roos in her Fancy Persuasions penthouse apartment. All her purchases were paid for, Binary had determined, by Vegas Lohan. His “fuck-toy fund,” Binary named it. There, on the cube before him, astonishing and ignoring every precedent, he gazed at a human being’s history, as filtered through a bio-electrical concoction of zeroes and ones. He’d never met her, never spoken to her, but he was a principal to the seminal circumstances of her life. An eccentric situation. He wondered if the intensity was diluted because she was only a statistic in his cube. Suddenly his sixth sense ramped into overdrive, his head ached. An unrelenting secretive ache, with no indication of letting up. What was she doing now, in that apartment?

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Drinking Vodka? Watching some simstim? Washing her hair? Looking at his hands, which exuded an aura of lethal expertise, he flexed his fingers, trying to let the ache in his head flow out through his fingertips. Reaching for his satchel, he got up, leaving the half-empty rye and soda on the table. Tanya Roos was going to die. He’d seen it, now he felt it with an almost palpable energy. His sixth sense was impervious to reason. Five minutes later he was in an FL aircab, headed for Fancy Persuasions, his satchel next to him.

“So we’re not talking about deductive reasoning, here?” Taussig said, his attitude a curious composite of envious disapproval and grudging admiration. “No,” Tilly said, “I felt like I was on auto-pilot, controlled by some outside power.” “Some kind of savior mode.” “I don’t know. All I know is I had to go,” said Tilly. “Lorenz’s butterfly effect,” said Don Cesario. “Sensitive dependence on initial conditions.” Taussig glanced at the thin man, lifting his chin an inch and squinting his eyes, his semiotic of asking for clarification. “The mathematics of chaos,” explained Don Cesario. “It’s where an image of predictability gives way to pure randomness.”

Somewhere over the Fancy Persuasions’ district, Tilly came to his senses in the FL

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aircab. Sitting motionless, he blinked his eyes ten times in rapid succession, his method of reducing any question to its essentials. Shrugging his shoulders, he decided to carry the affair to its ultimate conclusion. In the interests of procedural harmony, he opened his black satchel, took out a Winston High Liter. There were many others like it, it being the standard model. Nothing fancy, no custom engraving or Heinnemann acquisitioning system. To Tilly’s way of thinking, such novelties were a transient quality. He took a tarn holster out of the satchel, fitted it about his shoulders, slid the High Liter into it. Five minutes later he was in front of the Fancy Persuasions building, its organic wing-like architecture thrusting up into the night sky. There was the hint of mint in the air.

“So? What happened?” asked Taussig. Tilly glanced up from his latte, meeting Taussig’s eyes across the table. Tilly’s face twitched with what might have been embarrassment. “I’ve never spoken of this to anyone,” he said in a measured voice. “Let’s get out of here,” said Taussig, rising, his mass seeming to move slo-mo once more, as though he was moving through water. Don Cesario left some money on the table. He walked out with them, out into a mist that was almost, but not quite, rain. Don Cesario, with a flourish, popped open a bumbershoot that Tilly hadn’t noticed he was carrying, handed it to him. Both of them, by some kind of mutual impulse stared up at the black floating concavity. “Where’d you get it?” “They retract to four inches by an inch and a half,” Don Cesario said, taking out a

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small cylinder for himself, popping it open. Taussig apparently either didn’t have one, or didn’t want one. “Please continue with your story. I admit that I am fascinated by it.”

Tilly entered the seven digit code into the numeric pad outside the opaque doors of Fancy Persuasions. Binary had provided the code. Seven digits because mimetic synapses in the human cerebral cortex found more than seven difficult to remember. Tilly softly sang along with the music in his head: “Baby love, my baby love, I need ya’ love, I need ya’.” The doors slid aside, revealing someone’s idea of neo-entropic Italian décor. A kind of dark tan drunken prolixity, shimmering in furniture agitation.

“Okay, then,” Taussig interjected, as they crossed the street, “you simply walked in. Lo and behold, there you were.” Lo and behold.

An elusive familiarity in the entry way. He’d been there once before -- post déjà vu? Without the slightest sense of dubiety or self-consciousness, Tilly moved silently across the tiled floor. Into a vacuum lift with one of those programmable scent dispensers, this one hissing out a sythetic almondine odor. Up to the 83rd floor. More neo-Italian tile. Hushed green walls with Monet-impressionistic flowers astride them. Penthouse. “Artificial tensions are the outer semblance of fear,” he spoke out loud, in a quixotic tone.

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Another numeric pad. His fingers moved mechanically over the pressure sensitive synapses. 8-6-7-5-3-0-9. He cradled the weight of the High Liter in his right hand. The door slid aside with complacent acquiescence. Tanya Roos, naked, lay on the floor as if posing for a portrait, framed between the two Boyd leather chairs. That explanation seemed remotely conceivable, except for the taint, the psychic proximity, of death. Tilly heard himself whimper, an inarticulate cry of utter desolation. He needed to be sure, but couldn’t move. Just stood there, caring. After a moment, he walked toward the leather chair on the left, nearest her head. Sitting down, he leaned forward, took her wrist, felt for a pulse. And suddenly discovered himself kneeling beside her where she lay, his fingers curled in her fingers, as if holding hands. Her fingernails were red. Carnivore Red. He knew that from her purchase records. Her hands were bluish. “Don’t move,” said a voice behind him, behind the couch to his left. Tilly recognized it. Vegas Lohan. Filtered through a lifetime of mistrustful cynicism, Tilly’s response was anomalous, the exact opposite of the command. Leaning forward over Tanya’s prostrate body, he simultaneously rolled his torso counter-clockwise, firing the High Liter at the location of the voice. In precisely eighteen nano-seconds eighteen Winston Armament and Ordnance Max-Pack rounds, traveling at 5000 meters per second, emerged from the High Liter. Five of the Max-Pack rounds impacted Vegas Lohan ten centimeters above his right incisor tooth. Two Max-Pack rounds entered his right oculus, penetrated his cortex, exited the back of his skull, and passed through the wall behind him, producing an

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immaculate, perfectly round hole three inches in diameter. The other eleven Max-Pack rounds missed. Tilly was a strong advocate of the multiple hit theory of combat. Tilly found himself lying across Tanya Roos, their bodies forming a cross. Getting up, he heard himself say to her, “Sorry.”

Taussig’s shoulders rose as he sighed, a sound that Tilly heard over the air traffic above them. Don Cesario’s glasses reflected quinces of white light. Taussig was looking at Tilly with plangent severity. “Over this way,” he said, eventually, and turned a corner. Tilly followed, Don Cesario bringing up the rear, like some thin caboose. Around the corner, they emerged into tourist heaven. Crisp white rectangular signs, outlined by twinkling Christmas lights. Each sign announcing a business. Huge vats of shredded ice gleaming dully in the gray light, the ice almost invisible in some spots because of the huge fish placed on top of it, some slit open and gutted, some whole. Shocked by the melancholy of their expressions, Tilly looked away. Don Cesario stared. A street pregnant with mysterious symbolism. A street of death exposed. “Pike Street,” said Andrew Taussig.

Big Daddy left the ship behind Mattie, who’d had difficulty with her harness straps. When Big Daddy stood up, he felt like he’d left something behind. His soul. He remembered reading once about how the folding of space left the soul behind, stridently trying to catch up, but it couldn’t, not for a while anyway. Because souls, like human

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beings, weren’t designed to travel faster than the speed of light. Souls meandered along, said the writer, with an exaggerated delicacy. He’d gotten a few more hours of rem-time in, then packed his cube again, just for safe measure. Now he was walking disjointedly, as Mattie, in front of him, walked along the narrow ramp in her black Stallion boots. Finally, they were off the ship, breathing machine cleaned air in a concourse, under huge light matrix adverts for L’Oreal products. Beautiful women and handsome men rambling on about skin toners, permanent eyeliners, semi-permanent eyelashes. “Did you check any bags?” Mattie asked, walking beside him. “No,” Big Daddy said. Mattie let Big Daddy precede her through Immigration, where Big Daddy gave the officer his right hand to scan, and his travel filament. The officer passed the filament through a scanner slot and handed it back to him. “One month vistor’s visa,” he said and passed him through. Doors slid silently open for him. It was crowded here. Where are all these people going, wondered Big Daddy. Where are they from? What do they expect to find here? Like all people, he answered himself, they hope, they yearn. For what precisely? In any absolute or ultimate sense. He stepped aside, waiting for Mattie. “Well, at least that was easier than expected,” said Mattie, coming up to him. Big Daddy watched her inhale deeply, thrusting out those enhanced boobs, then exhale loudly. Mattie’s eyes looked tight, like she was easing some residual oddment of stress. “Would you happen to know which way to the air cabs?” Big Daddy asked. There were ’you are here’ templates everywhere, but he could never figure those things out. No

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sense of direction. “That way,” said Mattie, pointing. “Follow me, I’ve got to get my bags. Then we can get an aircab.” Mattie dodged her way through the congestion, Big Daddy following with his bag over his thin shoulder. Ten minutes later they emerged into a venue that a logogrammatic declared was ‘Baggage Claim‘, where bags were popping into slotted cubicles. “Here’s one of them,” Mattie said, sliding her filament along a slot, which caused the cubicle to open. She extracted a red and white bag with YIK-YAK Studios emblazoned on its sides. “There’s the other.” An exact replica of the first, except smaller. “Would you mind carrying this one for me? It’s not as heavy as the other.” Handing Big Daddy the smaller YIK-YAK Studios bag, she took the other. It wasn’t very heavy, and Big Daddy wondered what was in it. Draping it over his other shoulder, he drooped on both sides now. “Thanks,” said Mattie, batting semi-permanent extended eyelashes at him. Big Daddy wondered if they were L’Oreal, or some other brand. “Now we go this way.” With two bags to carry through the crowd, Big Daddy suddenly discovered that his existence had become extremely complex: track on Mattie, manage the bags, avoid bumping people with the bags, don’t step on anyone’s feet. Big Daddy concentrated on the four tasks with somber intensity, but before he knew it, he’d lost Mattie. Glancing around, he scanned the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of blonde ringlets or Stallion boots. Nothing. Looking up, he noted a logogrammatic, its letters seeming to float in the air, Final Immigration Check >>>>>>. No problemo, that’s what the doctor ordered. Queuing up

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behind a really big, really wide guy in a white leather analog jacket that said ’Noise, Water, Meat’ across the back in green chevron font, he wondered whether it was an advertisement, the name of some band, or just pure drivel; one projection was no more absurd than another. “Next.” They placed Noise, Water, Meat’s bag on a slideway belt, which ran under scanner wands. One of the Immigration cops had funky looking sunglasses on, which Big Daddy knew were not sunglasses, but scanner receptors. The cop was imaging the contents of the bag. Another cop scanned your right hand’s cipher code, then passed you through. Big Daddy handed the first cop Mattie’s bag, which he tossed on the slideway. Big Daddy handed him his bag. “My cube’s in there, so please be careful with it,” he said. The cop either didn’t hear him or, more probably, didn’t care. “Cipher code,” the second cop said, and Big Daddy stuck out his right hand. The cop scanned it perfunctorily. “What ya’ got in there?” asked the cop with the sunglasses. Big Daddy wondered if he could actually see whom he was talking to, or just some digital silhouette. “What?” asked Big Daddy, insouciance giving way to dismal foreboding. “The first bag. What ya’ got in there?” “Research materials,” said Big Daddy, deciding that lying was easier and, mathematically speaking, less risky than attempting to explain that it was not his bag. Probability versus possibility: eighty, twenty, Big Daddy figured, especially factoring in another social component: conviction creates susceptibility. “Next,” the cop said.

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Big Daddy picked up the two bags, momentarily considered dragging them behind by the straps, then hefted them up to his shoulders. Through another set of doors, and he found himself in the main mezzanine, where more adverts pummeled his senses, even more people swarming around. Stopping to adjust the bags, he wondered what to do if he couldn’t find Mattie. Well, he couldn’t wait around; he needed a hotel and to slip into never-never-land. Peering around, trying to find some logogrammatic that said ’Aircabs’, when a hand closed on his left shoulder. He looked down at the hand, saw some kind of serpent tattoo, trying to swallow its own tail. Red, black and orange. “You’ve got my bag.” Big Daddy followed the hand to a wrist to a black linen shirt, then up an arm to a shoulder with a gray Rixon jacket tossed over it. To a tumble of black hair, a pair of brown eyes set in a smooth ovid face with thin lips. His hair was too long, definitely out of sync with current fashion trends, and slicked straight back from his forehead. Almost vampirish. “It’s my bag,” said Big Daddy, grasping at the red YIK-YAK Studios bag. “Actually, I’m holding it for a friend of mine.” “Mattie? She gave it to you?” “No, she didn’t give it to me. I’m just carrying it for her,” replied Big Daddy, who disliked semantic imprecision. “When did she give it to you?” the thin lips asked, unsmiling. “Back there. When we got off the ship.” “Where is she?”

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“I lost her in the crowd, and have not yet been able to re-locate her.” Count Dracula, as Big Daddy had already named him in his head, was appropriately dressed in black, except for the Rixon jacket, and all of it expensive-looking. Big Daddy knew for a fact that a real Rixon, not one of the cheap knock-offs which were everywhere, went for thousands. And that was if you could find one. Count Dracula appeared to notice that he still had his hand on Big Daddy’s shoulder. He let it go, but stayed real close, like he was afraid Big Daddy might bolt. “Here,” said Count Dracula, “let me have it,” reaching for the red YIK-YAK Studios bag. Big Daddy considered for a moment. The way Count Dracula’s clothes fit him he either worked out, or took anabolic toners. Either way he was a true believer in the doctrine of worth through magnitude. If it came to a tussle for the YIK-YAK Studios bag, Big Daddy was certain to lose; certainty can be an inhibiting prospect. He handed the bag over. “Are you Mattie’s boyfriend, Vance?” Count Dracula smiled thinly. “Yeah.”

Vance’s hovercar was a Rolls Pacer, the J model. Big Daddy knew that because he had once considered purchasing one, but decided against it because of the cost factor. He had discussed it with his mother, who said he wouldn’t know what to do with it, anyway. And, she added, he’d probably kill himself inside a week. More of a possibility than a probability, stated Big Daddy. Fifty, fifty chance, mathematically speaking, which, in Big Daddy’s mind was a possibility, not a probability. One percent either way, and then it was

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a probability -- either way. However, Vance had one, in what was called Turbo Blue, what his mother characterized, in disparaging tones, as Pollack blue. It looked kind of like a bloated wedge of blue cheese. A Rolls Pacer was super-profligacy. Pure prole, it appealed to a certain personality type, the type seeking an image. Inside, the Rolls Pacer was all tan leather analog, tufted in these little circlets of three different sizes. Gizmos and buttons and digital displays were everywhere. Mattie, seated next to Big Daddy, was describing all the things the hovercar could do, and what all the gizmos were for. Big Daddy just nodded. Vance was driving, talking into one of those ear/diaphragm phones. They’d come across Mattie seated at a food court, near the center of the mezzanine. From Vance’s body-language, Big Daddy gathered that he was angry and impatient with Mattie. But Mattie was either oblivious or didn’t give a shit. It was Mattie who had suggested that they give Big Daddy a ride to his hotel. She said the FL air cabs were dirty and a rip-off. Besides, added Mattie, they were going that way anyway. Big Daddy noted that all the other bags were in the back, but the smaller red YIK-YAK Studios bag was right next to Vance. Big Daddy tuned Mattie out. This was too weird to even think about. He slumped back in his tufted tan seat and closed his eyes.

“What’d you do then?” asked Don Cesario, sitting motionless, staring at Tilly with wide eyes. Tilly felt a wet bubble of nausea rising in his throat, the arcane energy of memories.

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“Went to see Edward James Nolmo,” he said. They were seated on the inside of one of those inside-outside cafes that proliferated Pike Street. Apart from their waiter and the bartender, who looked like a drag queen in drag, they had the place to themselves. And the place was old. The walls looked to be made of real wood, relics from another time, another era. Sadly, the tables and chairs were the products of progress, fake. “Ah,” Don Cesario said. “Micromics building, 35th floor.” The waiter placed drinks and a platter of shrimp before them. The shrimp were huge, more likely prawns; with some tomato-based sauce whose primary ingredient seemed to be horseradish of great potency. “Thanks,” mumbled Taussig. The waiter nodded. The wooden walls were covered with dozens of shelves upon which sat fragile pieces of milk-glass, another relic of days of old. Each shelf had a tab on it, with a name written on it. Don Cesario had explained that you brought in your milk-glass plate or cup or bowl, and they kept it for you. Kind of a collector’s showcase, as it were. Taussig was on his second beer. Don Cesario was sipping a Pepsi-Silver. Tilly had a shot of Tequila in front of him. “Okay, then,” said Taussig, gulping the remainder of his beer and signaling the waiter for another. “You’ve got two dead bodies in a penthouse at Fancy Persuasions. Then you go visit your employer, a VP at Micromics Corporation, one of the Big Five of the Elegant String.” “Basically, yeah,” Tilly said. “There was something queer about the guy, and I don’t mean his sexual preferences.” If he didn’t, he knew, that would be the end of it.

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Nineteen year old Tanya Roos would have died for…what? Before he left the penthouse, he examined her asthenic body. There was a bruise, just under her left ear; presumably, Vegas Lohan had hit her. Why? The only two people who could have told him were dead.

Edward James Nolmo sat behind his big-ass desk in his big-ass office, both hands in his crotch, ministering to his penis. Rubbing the half-tumescent hardness. It was always half-tumescent; he couldn’t get it all the way up except when viewing pictures of little boys. Tilly sat across from him, in the same chair he’d sat in the last time. The High-Liter in his right hand, which was in his lap. A repressed choler surged within him; he needed to vent it. “So,” said Eward James Nolmo, “Vegas Lohan is dead.” “Yes,” said Tilly, “and the girl, too.” “Ah, yes,” sighed out Eward James Nolmo, “the girl. But in the ensuing concatenations of cause and effect, she has no value.” “I will not argue the proposition,” said Tilly. “However, that is a tenuous assumption on which to hazard one’s life.” Edward James Nolmo furrowed his brow. Obviously, he didn’t understand what was going on. “Were you able to procure the items I requested,” asked Edward James Nolmo. “No,” Tilly said. Nolmo pressed harder into his crotch. “Then your services are no longer required. The contract is abrogated due to lack of fulfillment.”

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“I assumed that,” said Tilly. “Yet I expect to be paid the full amount, as specified in the contract.” “I don’t think so,” said Edward James Nolmo, leaning forward and placing both hands on his desk. “I assumed that, too,” said Tilly. Raising the High-Liter in his lap, he fired nine rounds in nine nano-seconds, through the front of the desk, at hip level. Nine rounds of Max Pack impacted Edward James Nolmo in his gonads, penetrated his prostate and lower colon, exited his back, tore through his VP’s padded chair. Suddenly, Tilly felt better. He felt like Tanya Roos was just a little less dead than she was ten seconds ago. As he rose to leave, Tilly realized he hadn’t even tried to find out what was going on, really, between Edward James Nolmo and Vegas Lohan. Walking out of the Micromics building, a tinny voice sang a roundelay in his head: “Baby love, my baby love, ooh how I need ya’ love…”

Gretchen Dieter reached for the phone, her arms, heavy with cloned muscle, rippled in the dim light of the office. Her sister was about ten feet away, seated before a rhizome cube, filing her fingernails. Their office composed the entire building, a structure with walls that appeared to be poles, but upon closer inspection were merely faux-bamboo simulacra, a ten-coned roof sheathed with green tribonite glass tiles. There was a barbaric grandeur to the interior. Rugs woven in bold patterns of black, white and scarlet covered the floor; along the wall were pilasters carved to represent attenuated gargoyles with gaunt sagging faces; vines

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with green leaves and white flowers hung from exposed beams overhead. Windows thirty feet high overlooked the street. The room was furnished with chairs and desks of dense black wood analog. “Yeah?” she said into the phone, deliberately not activating the view screen. Both the Dieter sisters were big, with that sensual, more alive than alive look. Brunettes, with hair moussed to attain a semiotic of assertion. “What?” yelped Gretchen into the phone. “When?” Rita turned to look at her, swiveling in her chair. She knew that tone. Something was way wrong. “Okay, okay,” snarled Gretchen to whomever was on the other end, pissing her off. “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of it before it gets out of hand.” Pressing the clear plastic analog phone into her ear, Gretchen listened intently. “No, no,” she replied, “there’s no reason to advise the principal yet. We’ll take care of it, I told you. No reason to bother him.” Rita wondered just what the hell was going on. Rising from her chair, she walked over to her sister, her large buttocks tightly ensconced in white leggings with vertical blue stripes. A short, short skirt attempted valiantly to cover her full to bursting haunches, but failed miserably. “Okay, okay,” said Gretchen. “Consider it done.” She dropped the phone on the desk. Turning to Rita she said, “Un-fucking-believable!” Her thick jaw muscles flexed and twisted as she ground her teeth. Her skin was coffeed by dermactif tint, a L’Oreal product.

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“What?” asked Rita. “Some fucking asshole offed Vegas Lohan. Right in his own apartment.” “Oh, oh,” said Rita, her face a peculiar combination of qualities: worry, fear, anger. “Who? Did they say?” “Some freelance contractor. Name of Tilly Shank,” sighed Gretchen. “A hit?” asked Rita, looking at her nails, one of which was chipped, which pissed her off even more than what they were talking about. “No,” said Gretchen. “He said --” “He? He who?” “Roger Candide. The ISCA guy,” snapped Gretchen. “You know, the one Magico has on the payroll. He said it was definitely not a hit, not in the usual sense.” “Well, what the hell?” asked Rita, squinting at her nails. Gretchen couldn’t tell if the question referred to the state of her sister’s nails, or the information she had from Roger Candide. She guessed the latter. “He doesn’t know. But it seems this Shank asshole was working for Nolmo, the Micromics perv. Something got messed up somewhere, and fucking Tilly Shank got nasty. Real nasty. Took out Nolmo, too.” “Why would he do that?” asked Rita. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” shrugged Gretchen. “In fact, I can’t imagine Vegas and Nolmo having anything in common, except maybe Vegas was Nolmo’s supplier. That is, if Nolmo was into pharmacopoeias. Probably was, I mean, he was a perv-boy.” “But why both of them?” asked Rita again. “It’s moot,” said Gretchen.

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“It’s what?” asked Rita, stymied by the word. She scrunched her face, as if at a bad smell. “It’s academic at this point,” explained Gretchen, groaning to herself. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Magico is going to be downright peevish when he hears that his primary asset in Judaic city has gone and got himself dead. And then he’s going to remember that Vegas was one of ours and want to ask us some questions. And that -- we don’t want.” “I don’t know why you’re all worried about it,” said Rita, “we didn’t have anything to do with it. It was that Shank guy.” She was leaning back against the desk, the edge of the desk pressed deeply into her bulging rump. “Yeah,” said Gretchen, “but Vegas was our guy, and Magico’s go-to-guy, so we should have been taking better care of him. Made sure he had security and all. But we didn’t. And Magico’s behavior is sometimes…hasty.” She choose the last word with great care. It made her point, and Rita probably knew what it meant. She’d almost said impetuous. “Yeah, you’re right,” said Rita, nodding her head slowly, “it is. So what’re we gonna’ do?” “We’re going to find this Tilly Shank asshole, who is, according to Roger Candide, in Seattle on old Earth,” said Gretchen rising from her chair, “and set things right. Kind of restore the balance, before Magico finds out it was out of kilter.” Turning, she walked over to a cabinet behind and a little to the left of her desk, swung the doors out like bird wings, exposing an array of weapons mounted on the inner wall.

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Gretchen, unlike her sister, who was a fashion nightmare, dressing in something akin to neo-post-modern boho butch apparel, was a clothes horse of impeccable taste. At this particular juncture, she sported an Ellia parka, filled with down analog, a removable faux-fox collar, made of embroidered dark brown fabric, imported by Bogner. A beige pashmina fur trimmed scarf wrapped itself about her corded neck. Her massively muscled forty-six inch legs caparisoned in Esta arch pants, in the boot stretch twill, black in color. On her size eight feet, which were brazenly out of proportion to her seventy four inch height, rode wool lined, leather analog knee boots with molded lug soles. The overall effect was one of a muscular ski-bunny. “Now,” she said to herself as much as to her sister, “what kind of balance restorer do I want?” Tapping her chin with her right forefinger, she pursed her lips, and stared at her choices. Her other hand, her left one, was balanced on her hip, which was balanced above haploid buttocks of sturdy proportions, though not quite as impressive as her sister’s. Reaching for a Winston High-Liter, she stopped in mid-extension; instead, took an Abbatram Projac, designed originally for punching holes through steel beams in tight enclosed spaces by a gentleman named Karkov Asm. A construction tool. It was subsequently modified by an ISCA armament tech, one Paing Godoland, to fire soup can sized rounds accurately, at a velocity of 1500 meters per second, and rapidly, from an attached circular, spinning magazine. Knowing a good idea when he saw one, Paing Godoland resigned from the ISCA, and started Paing G Arms Manufacturing Industries. Paing G Industries went public within a year, and was presently a Blue Chip company although bogged down in the silly-putty of military contracts. Hefting the weapon in both hands, her huge, cloned biceps bunching into striated

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bands, she looked at her sister, smiled, and said, “Just the ticket.”

“What did Nolmo want, that Vegas Lohan had?” asked Don Cesario. “LSD and little boys,” said Tilly. “Edward James Nolmo was a pedophile and a frequent flyer. The LSD was no problem for Vegas. But the little boys had become a concern.” “It is unfortunate,” said Don Cesario. It seemed a strange remark to Tilly. “What is unfortunate?” “The whole episode,” Don Cesario said. “What you did for the girl was…kind.” He took a sip of his drink. “How about that, Tilly,” Taussig said, “you think of yourself as a nice guy?” The scar on his face wriggled as his cheek twitched. “No,” said Tilly, “not at all.” “But you killed two men, didn’t you, because of the girl? You had a contract with Nolmo. But they killed the girl, so you decided to even the score. Isn’t that correct?” “Nothing is quite that uncomplicated,” said Tilly. When Taussig spoke, Tilly realized he thought in fields, fields of valencies, which signified a unique intelligence, which Taussig must have labored to hide. “No,” said Taussig, almost kindly, “it never is, is it?” “Nice,” continued Taussig, “is helping little old ladies across the street, taking care of your mother, adopting some child that no one gives a shit about. What you did is something else all together. You killed out of a kind of nuncupatory revenge. What I mean is, didn’t killing those two make you exactly like them?”

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“I just couldn’t let it drop. To allow her to evaporate as if…she was less human, less important than anyone else. I didn’t do it out of revenge, as much as a fulfillment of the single solution.” “So you’re a hard man,” said Taussig. “No,” said Tilly. “I’m a sentimentalist. And sentimental people have a tendency to be cruel. Sometimes.” Taussig and Don Cesario looked at each other. Taussig gave a tight little nod. “You’re right. You might just be the man we’re looking for.” “I don’t think I’d be interested,” Tilly said, but motioned to the waiter for another drink. “Not unless I knew who was hiring me.” “I’m what you’d call a babysitter,” Taussig said, “for Magico. The mad twat saved my life once, kept me out of an ISCA maximum detention complex. Some might call me security, or a bodyguard maybe. But I’m a babysitter.” “For Magico? He really exists?” “Our sources speak well of you, Mr. Shank.” Don Cesario’s adam’s apple bobbed in his thin neck as he swallowed. “I don’t know many people,” Tilly said. “And very few of them would be considered sources.” “I doubt you know any of our sources,” Don Cesario said. “But they have proven vastly reliable in the past.” Looking at Taussig, Tilly said, “Constantin Ajayo? Needs my talents?” “Magico,” said Taussig. “He thinks he’s in love. Wants to marry this Nastic cow isn’t even human. And he knows she’s not, and says her beauty conceals another quality

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which we can’t fucking fathom. Listen,” said Taussig and magically produced, from some portion of his clothing, a Hibben knife, polished to a supernatural shine. It looked almost small in his huge hand. “This Nastic cow has warped him. Some kind of hallucinizer, whatever. In any event, Mr. Shank, you’re going to use your talents for us, this sixth sense you talk about, to find out just what the fuck is going on.” The Hibben blade came down with a precise thunk, to be left standing, its point buried a full inch in the table’s wood analog surface. It had a wooden handle with a steel knurl at the end, a four inch cross-guard at the blade’s junction. “And when you do,” Taussig said in a fat voice, “we shall exact tit for tat.”

YIK-YAK Studios resided in a low, squat building. Big Daddy had dozed off in the Rolls, and re-entered reality as Vance drove into some parking garage, then slowly ascended a spiraling ramp. He looked out the screens as it waffled up, stopping at the top level, where Vance drove into a parking space marked with ‘Reserved.’ “Come on,” said Mattie. “You need some food. You look like shit.” “Actually,” said Big Daddy, “I need to get to my hotel, get my cube up and running.” “Sure thing,” said Mattie, pressing the door release. Vance got out his side, taking the smaller red YIK-YAK Studios bag with him. He still looked pissed. Big Daddy took his bag and followed along. They came to a gravity lift. Vance pressed his right wrist against a scan panel. The door slipped up, they entered. Vance pressed an unmarked synapse, and the lift went down. Vance’s mood didn’t seem to be getting any better. He stood directly across from

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Mattie, and Big Daddy could see his jaw muscles flexing, as he looked at her. Mattie stared right back at him. “You need to relax a little,” said Mattie. “It all worked out just fine.” His jaw muscles bulged, the veins on his neck jumped into high relief. “Yeah,” he said, “but it wasn’t according to plan.” Mattie pushed her fashion-driven eyebrows up, dropped her chin half an inch. “Aren’t you the one who’s always preaching improvise, improvise, improvise?” Vance’s eyes flicked from Mattie to Big Daddy, then back to Mattie. “That’s not exactly an improvisation.” “Whatever,” said Mattie, as the lift slowed, stopped, and the door opened. Vance frowned, then stepped out, Mattie and Big Daddy tagging right behind. Big Daddy had expected some kind of studio, music or simstim, but not this. A room full of piggybacked rhizome cubes and the biggest monitors he’d ever seen. The ceiling was high, and the room was lighted by aluminiferous rods suspended from some kind of superstructure up in the ceiling. Some totally hairless guy was sitting on a chair in front of the monitors, drinking coffee from a Starbuck’s cup. “Norman,” Mattie said by way of greeting. “Mattielicious,” the guy said. “Norman’s from Red Mammoth,” Mattie said, as Big Daddy watched Vance, red bag in hand, continue across the room, through a doorway, into who-knew-where. “Vance looks pissy,” the hairless guy said in a sibilant tone, taking a sip from his Starbuck’s cup. “He is,” said Mattie. “He’s all pissy ‘cuz of a little improv on my part.”

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“All will be well, and all will be well, and all will be well,” said Norman, sipping again. “That’s a quote from some saint or other.” Glanced at Big Daddy from beneath what should have been eyebrows and eyelashes, but wasn’t. “This is Emil,” Mattie said. “Met him on Judaic.” Big Daddy noted she hadn’t said while waiting to be scanned by Judaic cops. Which made him recall her proffering her left hand instead of the right hand to the cop. Everybody’s cipher code was on the right. Something was fucked up. “That’s real sweet,” said Norman, in a plastic sing-song voice. “I need to pee,” said Big Daddy. “Is there a bathroom I can use?” “Right there,” said Norman, pointing at a door on the left about twelve feet down the wall. The bathroom had a white sink made of some analog that Big Daddy couldn’t place, two urinals and three toilet stalls. Done in pale pink and a medium gray color, it projected the look and the feel of a public bathroom at a mall. Except it was a lot cleaner than a mall bathroom would ever be. There was a big ass painting on the wall, maybe ten feet by twelve feet. Not a mural. That was something you didn’t see everyday -- a painting done on a canvas as big as an elephant in a bathroom. Big Daddy was impressed. He wondered if it was a famous one, by some famous artist. It looked like somebody had smeared very fine layers of paint over succeeding layers of paint, kind of letting it all slime together, yet at the same time maintaining a certain integrity. Prima! As he stood with wet hands in front of the sink, he realized there was no air nebulizer to dry his hands. Fuck! Digging in his bag he got a shirt out and used that.

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As he stuffed the shirt back in the bag, he noticed something he didn’t recognize as his. As he reached for it, Norman knocked on the door. Norman opened the door six inches. “Pardon me,” he said. “You done?” “Yeah,” said Big Daddy, closing his bag. “Everything’s good.” “Actually, it’s not,” he said, looking back over his shoulder, then back at Big Daddy. “Did you really meet Mattie on Judaic?” “In line at a security checkpoint,” Big Daddy said. “So you’re not with us?” Big Daddy went blank. “With what?” “With the…company?” He looked at him strangely. “No, I’m not with YIK-YAK Studios,” replied Big Daddy. “Then it might behoove you to get out of here. And I mean right now.” “Why?” asked Big Daddy, as his head swarmed with speculations. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” said Norman, obviously imitating somebody that Big Daddy didn’t recognize. There was the sound of loud voices behind Norman. “They’re having an altercation about policy matters,” said Norman. Motioning with his head, he led the way out, moving fast. Past the door that Vance had vanished through, past the monitors, where he thought he saw sequencing idioms, but he wasn’t sure. Norman opened the gravity lift. “Up to the parking area,” he said, as the shouting got louder. “Right about ten meters, another lift. Blue button takes you to street level.” “Okay,” said Big Daddy. But the door had already closed, and he was ascending. The Rolls was still there as the door opened, a veed piece of blue cheese. Finding the second lift, he dropped down four levels. Touchdown. Seattle waited for him.

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Tilly’s suite was way up high in the stylus shaped L’Oreal Hilton. It was shaped like a trapezoid and done in somber dark green. The structure itself had recently been renovated by Activitx nano-assemblers at a cost both gross and unpleasant to the Replacement Area Office of the L’Oreal Corporation. That it had been deemed necessary was testimony to L’Oreal’s primary competitor, Revlon and Company, which was presently involved in a methodical commercial assault on L’Oreal’s consumers, the spillover of an ongoing struggle between the Elegant String’s largest cosmetic corporate entities. Don Cesario had explained all this in the FL aircab, returning from Pike Street. Tilly sat on the edge of his bed, staring numbly at the green surrounding him. He found the color annoying, psychically disturbing. Couldn’t L’Oreal, for whom the term color was tautological, do better than this? The phone began to ring. Picking it up, he said, “Listen and look.” The screen next to the phone blazed awake. Reflected on it were the words: No image available. “Hello,” said Tilly. “Mr. Hillary Shank, please,” a voice said. “Who’s calling?” demanded Tilly. Only three people knew that name, and two of them were dead. The line sapped, like a sucking noise. “Binary. From the Cioran. Are you currently in a position amenable to conversation?” Tilly rubbed his eyes, looked at the faux panorama on the room’s window. “Yes, I can talk.” “An alert situation has arisen,” said Binary. “Do you have any knowledge of a

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Gretchen Dieter? She is making inquiries concerning your present whereabouts.” “No,” said Tilly, matter-of-factly. “Never met her. Don’t know her. Don’t want to know her. What kind of inquiries? And through whom?” “Inquiries I would catgorize as contradictory to your continued health. Through any and all sources, including the Micromics Corporation, and DatElegant’s AI cube. And, I might add, her binary programs are not subtle. They are rude and harsh textured. If she is attempting to remain anonymous, it is in vain.” “What does she want?” “That is presently unknown. All inquiries reference only your present location, with the addendum of a substantial bonus for the information.” “Well,” asked Tilly, in an acidic voice, “have you tried to access any information regarding this Gretchen Dieter?” “As a matter of fact,” said Binary, “I have integrated a proliferation of information related to her.” “Would you care to share it?” asked Tilly. “Or am I going to have to cope with your overcompensating attitude and beg?” “Supplication is unnecessary. Gretchen Dieter, a native of the Bight of Leo, vacated the Bight along with her sister, one Rita Dieter, as a result of the Preterite Purification Proclamation. Arriving on Little Joseph, she accepted employment as a bodyguard for a local Mafioso. Later employed as a mule and dry-cleaner for the same Mafioso and his organization. Prospering and expanding as opportunities arose, she became the listed agent for Exo-Supplemental Exports on Little Joseph. The latter was the result of achieving a reputation for versatility and ingenuity, to such a degree, that all

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competitors went out of business. Some by very mysterious means.” At mention of Exo-Supplemental Exports, Tilly’s eyebrows contracted, expanded, then ascended as if living creatures reflecting the caprice of some intrinsic deviancy. “Exo-Supplemental Exports? Does she still work for them?” he asked. “Most definitively,” said Binary. “Well, what the fuck?” said Tilly, mumbling to himself. “What do you know of Exo-Supplementary Exports?” Reaching, he snabbed a cigar from a cedar analog box on the table. Not just a cigar, but the best in his humble estimation. A Pallas Patina, grown, harvested, cut and rolled by hand on Marjune. The real thing; not some assembler replicated analog simulacrum. Real tobacco, cultivated in real soil, with natural wrappers, shipped in refrigerated humidifiers by Majerus Freight, Ltd., a privately owned and operated company. Owned and operated by the Niscelli family, whose colorful, glossy trade brochures stated: ‘Our policy? Simple enough. The Koch and Nicholson Metage has given a wonderful tool to small, independent businesses such as Majerus Freight. Having entered into a legal and binding contract with Pallas Tobaccos, Majerus Freight ensures the timely delivery of only the finest and most natural of cigars. In effect, then, we control the dissemination of our product. We have been accused of intolerable nepotism, price gouging, exorbitant tariffs. All are true. Majerus Freight, Ltd., holds that gain after toil, triumph after adversity, achievement to a goal long sought, is the natural right of any commercial enterprise.’ Whatever the policy, whatever the politics, Tilly had long ago decided that paying through the nose for the best was worth it. Blowing a series of smoke rings into the air above his head, Tilly watched them

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expand, waffle gently, slowly vanish as Binary continued its didactic lecture. “Exo-Supplementary Exports is a privately owned, publicly traded mega-corporation, duly registered in the Elegant String. Its actual assets are not listed, although it has offices and agents throughout the Elegant String. As a corporate entity, it would seem to be reactionary, even secretive. As already stated, it has agents everywhere. It engages in no known research or development, manufactures no known products, imparts no data. Its only fuction, apparently, is the dissemination of exported goods. However, there is no catalog of those goods available for public inspection.” “So what you’re telling me,” said Tilly, “is that it’s a mega-company that does nothing that anyone can identify?” “Essentially, that is correct,” said Binary. “Okay,” said Tilly, puffing deeply on his cigar, framing his next question. “What, then, based on the data available, would you deduce that they do?” “A posteriori analysis would indicate illicit activity,” said Binary. “Yeah,” said Tilly, leaning forward. “My thoughts exactly.” An idea squirmed into his head. “Who is the registered owner of the company?” “A conglomerate, called Centennial Institute,” said Binary. “In other words, an anonymous corporation owns a corporation that does nothing, is what you’re saying?” “Apparently,” said Binary. “Are any officers of the corporation given?” asked Tilly, still titillated by his absurd idea. His sixth sense, with a fugitive tendency, was nagging at him. It was more than his imagination, but less than awareness, like a confrontation or exchange between two minds.

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“Only one name is cited,” said Binary. “And that would be..?” “The managing director. Constantin Martino Jarvio Ajayo.” “Ahhh,” sighed Tilly, with a puff of pale blue cigar smoke.

Big Daddy’s FL aircab proceeded along at an altitude of one thousand meters; the driver looked like a bit player in some simstim production: peaked cap, what appeared to be a 16th century page’s costume, white with flounces, or whatever they called them, those funky, billowy sleeves, with puffed up epaulettes at the shoulders. And ondraeden hair, what the history books described as dreadlocks: thick, braided strands of mane which flowed down to his shoulders. His skin was black, but Big Daddy suspected it was L’Oreal skin toner, because the guy didn’t look Hamitic. Too short, too asthenic. Some form of personality expression, he guessed. Ahead lay the L’Oreal Hilton. It was a tall needle-like building set in the middle of a great garden, the design of which, like the other nano-tech structures of Seattle, was at once ornate and pleasantly naïve: there were six tall towers at the base encircling the main spike, a dome of glass pentagons at the top of each tower held in place by a web of bronze, terraces with balusters in the shape of nymphs. At a white tribonite ramp the FL aircab halted; here waited an extremely tall, extremely thin man in multi-shaded green robes. He greeted Big Daddy with measured respect, escorted him into the hotel. Across a long salon hung with crystal he walked, on a carpet in patterns of lavender, rose, and pale green. After both his right hand and his credit filament had been scanned, Big Daddy was taken to a suite of rooms opening on a walled garden, with blossoming trees surrounding a

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fountain. After the inarticulate stoicism of Judaic, the sudden luxury was unreal. Big Daddy bathed in a big ass tub, almost a pool, of warm water. A barber appeared to depilitate him. In the garden a table had been set with fruit, cakes, and libations. Even though he was sure they were all assembler replicated analogs, Big Daddy enjoyed them, wondering how, amid surroundings such as this, he was supposed to locate this Magico. Turning on his cube, he jacked it into the Hilton’s data port. The Apple Valence cube ramped into the hotel’s AI cube, sent the number he’d found for the Seattle office of Exo-Supplemental Exports. A woman’s sleepy voice answered from the Apple’s speakers. “Hello. Exo-Sup-Exports. How may I help you?” “Yeah,” said Big Daddy. “My name is --” he paused. “This is Emil Michelle, from Judaic. Exo’s agent on Judaic, Jennifer Gov, told me to contact your office when I arrived in Seattle.” She hadn’t, of course, but nobody would care. “Yes,” said the voice. “What can we do for you today?” “I’m trying to locate a guy, a gentleman named Magico. Jennifer Gov said you guys might be able to help me find him.” It couldn’t be this easy, could it? Silence. “Yes. Very well. Perhaps it would be best if you came to our offices regarding your inquiry. As I’m sure you’ll understand, we can’t just divulge information indiscriminately over the phone,” said the voice, not sounding so sleepy now. “Sure thing,” said Big Daddy. “Where are you located?” Clicking on an icon, he upped the map of Seattle on the cube. The voice began to explain the location and the route.

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“That’s not necessary,” Big Daddy said, “my cube can do it. Just give me the address.” He found it on the map, clicked an indicator. “How long will it take to get there from the Hilton?” “Twenty minutes by aircab.” “Thanks,” said Big Daddy. “I’m on my way.” “We will be waiting for you.” With his cube bag over his shoulder, Big Daddy left his room, took a gravity lift down to the main salon, which was really crowded now, got an aircab via the tall, thin guy out front. The sky was dull gray like old steel when he arrived in front of a gray building. Exo-Supplemental Exports’ office was on the second floor. The office was larger than Jennifer Gov’s on Judaic, cleaner, neat and organized. So was the woman, who had black porcupine quilled hair, with a white diagonal stripe bleached across it. Jana sweater in bright cerise over a white cotton blouse, Bauern belt with pack purse in red leather analog; heavily cuffed blue denim jeans exposed crocodile analog red-leather analog Texas boots. Definite ultra-chic, hot-chickette apparel. Big Daddy whistled to himself. Go, mama! She was about his age. “Hello,” she smiled. One of those on-the-run smiles that made him yearn for her. Yearning for the unattainable. “Mr. Emil Michelle?” “Yeah,” said Big Daddy. “I’m Lexi. Have a seat and let’s talk about your inquiry,” she said. Big Daddy sat down in a beige tufted chair, the kind that almost swallow the occupant up in softness. The chickette sat down behind a bleached wood analog desk,

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looked at him frankly. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked, indicating a carafe on the desk. They drank the black liquid from small pale lavender cups, resting on matching saucers with nubbly edges. She explained that the agent was out on business. “You mentioned you were familiar with our Exo agent on Judaic,” said Lexi, flashing that transporter smile once more. “How so?” “I’m a designer,” said Big Daddy. “A designer?” said Lexi, spinning her lavender cup on its saucer slowly. “What do you design?” “Pharmaceuticals. Psychotropic, psychoactive drugs,” Big Daddy said, a smug look on his face. “You design drugs?” Lexi looked doubtful. “Like for R and D at some big house, you mean? AB Merck, like that?” All of a sudden, he realized this was his chance to impress this hot totty, maybe get into her pants, maybe get laid for the first time in the featureless simstim of his sex life. Lexi, though Big Daddy didn’t know it, was off limits. A member of a recently resurrected post-fem-quasi-nun order, St. Catherine of Alexandria, Lexi was a virgin and sworn to celibacy. The order had its provenance in the craving for a religious reverence of womanhood, and its acolytes, mostly young avantish-chickettes like Lexi, found a kind of satisfaction in the secular non-worship of the mother-God, the hoary with age, proto-Egyptian Neter Mut. According to Ralph Quarry, Ph.D, in the most recent issue of Psychology Now, such upheavals were the result of pervasive technological advances and their

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superimposition on humanity will-nilly. “Mankind has opted for monoculture, creating a vast mass technological civilization, eschewing the personal and sacred. Thus the rise of such quasi-religious fringe groups is the equivalent of a fitful sneeze through filters of techno-lollipops in surreal sandwiches of a rearview mirror, a revolving door attempt to return to the past, to a more pomo-arty life.” “Of course not,” scoffed Big Daddy. “Those guys are hacks. I design the good stuff, you know, toys.” “Toys?” Big Daddy shook his head. “Toys. Leisure drugs. R and R. The kind you take for fun. You know, to get high and all.” He moved his right hand up, wiggling it as it ascended. Lexi stared at him for a few moments. Then sat back in her chair, crossing her denim clad legs. “And you sell these toys?” “No,” said Big Daddy. “I mean, yes, they are sold. But I don’t sell them. That’s not my department. I’m no vendor, I’m an inventor.” She leaned forward, filled her cup from the carafe, brown eyes regarding him narrowly. “Name one.” “One what?” “One of these drugs that you designed.” Taking a sip, she gazed at him over the edge of her cup. Big Daddy considered for a second, shrugged his scarecrow thin shoulders an inch. “Superfly is probably my most famous,” he said, modestly. She hitched forward in her chair, rested her expensively ensconced elbows on the

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desk. “You made Superfly?” “Yeah. But ‘made’ is a little light, ya’ know. More like fashioned, or maybe created. Ex nihilo.” “Like God, huh?” said Lexi, dropping her chin half an inch. “Almost,” said Big Daddy, deciding he liked the analogy. “’Cept even God would need a molecular maze sequencer to pull it off.” He smiled benignly. “Right,” said Lexi slowly, looking a him funny-like. He could tell, she didn’t believe him. Thought he was a factor five liar. Whatsoever. “I’m here trying to locate some guy, goes by the name of Magico,” Big Daddy said., performing a subject modulation, for procedural effect. “I need to find him.” “I understand,” said the chickette, her quilled hair shimmering like a one-striped zebra. “That’s what you indicated in our previous conversation.” “Well, can you help me find him?” She looked uncomfortable. “I’m just the secretary,” she said. “You’d have to discuss this matter with the agent.” “Who’s he?” said Big Daddy. “Don Cesario. He’s the Seattle agent for Exo.” “Fine,” Big Daddy said. “When can I talk to him?” “As soon as he returns. Which, I hope, will be soon.” Big Daddy decided to pry a little. “What’s he like?” “Very capable,” Lexi said. “He is a techno-fetishist.” “Okay,” said Big Daddy. “He likes tech stuff,” trying to gain more of a sense of

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this Don Cesario, before he had to speak with him, but with little result. He kept bumping into Lexi’s sense of loyalty to her boss. Big Daddy hated this kind of corporate artifice, mercantile mumbo-jumbo, he called it, where no one ever said what they really meant; and he was beginning to suspect it was going to be a problem here. Lexi turned to the cube on her desk, clicked on something Big Daddy couldn’t see. “Don Cesario is on his way back to the office,” she announced. “Should be here shortly.” “Swell,” said Big Daddy, sipping his coffee. “I’m looking forward to a little face to face time.” Lexi giggled.

Don Cesario called just before noon. Seattle was dim and overcast according to the faux panorama depicted on his window, which, L’Oreal Hilton proudly claimed was ’more real than real itself’, a hyper-accurate representation of authenticity. Tilly had switched it off, turned on the simstim. He was watching a program denominated ’So-Cal’s Hottest Beach Babes.’ The luminaries, he gathered, were the genetically enhanced, surgically tailored women with blonde tresses, aureolae-stickies and t-backed bathing suits. Ostensibly, you could visit any of So-Cal’s beaches at anytime, night or day, and find them littered with such females. Most of them looked bow-legged, buck-toothed and a little cross-eyed to Tilly. So much for tailoring. “Hello, Mr. Shank,” Don Cesario said. “You are feeling more rested now, I hope?”

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Tilly watched as one of the Beach Babes expertly rendered the meat of her double-D breasts to a dangling posture. The commentator said something over-elaborate. “Much better,” Tilly said. “We have made arrangements for you to view certain data concerning our subject. The machinery necessary to provide this data is somewhat complex, as this data has been deemed crucial, and was therefore encrypted.” “Is the subject aware of this?” Silence. Tilly watched as a gaggle of bubble butts bounced across a sunlit beach. He could almost see Don Cesario pushing his glasses up on his nose. “No, he is not.” “I am still somewhat vague about whom I am working for. For the principal? For you? For Exo-Supplemental Exports?” “You are working for Exo-Supplemental Exports. I work for them, too.” “For whom does Taussig work?” “Mr. Taussig works for a parent conglomerate, the Centennial Institute, which owns Exo-Supplemental Exports. Over the course of time, a number of image-management entities have evolved around Exo Exports, in order to optimize operations. However, they are all part of one corporate entity.” “I like that,” said Tilly. “Image-management. In other words, the corporation is scared shitless ’cuz he might do something weird? Is that it?” The Beach Babes were beginning to form a line, holding hands. Profulgent mammai thrusting forth like the warheads of firm flesh missiles, long tapered legs moving like twin fuselages across the monitor. “I have another problem, too,” said Tilly. “I’m finding this somewhat surreal.

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What did Taussig mean about him wanting to marry a Nastic, who isn’t real?” “Anamorphotic,” said Don Cesario. “What?” “Form-changers. She is a native of Nastic, and she does exist. However, Nastics gradually change their morphology to whatever type they choose. It is a distorted image of whatever they really look like. And what that is, no one knows for sure.” Tilly closed his eyes, opened them. “In other words, you’re saying she is not human.” “Correct.” “Then why would he want to marry her?” “Quite frankly,” Don Cesario said, “I don’t know. But he has cogently stated that this is his intention.” “Can you tell me what your job is?” “Initially, I think, because I’m a sci-guy, they hoped I could explain Nastics to them. How they metamorph, how they think. Too, like Taussig, I think they remain unsure what is actually transpiring. Now they want me to advise you from a scientific aspect.” “Who are they?” “On the phone, I cannot be specific.” The Beach Babes, holding hands, were swinging their arms to and fro, tailored breasts wobbling and bobbing. “What do you think is transpiring?” “I will try to answer that question later, if you don’t mind. Meanwhile, perhaps you will study this data…” “Damn!” Tilly protested, as the bouncing breasts of the Beach Babes were replaced

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by a series of architectural representations, like lines on a digital etch-a-sketch. “A documentary simstim, homemade, on Constantin Ajayo,” Don Cesario said. “Three simstims, in point of fact. Constantin Ajayo is a solipsistic megalomaniac. As such, he likes to view himself. These were produced by one of his previous employees.” Tilly stared at the white constructs, missing the dancing breasts of the Beach Babes. “A simstim for himself about himself?” “I admit that it is somewhat unprecedented,” said Don Cesario. “Okay,” said Tilly. “And what, may I ask, is it that you want me to glean from them?” “I cannot say,” said Don Cesario. “Allow your sixth sense to be your guide.” He disconnected. The simstim played across the screen: someone’s house? A restaurant? A figure was seated opposite the simcam, beyond an ocean of bottlenecks. Then someone leaned forward, taking on substance. He gestured toward the simcam with drink. Tilly still couldn’t make him out. “I continually have to cope with the problem of my notoriety. Practical considerations make anonymity and facelessness important. So I guard my identity from one and all. Yet, am I not a man with the appetites of a man? I, too, desire to visit the centers of culture, to enjoy life. Fuck this shit! I’ll do as I please!” “Easy, Connie. You’ve had too much to drink.” Tilly sat forward. The voice had been Taussig’s. “Don’t tell me what to do, Tossie.” Constantine Ajayo receded, out of view. “Because if you do, I might take umbrage. In fact, I might take two, and then we’d have

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trouble. Or do you think you can take me, Tossie, you pussy?” The phone sounded again. “Yes?” said Tilly. “Taussig says something’s happening. The subject is on the move. So he would like you to access the available data now.” It was Don Cesario. “Okay,” said Tilly. “Because this simstim is nothing but hugger-mugger amateur shit. I don’t think I can get much from this stuff.” “No problem,” said Don Cesario. “If necessary, you can view it again later.” “Thanks,” said Tilly, sarcasm dripping from his lips. “Taussig is on his way to your hotel. See you later.”

The doors of the Revlon Hampton Hotel opened and seventeen personages entered: Gretchen and Rita Dieter and their entourage, consisting of fourteen hugger-mugger types, and one female who wore a black skirt, with a black short-sleeved blouse, sandals, no jewelry or skin tint, which, throughout the String, was becoming more and more fashionable. She had good features, though her hair was a tangle. She was either extremely poised or vastly indifferent. Her name was Renata Wills. Gretchen took her along when she thought things might get nasty or might require a certain oblique kind of finesse. Frito Bandito Freedom Fighters was the tag of the fourteen hugger-muggers. They were gonzo renegade mercenaries, made up of pathic-squeezing rugmunchers and freak-patrol hell-on-wheels thugs, who specialized in rape, pillage, plunder, substance abuse, homocide and sadomasochism for a fee. Nameless blue-eyed willies, they’d do

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anything for anybody, if the price was right. Or, as Gretchen explained them to Rita, “Bad attitudes, unpleasant tempers, wrong-think.” “Then why do we need them?” said Rita, “Cuz we don’t have any time to waste on being fancy,” said Gretchen. The Revlon Hampton Hotel was the most elegant rendezvous in Seattle, according to some people. Others argued for the L’Oreal Hilton. The main foyer of the Hampton was enormous; it measure two hundred feet on a side, and a hundred feet to the ceiling. Golden light exuded from twelve aluminiferous chandeliers; a deep golden-brown carpet enriched with subtle patterns covered the floor. The walls were covered with silk of pale blue and yellow. Furnishings of an intricate antique style, solid yet graceful, were placed as if by happenstance, with cushions of rose or yellow satin, the analog woodwork lacquered a muted gold. On marble tables perched eight foot urns from which a profusion of flowers overflowed. Sumptuous to the max. Never before had the Dieter sisters, much less their fourteen Frito Banditos, entered a place so grand. They entered, threaded their way to the front desk, where the Frito Banditos immediately began pounding on the desk. Renata Wills looked this way and that, whether from interest, uneasiness, or a sense of suffocation, Gretchen didn’t know. Gretchen scowled at the Frito Banditos, shook her head in disgust. “E-goddamned-nuff!” she shouted. The Banditos froze. Whereupon Gretchen proceeded to solicit accommodations for her group. That being done, she led her staff into a nearby hotel bar, denominated Franz Ludwig’s by the logogrammatic. They entered, threaded their way to a table, and the Banditos immediately ordered

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beer. Franz Ludwig’s was crowded; voices, clatter and shuffle competed with light classical jazz. A long bar on a level somewhat higher than the main floor ran the width of the room. Men standing at the bar were silhouetted against the orange and green lights of the bar. At the tables of the main floor sat men and women of every age, race and social condition and degree of sobriety. Gretchen summoned a waitress and ordered champagne. “Is this where you expect to find that asshole, Tilly Shank?” said Rita. Gretchen just shook her head, put her forefinger to her lips, and poured her sister a glass of champagne. Sitting in the murmur, they drank champagne. A man walked over to the table. Gretchen studied the man. He had a slab-sided face, close-cropped yellow hair, a short neck as wide as his head. His body was stocky and muscular. His eyes were the color of bone. “Sit down. Join us for a drink. Ask your friend to join us as well,” said Gretchen, who this evening wore a navy velvet coat of stretch cotton, ruffle shirt with blue stripes by Etro, and bootleg jeans, the five pocket stretch denim ones from Piazza Sempione. She had been trying for a bad and tight look as she dressed, and had achieved it. The Banditos were dressed differently, but the same: either black or slate grey shadowstripe jackets, with ventless two-button styling, flap pockets. To a man, they all wore black double-reverse pleated trousers of Super 120s merino wool analog, double-besom pockets. For footwear most of the Banditos chose black DM Gore Boots, with thick soles. Gretchen had been very specific about their clothes, telling them “to look like gentlemen of leisure, not like fucking hugger-mugger badasses!”

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Sitting down across from Gretchen, the white-eyed man introduced himself. “Malden. Malden Prince,” he said. Gretchen nodded. “Have your friend join us,” she said. “No,” said Malden. “He’ll remain where he is. He prefers to keep an eye out.” “For what?” said Rita, who, having finished her champagne, reached for the bottle to pour another. “For whatever might take place,” said Malden Prince, his voice thick with enigma. “Covering your back, huh?” said Rita. Malden just looked at her. Rita met his gaze blandly. Then, looking at Gretchen, he said, “You made some inquiries about a Mr. Tilly Shank.” “Right,” said Gretchen. She pulled at her right earlobe. Renata Wills looked somberly down at her goblet. “You know where he is?” “Perhaps,” said Malden, placing both his hands on the table. “There was mention of a sum of money for such information.” “That’s correct,” said Gretchen. “But my Mama always said, ‘no tickee, no washee’. By which she meant to say, ‘no info, no dough’. So. You tell us what you know, and if it’s solid, we’ll pay you for your efforts.” Malden Prince smiled ruefully, whispered in a husky voice, “That’s what I thought you’d say. However,” he continued, sitting back, placing both hands out of sight under the table, “the information is very solid. Therefore, the way I see it, the price is negotiable.” Unbeknownst to anyone in the room, including his own partner, Brian Greene, Malden was what, in ISCA biz-talk, was termed a ‘deep diver’. That is, he was an ISCA Special Agent who had infiltrated the murky depths of the criminal underworld,

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completely cutting himself off from his ‘real’ former life. He’d had his irises tailored by a cosmetic surgeon on Red Mammoth. The white color provided an image both chaotic and quasi-psychotic, in his opinion. In his other incarnation, as he liked to think of it, he’d had two wives and fathered seven children. Discordant elements, all of them; he hated both his ex-wives and their progeny. They reciprocated in full measure. At the present moment in this incarnation, Malden was shacking up with a twenty-two year old mega-babe from Hamish. Her black skin excited him, as did her sexual proclivities: she liked it up the ass, the chocolate starfish. And Malden like giving it to her. When Brian told him that Gretchen Dieter was putting out feelers about some privateer named Tilly Shank, Malden’s interest had been piqued. Gretchen, he knew, was part of the Magico industrial complex. So he called in some favors, had a guy, who knew a guy, who knew a guy in DatElegant’s primary AI support department ramp into their Red Queen, hit a button marked ‘locate’, and bingo, there was Tilly Shank in one of the regal suites of the L’Oreal Hilton. After that, it had been easy. But things were getting complicated all of a sudden. Gretchen looked down at her champagne goblet, twisting the stem between her fingers…She came to a decision, made a fretful movement, tugged at her right earlobe once more. “This is tiresome. I don’t like to have to consult with my hired help.” At the two nearby tables, the Frito Banditos were quaffing beer, conversing loudly in biz-jargon and laughing, totally unaware of what their muscular mistress was doing. Malden Prince sat back even further, teeth glinting in contempt. His hands

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remained under the table. “Hired help?” Gretchen nodded to Renata Wills, rose from the table. “Come on, Rita,” she instructed her sister. “It’s time to go.” Malden Prince hunched his shoulders. As he did so, Renata Wills fired her Projac from underneath the table. It made a sound like a glass shattering on the floor. One synthetic plastic round, traveling slowly, six-hundred meters per second, entered Malden Prince’s lower stomach, where the plastic fibers expanded like a flower and halted abruptly just two centimeters from his spinal column. Malden Prince slumped forward onto the table, his hands reflexively clutching his stomach. Across the room, at the bar, his partner, Brian Greene raised a Winston High-Liter. Before he could discharge its eighteen rounds of Max Pack, somebody dropped another glass on the floor. Brian’s left eye disappeared as a second synthetic plastic round left Renata Will’s Projac. A fibrous plastic flower bloomed in Brian’s medulla oblongata. The force of the impact pushed his body back against the wood analog bar, where he stood staring at them like a cyclops. Jumping to their feet, the Frito Banditos magically produced Winston High-Liters. Arms outstretched, moving disjointedly, they searched in vain for something or someone to shoot. The other patrons of the bar either stood as if paralyzed, or dropped to the floor. A woman screamed. Gretchen and Rita were almost to the doors of the Franz Ludwig when the Banditos finally apprehended that nothing was doing. Winston High-Liters vanished and the Banditos followed their mistress out of the bar.

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Renata Wills sat calmly, finished her glass of champagne.

Big Daddy sat with Lexi and some short, skinny guy in Exo-Supplemental’s office. Glasses, which kept sliding down his nose, and an expensively cut white shirt were the two outstanding features of Don Cesario, who definitely did not fit Big Daddy’s preconceived image. “Lexi tells me that you’re looking for someone,” said Don Cesario, pushing at his glasses with his right pinky. “Yeah,” said Big Daddy. “Some cat goes by the name of Magico. Supposed to be here in Seattle.” “Mmmm,” said Don Cesario. “And what is the source of your information?” Big Daddy shifted in his chair. He was afraid that question might come up, and here it fucking was. What was he supposed to say? An abstract multi-hued fractal living in another dimension told me. Fuck that! “I’m afraid that’s confidential,” he said, trying to act professional. Even he didn’t believe it. “And the reason you want to find this Mr. Magico?” said Don Cesario, apparently accepting the ‘confidential’ camouflage. Big Daddy shifted once more. “Uh,” he said, “that’s kind of confidential, too. But it’s very important that I speak to him.” Glancing at Lexi, Don Cesario raised his eyebrows at her, then turned back to Big Daddy. “Well, then…why is it that you thought we here at Exo might be able to help you locate him?” “My agent, your agent on Judaic, Jennifer Gov, led me to understand that you might

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have access to that kind of information,” lied Big Daddy. “Yes,” said Don Cesario, a monosyllabic response devoid of conviction. “And what, precisely, is it that you do for this Jennifer Gov, on Judaic?” “I’m a pharmaceutical designer,” said Big Daddy, warming to his subject. “Superfly is mine. Hyer 2-CB is my latest creation. I’m not sure what it’s being called on the streets yet.” “Seventh heaven,” said Don Cesario, in a voice suggestive of deeper wisdom. “Really?” said Big Daddy, smiling like he was in seventh heaven. “You know it?” “Not from personal experience,” said Don Cesario. “But I know of it. It’s selling quite well, I hear.” Don Cesario didn’t doubt him. This sort of subterfuge could not be imagined. It was beyond anything the ISCA could come up with. “Cool,” said Big Daddy. “Jennifer Gov thought it would. She was very excited about its potential when I first gave it to her.” “I’m sure she did,” said Don Cesario, then changed the subject. “Why do you need to speak to Mr. Magico? Or is that confidential, too?” Then added, “You see, it’s difficult to know how to proceed, if I’m am ignorant of what you need.” Big Daddy knew how to add two plus two, did so, and realized that the skinny guy had just tacitly admitted that he knew Magico, or had access to him. “You know him, then?” said Big Daddy. “Put it this way,” said Don Cesario, “I’ve heard of him. And Exo does business with many, many diverse people and companies.” All the easy intimacy left his voice. “That being said, I return to my original question: why do you need to speak to him?” Big Daddy intuitively noted the change. Glancing at Lexi for some kind of

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reassurance, he noted her staring at her red Stallion boots. Sighing to himself, he took the plunge. “It’s about the Nastic chicky he hangs out with.” A strange expression came over Don Cesario’s thin face, as if he went from very interested to uniquely earnest in the blink of an eye. His voice took on a sudden resonance. “Where did you get that information?” “From the individuals who sent me to find Magico, and her,” said Big Daddy. He’d almost said ’people’ who sent me, but even he knew that was incongruous. “And who might they be?” “I really can’t say,” said Big Daddy, beginning to feel a kind of insane exhiliration. “Can’t or won’t?” “Can’t. I mean, I really, really, really can’t say.” And he couldn’t. He didn’t know what the hell they were. Don Cesario looked at him through lenses that had slid to the end of his nose, his head tilted back at a funny angle. Then turning to Lexi, he said, “Would you excuse me, Lexi? And see to it that Emil is comfortable in your office? I need a moment to consider certain ramifications.” “Sure,” said Lexi, rising as did Big Daddy. As soon as they left, Don Cesario picked up his phone, said three words, “Get me Taussig.”

Gray drizzle drooped down from gray skies onto a gray city. Tilly glimpsed neon suffused buildings through the screens of the Scion limo. They passed over vast rotating advert-matrices, billions of digital pixels mutated

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into L’Oreal products, the L’Oreal logo. Tilly felt a juvenile fascination, as though the sensory stimulation was fresh and new, just for him. His own private light show, courtesy of L’Oreal. “Fucking L’Oreal just about owns the city,” said Taussig. He was dressed in all black, which made him look smaller, but not much. Black Bellagio jacket composed of some analog fabric, black double-pleated pants, cuffed. He wore a raised-twill dress shirt, 100s 2-ply cotton, black. Tilly thought it looked kind of semi-religious because the Bellagio jacket was cut six inches longer than was the style. “They do?” “Yeah, buying up buildings and property as fast as they can. Like Revlon on Red Mammoth. They should just change the name to planet Revlon. It’s some kind of acquisition syndrome. Like a disease.” “Where we going?” “Kirkland.” “Where?” “You’ll see when we get there.” A yellow light appeared on the console in front of Taussig. He reached out and touched a button. By the contemplative angle of his head, Tilly guessed that he was listening to someone on his ear receptor. Touching the mole-sized metal decal on his throat, Taussig spoke, “Where’d you say this designer is from?” Tilly felt disconcerted, the way he always did when someone appeared to be speaking to him, but wasn’t, one of the curious inscrutabilities of technology. Taussig said, “And he knows about her?” From the devout look on his face, he was

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obviously extremely interested in what the other party was relating to him. “Okay, then,” said Taussig after about thirty seconds, “bring him around. But don’t divulge anything yet.” Again, he reached out and touched the button. Tilly looked at the back of the driver’s hairless head, wondering about the glut of baldheadedness surrounding him, about its semiotic implications. A mere fashion, or something more? What kind of anthropocentric statement were they trying to evoke? In a sense, it was a random and contradictory symbol, as if they were in constant camouflage. At once ascetic and austere to an astonishing degree, it produced in him, on some basic level, a remote nuance of uneasiness, established a type of artificial tension. “How long have you worked for Exo-Supplemental?” “Ten years.” Tilly thought of his conversation with Don Cesario and the Centennial Institute. Prevariacation. “Where’d you say we’re going?” “We’re almost there now.” The Scion limo began to descend. It entered an area of gathered buildings that were shabby looking in the gray light. The limo settled down. “Kirkland-by-the-water,” said Taussig. “We’ll be a while,” he said to the driver, who simply shrugged in a non-commital way. Taussig released the door and got out with a gracefulness that belied his size. Tilly slid across the black leather analog seat, followed him out. “I’d envisioned something more elaborate,” he said to Taussig. “Sorry to disappoint, but this is it,” Taussig said. The building was three stories, cinderblock painted white, a red and white sign

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above the doorway that read, ‘Schemper’s Semi-permanent Durables’. It opened into an ocean of nick-nacks and you-need-it-we-got-it kind of stuff: handles, bolts, nuts, tools. The ceiling was unfinished, a lattice work of pipes and gray plastic conduits. Tilly followed Taussig down a central aisle. People, some in red shirts, stood along the aisles. Tilly took them for employees, a kind of crimson caparisoned vending power. No one seemed to notice them. It was like they were invisible. Another anomalous event, which, thought Tilly, is only one more bad sign. Occasionally, though, as in this instance, exceptions do occur -- which merely served to create the illusion of the unexpected. Tilly was an amateur philospher. His entire life, he had spent his entire life formulating a philosophy of life. He had passed through standing, where, one readily admits that every moment vanishes forever; to prone, where, each obvious point seems inadmissible, so much so that he longed never to rise again. From thence to Progress and the Eternal Return: two meaningless concepts. What remains? Resignation to becoming, to surprises that are not surprises, to calamities that pretend to be uncommon, but in reality are not. At the present juncture, his primary tenet was, when asked, what is the meaing of life? His answer was: blow jobs. The meaning of life was blow jobs. It was a good as anything else he had come across. Taussig kept walking. Tilly followed. They ascended a series of steps to the second level, this one displaying pipe, steel membranes of every angle and confuguration, like mutated sieves. Entering a kind of storage room, they traversed rows of corrugated boxes, stacked

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to the ceiling. Taussig had his hands tucked into the pockets of his black elongated, quasi-epicene, quasi-religious-too-long black blazer. Through another doorway into a room of oriental rugs, hung from hangars, an abbatoir of floor coverings. Totally surreal, like walking into Carpet Land Hell. Taussig pushing aside a large brown and white rug, with some sort of blue stick figures on it. Tilly tilted his head, entering. “Fucking-A, Taussig. We’ve been waiting for a goddamned hour,” someone said. “We are too fucking busy for this shit.” Taussig released the rug behind him, letting it swing wildly to and fro. “I had to go to the L’Oreal Hilton.” The room, walled off in gray cinderblock on three sides, was big but crowded. A maze of hardware was present: a group of green consoles and monitors piggybacked to one another in an ocean of packing forms, plastic, and shock proof bubble pack. Two women and a man. It was one of the women who had spoken. As Tilly moved forward through the packing materials, the bits and pieces creaked and squealed, as if speaking some archaic language. Taussig kicked at it. “Shit! You ever heard of trash bins?” “We’re not union,” one of the women said. She sounded to Tilly as if she was from Judaic or the Bight of Leo. She highlighted her liquids in a distinctive manner. She had long red hair hanging free to her shoulders, and something about her reminded him of the icebergs who simulated females on the Bight. Like the other two, she wore Bogner denim jeans and an erde-colored Partenkirchen suede analog jacket. “Goddamned short notice,” she said. “As in no fucking notice,” the other female said, and she was definitely from the

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Bight of Leo. Her hair was blonde, pulled sloppily back, fixed with some kind of doodad in a ponytail. “You’re paid goddamned well, too,” said Taussig. “Not enough for this shit,” the redhead said. “Well, let’s just hope you’ve got it working,” said Taussig drolly. Tilly looked at a portable table set against the far wall. It was the same forest green as the consoles and monitors. Color-coded cables ran everywhere. Tilly walked toward the table, pushing through the packaging, like wading through the surf. “Fire it up,” he said. “Let’s see what we can see.”

Big Daddy had slipped. He was in his secret place, the other dimension, the other half of the universe. It was a valley lined with red fractals, punctuated with with green ribbons of mathematical equations and pink falling snow. Naked waifs posed like statues on trembling tile liquefied poles. A liquid crystal compass floated by. The time of the prophets. “Zap?” “Someone seeks you.” Zap 210 in his glistening fractals, and what looked like a white t-shirt. A collage of fragments, tearing and tearing again, forming and re-forming. Aquamarine eyes, flat cheekbones, a dusting of twinkling stars, his flat young-old face wavering like smoke. He never came completely into focus. “Who?” “Someone who flies too close to the sun. Someone with resources. Someone who

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knows you are where you are.” The valley whispered from blue to coppery bronze. “Have you found her?” “No,” said Big Daddy, then remembered the meeting with Don Cesario. “But I have found someone who knows of her.” “Where are you now?” “In my hotel in Seattle.” Zap 210’s eyes flickered from aquamarine to black crystals, like a black hole. “Who else have you talked to?” “No one.” “No other being like you?” “A woman on the ship from Judaic.” Zap 210 flexed his fractal hands and a waif left her pole and hovered above him. It descended, wrapping itself around him, like contained light around a magnetic field. Zap 210 stroked it with umbral fingers of yellow. The patterns changed from falling liquid to horizontal blisterings. Tapping it, the waif vanished, its molecules dividing and moving away from a central node. “A curious analogue exists.” “What?” “Someone shimmers around you, asking tumultuous questions. Tautological epitaphs were uttered.” “What?” “Threats designed to elicit your whereabouts.” Big Daddy thought about Mattie and Vance. Zap 210 took what looked like a lightning bolt from his undulating body, perched

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on a passing brown cloud of flowing numbers. Thumbing the bolt, an arc of forest green linear light particles shot forth. “Amicability is sternly tested,” he said. “Yes,” agreed Big Daddy. He didn’t know what else to say. “Who seeks you?” “I don’t know…” “That explanation is remotely conceivable,” pronounced Zap 210, his tone of voice making no pretense of stoic resignation. “If someone had my voucher cipher, or access to Deltunited’s databanks, they could trace it back,” said Big Daddy. Then after a moment’s thought added, “Perhaps.” “Intrinsically,” intoned Zap 210, mutating into speckles shaped like tree stars, a rainbow of twinkling coruscations. “Tainted by untruth, illicitness.” Big Daddy felt proud of himself. He was actually beginning to understand the linguistic configurations of Zap 210’s speech. “From there, they, whoever they are, could trace me to my hotel.” “Utmost folly,” zapped Zap 210. “There is inside DatElegant’s rhizome cube. Business of transcendent resources.” “Mattie was on the ship, next to me,” said Big Daddy. “I helped her with her bag and she gave me a ride into Seattle….” Zap 210 looked tarnished, a kind of rusty scintilla. “Parochial undertakings. Inform me of this female creature.” “She was in front of me as we passed through a security checkpoint on Judaic. And she did this strange thing with her left hand, her cipher code…” Big Daddy began the tale, as Zap 210 expanded and contracted from twelve feet tall to half an inch in height.

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“Where is your vaunted gallantry now?” Zap 210 said, as Big Daddy finished his tale. “What?” Big Daddy was lost in semantic wasteland, again. Zap 210 gazed at him with eyes peeling like oranges, quarter slices dropping away to reveal greenish zagging nothingness. “Errata. To motivate the bag. Contraband.” “Oh, shit,” whipered Big Daddy to himself. Something dropped out of his stomach, leaving it empty and cold, and accompanying it was the memory of something in his bag that he hadn’t recognized. When he’d fished out the t-shirt to dry his hands in the bathroom. “Interrogation?” said Zap 210. “I need to see about something,” said Big Daddy, worry and haste in his voice. “I’ll slip again when I know more.” Touching his shunt, histamine shot into his limbic system. “Bye.” He was back in his suite at the L’Oreal Hilton.

“We didn’t have time to set this up and test it,” said the redhead, handing Tilly a pair of vizor-looking sunglasses. He was sitting on a chair in front of the rhizome cube. “So I’m not sure if it’s going to work or not.” “Okay,” said Tilly, putting on the sunglasses. “Let’s give a whirl.”

In the days following Tanya Roos’ death, Tilly had used Binary, who had used DatElegant’s databanks, to reaccess her data. The data was still there, but in some strange

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sense, it was lifeless, just like Tanya. Tilly realized that after someone dies, it’s as if they never existed in the first place. Except for the data, of course.

He touched a button on the sunglasses and watched as the interior of a house or apartment appeared. He walked through the residence, large rooms, expensive furnishings, but Spartan in some sense, like there wasn’t enough furniture. Too much open space. Touching another button on the sunglasses, he tried an oblique angle. Then infra-red filters, then gamma filters, then mozine filters. Nothing. It was like looking at Tanya Roos’ data subsequent to her death. Lifeless data, like the guy didn’t exist anymore. There was nothing for his sixth sense to fix upon, no people.

“There’s nobody home,” Tilly said, removing the sunglasses. Taussig looked at him sourly, sat down on a chair like a black draped titan. The three others, the two women and the man, looked confused. “What do you mean, there’s nobody home?” Taussig inquired. “I mean, there’s no one there. Something or someone is sifting out all anthropomorphic forms. I can’t see anyone,” said Tilly. “The fuck?” declared Taussig. “Okay,” said Tilly, patiently. “Where is this place?” Taussig looked prickly. “It’s his suite.” “Where’s that?” “The same as yours, the L’Oreal Hilton.” Taussig glanced at the other three Exo employees.

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“In Seattle? He’s here in Seattle?” “You three,” Taussig said, “get out of here.” The blonde chicky shrugged, bobbing her pony tail, and walked toward the doorway, the other two following her. As the oriental rug dropped behind them, Taussig rose from his chair. “What the hell is going on?” “I’m trying to tell you. This isn’t going to work. Someone has sorted and sifted all the human parameters. He’s not there.” “Of couse he’s there,” said Taussig. “I left him there this morning, with the Nastic bitch.” “Well, he’s invisible. I can’t see him. He isn’t there. If I can’t see him, see him move and talk and walk, I can’t use my sixth sense. There’s no focus point.” “Who is cleaning the visual input?” asked Taussig, looking befuddled. Tilly set the sunglasses down on the table. “I don’t know. You’re the baby-sitter.” “Fuck!” whispered Taussig. He bit over his lower lip and left his teeth there, thinking. “Someone’s superseding the visual,” said Tilly. “And that takes some pretty sophisticated equipment.” The lower lip emerged, teeth marks under it. “Yeah,” said Taussig; his voice sounded mean, fat with anticipation. “I need to meet him.” Taussig rubbed the back of his thick neck with both hands. “If you meet him, see him, do you think your sixth sense can pick up what’s going on?” “Maybe,” said Tilly. “It’s worth a shot.” “Goddamnit!” said Taussig, striding over to the brown and white rug he pushed it

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aside, snarled something to the three waiting in the adjoining room. Turning to Tilly, he said, “It’s got something to do with that Nastic bitch, I’ll bet on it.” The redhead poked her head in, using both arms to hold back the rug. “Get this shit out of here,” Taussig told her, waving his arm at the rhizome cube. “Okey dokey,” she said. There was an I-told-you-so sing-song buried in her tone.

Gretchen Dieter sat on the end of her bed in her suite at the Revlon Hampton. The suite was already strong with the feel of Gretchen’s habitancy: the odor of her perfume, O’Delay, together with an aura more subtle than odor, of palpable energy, magnificent physical strength. Her suite had four rooms, encompassing the usual functions. The ceiling of the bedroom was scrolled plaster, painted a pale pink. The floor was covered by a carpet of reddish-salmon fiber, the walls were a checkerboard of maroon and dark brown tiles. At the far end of the bedroom rested a heavy chair. The wall over it was hung with dozens of photographs. Gretchen and/or Rita with various celebrities. She’d changed clothes. A Brigitte sweater, color dipped cashmere analog, a single ply gauze, in a rampant violet shade, cambered over her large breasts, descended tightly to her waist. Stretch gabardine dress trousers in black snugged at her long, graft-job hypertrophied legs. Around her neck, a triple strand necklace of 4mm freshwater pearls with a sterling silver clasp. On her feet, black Holak low boots, the lace up style. “Now then,” she said to her sister, Rita, who sat ten feet away on a salmon pink couch, “we need to find out where this cat, Tilly Shank, is, and fast.” Rita was all in white, doing her nails with white Revlon laminar polish which had

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been happily provided by the management of the Revlon Hampton. It would appear on the bill, of course. Nothing was free at the Revlon Hampton, although they tried their best to make you think otherwise. “And how do we do that?” asked Rita, blowing on her pinkie nail. Gretchen leaned forward, reached for the pearl white plastic phone. “Well, for starters,” she said, “we call Mr. Roger Candide and see what he can tell us.” “The ISCA dude?” Rita held her right hand out at arm’s length, trying to gain a true perspective on her nails. “Do you know of any other Roger Candide?” said Gretchen, rolling her eyeballs to herself. Jesus, Rita was dumb. “No,” said Rita, dabbing at her pinkie with the brush. She’d missed a spot. “Shit,” she said. “Now I’ll have to do it over.” She reached for the polish remover. Gretchen spoke into the phone, slid a filament along the port, waited. “Roger? Yeah, it’s me. Look, we need some help here. We’re having trouble locating our man.” In his office at the ISCA complex on Judaic, Roger Candide cursed to himself. It was that muscle-bound bitch, Gretchen Dieter. And that meant that her sister was there, too. Gretchen was impetuous, had never even heard of the word tact, and the other one, Rita, caused him to wonder as to the validity of Darwin’s theory of convergent evolution. Both of them provided certain service for Magico. Roger knew that. Just what those services were was unclear to him. Taking a deep breath, as if he was diving into a pool of water, Roger plunged in. Information was what he was paid for. And paid very well, for that matter. One bright sunny day, five years earlier, Roger Candide had decided to go solo.

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His motivation? Covetousness. He coveted all the material things that he saw everyday, things other people had, but he didn’t. All for lack of the requisite wealth necessary to purchase such things. So he decided to do something about it. Putting out very delicate feelers, he soon found himself employed, in a part-time capacity, by Exo-Supplemental Exports. The rest was history. Each month, a large amount of money was deposited in an account on Rigel 2. The account was at the Detteras Bank and was registered to Alfredo Garcia. An ophthalmic print and a cipher code accessed the account. Both precisely corresponded to those of Roger Candide. Alfredo Garcia was Roger’s alias. He’d selected it himself. Took it from a 20th century film, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, featuring Warren Oates in his only starring role. Roger was a movie-buff and preferred the old, old classics, not that simstim shit that was presently suffocating the Elegant String. “Gretchen,” said Roger, “how nice to hear from you again. And so soon. By the way, I’m assuming that wherever you are, you’re signal is encrypted?” “I’m at the Revlon Hampton in Seattle, and I don’t give a shit about encryption,” Gretchen said. “What I give a shit about, Roger, is finding Tilly Shank. Have you got any information on where he might be? We know he‘s here in Seattle.” Roger sighed to himself. “Give me a moment, and I’ll ramp into our AI cube and find out.” Turning to his cube, he entered his password, entered Seattle, then entered Tilly Shank, hit acquire, and sat back in his chair. In the basement of the ISCA complex, her cellulose arteries ensconced in three thousand liters of translucent cryogenic fluid, which was in turn ensconced in a mylar

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hexagon reservoir, Rhonda, the ISCA’s AI rhizome cube, parsed ten billion gigabytes of data in three nanoseconds. Precisely thirteen seconds later, the information appeared on Roger Candide’s monitor. The thirteen second delay was the result of certain bioelectrical shields, composed of impulse transcription proteins, which utilized bioelectrical DNA sequences, known as CpG islands, to probe strings of coded data as they passed through an aperiodic crystal, four atoms wide. A data protection device, which precluded the dissemination of sensitive data to just anyone, like hackers or cowboys surfing the tranches of multi-dimensional cyberspace. “Gretchen?” Roger said. “You still there?” “Where else?” snarled Gretchen into the phone. “Mr. Shank is a registered guest at the L’Oreal Hilton. Room 222, level three,” said Roger. Gretchen was impressed. “Just like that, huh?” “Just like that,” said Roger, a note of pride in his voice. “Damn!” said Gretchen, hanging up. No thanks, no bye, no nothing, thought Roger.

Gretchen looked at Rita, who was applying polish to her right thumbnail. “Right!” announced Gretchen. “We got him. Get the Frito badasses, tell ’em to come weighed down. And tell Renata. It’s time to go get a refund.” “I’m almost done here,” said Rita, examining her nails minutely. “Give me just a few more minutes.”

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“Fucking now!” roared Gretchen at her sister. “Your nails can wait.” “No, they can’t!” Rita screeched. “Jesus, Gretchen! I can’t go out with only one hand done. I won’t match and I’ll feel all catawampus.” “Rita,” said Gretchen in measured tones, “now.” “Fuck!” yelped Rita, rising from the salmon colored couch, flapping her right hand. Glancing in one of the many full-length mirrors in her swank suite, Gretchen concluded that rampant violet wasn’t going to cut it. She needed something with a direct, aggressive semiotic. She’d have to change. Going the closet, she touched a button, waited as the doors hissed slowly open. Slipping out of her clothes, she stood naked in front of the mirrored interior wall of the closet. Purified molecular woman gazed back at her, reflecting the product of anabolic agents, cloned muscle grafts, and IGF-10, a synthetic hybridome growth hormone developed by MOAM Corporation on the planet Hamish. Initially, IGF-10 had been tested under controlled conditions on carefully selected pregnant females. The results had been astounding. Subsequently, 99.9% of all female Hamites were introduced to the hormone upon conception, however, only when the blasticis had been identified as male by invasive protocols. MOAM Corporation and its male dominated, misogynistic hierarchical structure did not want to forge a race of Amazons. Gretchen looked like a black version of Michaelangelo’s David, with 40-D cup breasts and no phallus. Rika jacket of walnut brown with bone buttons; Jenna stretch pants in a gray/brown color by Gunex; black jicky shirt with standard cuffs, and plaid wellie knee boots completed the ensemble.

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Gretchen turned around, spinning her head as she did, to get the overall effect. Not bad, she thought. Aggressive subtlety with a hint of the great outdoors-look. At the last second, she added a dark brown nappa hat, for chicness. Out in the hall she found the Frito Banditos, waiting patiently, for once. Probably, because they thought they might finally get to piss on somebody. Rita was standing nearby, whining about her nails to Renata Wills, who looked ready to hit the ski slopes: Isabella fleece jacket, 200 weight, with 2-way zip, in a color that Marker, the maker, called bluebell. A yellow and rose colored t-shirt, with multicolor rhinestone design, underneath the jacket. A-pocket stretch denim jeans in Niagara wash. Blue/violet/lime scarf around her neck, and faux fur trimmed denin moon boots, by Tecnica, on her feet. The Banditos, to a man, wore black/gray rope-stripe three button jackets in Super 100s wool analog, with matching trousers. Horizontal stripe 80s 2-ply linen shirts with horizontal stripes. They looked thick through the chest area, which indicated they were weighed down with shoulder holsters and High-Liters. Four of them carried large, heavy valises, which Gretchen assumed, correctly so, contained volatile destructive devices of mayhem and murder. “Okay,” said Gretchen. “Here’s the scenario. L’Oreal Hilton, third level, room 222. That’s his room. We’ll take three hover cabs. When we get there, everybody stay out front. Renata goes in first. Then three groups of five, thirty seconds apart.” She looked around at the listening faces. “Any questions?” Silence. “Okay. Once we’re inside, make for the third level, room 222. Hold until we’re all there, except for Renata. She’ll do her own thing. Once everybody’s there, we’ll do the

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door, go in, get our refund and leave.” She looked around once more. No one had any questions, apparently. “Okay. Let’s go,” she said, turning to walk. She stopped, pivoted, looked at the Frito Banditos. “By the way,” she said, rolling her eyes up, tilting her chin down, as if peering over the top of a pair of glasses, “I’m assuming someone had the foresight to bring something for the door.” “TELL-Atomics cushioned imploder, Model 2829,” said one of the Fritos, holding up a five inch by five inch plastic case. Gretchen nodded.

Something square, soft on the outside but firm on the inside, as Big Daddy pulled it out. Wrapped in green and red vacu-seal. Heavy. Thick. “Hi.” Big Daddy nearly falling backward, where he had kneeled above the open bag, at the voice and the sight of Lexi, who just for a second he took to be his mother, porcupined hair and all. “Jesus,” exhaled Big Daddy. “You scared the shit out of me.” “Sorry. But remember? I did ask if I could stop by. And you did give me your filament.” She wore a dark, tight body sock, vaguely antagonistic. White cargo pants with horizontal red stripes underneath, on her legs. Rubbery looking red canoe-shoes on her feet. “I brought something to drink,” indicating a bottle and two glasses. “Is Don Cesario here?” Big Daddy pushed the package back down into his bag.

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“Of course not,” Lexi said, looking at him strangley. “Why would he be?” “No reason,” Big Daddy said, “I just wondered.” He shrugged, to himself more than to Lexi. He felt bungling, the way he always did around young, goodlooking females that he wanted to impress. He knew, intellectually, that Don Cesario had instructed her to keep an eye on him, invite herself over to his suite; yet, somewhere else, in some other part of his human tissue, he wanted to believe that she was there because she liked him. It was, Big Daddy apprehended, the Warren Harding Error: take one look at someone, jump to a conclusion, and stop thinking. He’d taken one look at Lexi’s tough little tits and her tight little ass, concluded that he wanted her, and that therefore she must want him, too, and switched off both the right and left lobes of his brain. Total irrationality. She set the glasses on a small round table, poured some of the brownish liquid from the bottle. “You want one?” “No,” Big Daddy said. “I drink coffee or purified water only.” “Oh,” said Lexi, staring at him like he’d announced he was the archangel Gabriel, just back from visiting the third heaven. “Why are you interested in this woman, what’d you call her?” “A Nastic.” “Yeah. Why are you interested in her?” She took a sip from her glass. “Well…” Big Daddy said slowly, trying to come up with some plausible fib or other. “Is it because Magico’s going to marry her?” Big Daddy froze. “What? Who told you that?”

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“Don Cesario,” Lexi said. “He tells me everything, ’cuz he thinks he’s in love with me. He’s pretty harmless, really.” “Magico’s going to marry a Nastic?” Big Daddy forced himself to focus. He’d wanted to say, I’m in love with you, too. But he didn’t. “That’s what Don Cesario says. And it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t think much of the idea. I can tell from the way he acts all testy and grumpy when he talks about it.” She had walked over to a light tan hutch, as she spoke, touched a button and watched as coffee magically streamed into a cup. She carried the cup over to Big Daddy, who now sat on a plush forest green couch, his Apple Valence cube in his lap. The coffee was strong, sugary, thickly creamed. Lexi sat down next to him, moved a throw-pillow behind her back. She smelled faintly of musk, of soap, and of alcohol. This close, she seemed very real, very desirable. The thought made Big Daddy’s face twitch with embarrassment. “I like this very much,” she said. For an instant, Big Daddy thought she meant being with him, sitting close. Then he realized she was touching his cube. “How do you turn it on?” She gestured toward the cub with her glass. Big Daddy said, “Venture forth.” Worms and dots of pastel neon suffused the face of the cube, undulating and pulsing. “It’s voice activated,” he explained. Then added, “It’s a quote from Robert Heinlein.” Lexi just looked at him. Big Daddy realized she didn’t have a clue who Robert Heinlein was. And probably didn’t care. “Why would Magico marry a Nastic?” said Big Daddy. Lexi raised her eyebrows. “That I don’t know. But I can guess. He’s probably in

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love with her.” “Where is Don Cesario?” Lexi shrugged. “Wherever it is he lives, I guess.” Big Daddy thought of Zap 210, then of someone wanting to know his whereabouts. Don Cesario? No, he knew where he was. But there was still whatever it was, in his bag. He remembered Mattie and Vance. Zap 210 was probably right. “You ever heard of YIK-YAK Studios?” “No.” She took a drink of her brownish alcohol, which was, Big Daddy had decided, probably Bight whiskey. The most popular beverage of the Elegant String. Mostly due to savvy marketing, and a ’sticky’ ditty: “When you want a real drink, one with bite to it, think of the Bight. Bight Whiskey, that is.” “Supposedly,” said Big Daddy, “there’s a club by the same name. Ever heard of it?” Lexi looked at him, shook her head. Big Daddy held her gaze. “I want to visit this club, YIK-YAK. Except I don’t know where it is.” “So?” “How about you going with me?” said Big Daddy, turning red. He wasn’t asking her out, but it felt like it. He felt like he had a fever. “No,” said Lexi. “I don’t party much.” Big Daddy’s Apple Valence cube could find the address and provide directions, if it was listed, but Big Daddy had decided he didn’t want to go solo. Better to go with Lexi than alone. Mostly, though, he just wanted to get out of here. Zap 210’s warning had

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spooked him. Somebody knew he was here. And what about that thing in his bag? “Look,” said Big Daddy, “Please go with me. I don’t want to be alone right now.” Lexi’s face softened. Taking a long sip from her glass, she studied him over its rim. Setting it down with a thunk, she said, “Okay.”

“Have you always lived here?” Big Daddy asked as they stood out front of the L’Oreal Hilton, waiting for an FL hover cab. “In Seattle, I mean?” Lexi gave a little shrug. Big Daddy wondered if she was embarrassed to be seen with him. She had on a black ankle length Rixon, cut just right. It gave her a cloistered semiotic. “No,” she said. “I’m from the Bight.” “Yeah? What’s that like? I’ve never been there.” Hell, thought Big Daddy, I’ve hardly been anywhere. “It’s like…well, it’s not like this,” said Lexi, tossing her head at the planet, the sky, at everything. “Maybe I’ll visit it someday.” Lexi didn’t say anything. Big Daddy thought about what he’d found when he’d opened his bag. Flat, a little ovid, a greenish-colored mylar. But it didn’t feel like mylar, more like some fictile metal. It had no visible seams or opening mechanism. Nothing moved inside it when he shook it. Lexi had been in the bathroom when he’d taken it out. He’d looked around the room for some cubby hole to conceal it. No dice. Finally he’d put it in his cube case, hearing her opening the door of the bathroom. Which was where it was now, slung over his shoulder, as they entered the hover cab.

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Which was probably really, really stupid, he echoed to himself. But he didn’t know what else to do with it. He used his credit filament to pay for the hover cab.

There was a soft from Binary waiting for Tilly when Taussig delivered him to the L’Oreal Hilton. It was a multi-hued flexible lozenge that had the L’Oreal logo impressed on it. The logo was a tripartite colored wave, red/white/ blue, but not really; for the colors were pastel. But Tilly thought of them as red/white/blue because he liked to keep things simple. And maybe it wasn’t a wave, but whatever it was, the hotel’s aesthetic designers were enthralled with it. It composed a redundant motif in the lobby area, and Tilly was grateful that it hadn’t made its way to the guest suites. Plugging it into his cube, he read it. It was addressed to Monsieur Hillary Shank: They know where you are. They have a source inside the ISCA. I circumvented their data shields, an aperiodic crystal -- can you believe it? How archaic! Their AI cube, Rhonda, was very hospitable and forthcoming. Watch out. There was a little basket on his bed, sitting on a white doiley. Inside it, arranged in pattern, were chocolates individually wrapped in foil embossed with the L’Oreal wave. Opening the closet doors he found his clothes on hangars. They’d been laundered and pressed. Looking over at his cube, he imagined someone, whoever ‘they’ were, headed right for him -- thinking of him. The simstim screen behind him came on with a soft musical chord and he dropped to one knee, pivoting and reaching for his valise with his High Liter in it. Realization hit

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him and his heart slowed from an adrenalized 175 beats per minute to 110. Don Cesario’s next recording. He was about ten minutes into it when another musical chord sounded. The door to his suite. Magico was strolling through some park or other somewhere, wearing white cotton shorts and jackboots. He was humming something as he walked, some funny sounding melody, over and over again. His bare chest was chiseled with muscle and covered in sweat. There was a tatoo of the Worm Ouroboros on his left pectoral. Tilly had a sneaking suspicion that the tatoo spoke volumes. The chord sounded again. Getting up, he crossed to the door, High Liter in his right hand. Pressing a button, he said, “Yeah?” Touching another button, he looked back at the simstim screen, which shifted to the hallway outside his room. A red haired woman. Bangs. One of the women from the rug room. Another button and the door slid open. “Don Cesario thinks we should talk,” she said. Tilly noted her clothing. Blue frost colored Marion coat, silk crinkle shirt, boot-cut denim jeans by Seven, one of the more popular women’s clothiers; suave brown Stallion boots. Holding up the jeans, a leather analog Swarovski belt, with crystals and a Bight silver buckle. “Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” He stepped back to allow her in. “I wish.” The door slid shut behind her. “The Magico machine never sleeps.” She glanced at the simstim screen, where Magico was still strolling along. “Spying?” “Don Cesario.” “Lucinda Williams,” she said, taking a filament from her pocket and handing it to

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him. Her name on it, then two access numbers and two addresses, both to sachet numbers. “Do you have a filament, Mr. Shank?” “Tilly. No, I don’t.” “You can get one from the hotel. Everyone has a filament here.” Tilly put the filament in his pocket. “Taussig didn’t give me one. Neither did Don Cesario.” “Outside the Magico machine, I mean. It’s like not having clothes on.” “I have clothes,” Tilly said, indicating the closet. “Do you want to watch the simstim with me?” “No.” “I don’t know how to turn it off. Besides, they’ll probably know if I do.” “Turn the volume down, manually.” Crossing to the console, she did. “A technophile,” Tilly said. “That’s the kind of woman I like.” “A woman with all the latest technology that didn’t appear to do much for you.” She sat down in one of the plush chairs, crossed her legs a la femme. Tilly sat down in another chair. “It wasn’t your fault. Somebody filtered it.” “Don Cesario told me what you supposed to be able to do,” she said. “I don’t believe it.” Tilly stared at her. “That’s not my problem.” There were dragonflies engraved on her boots. Green, white and black dragonflies. “They’re custom made for me,” she said, noting his examination. Tilly looked up. “I hope you’re not going to ask me what I do or why people pay me to do it,” he said. “Because it’s hard to explain.”

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“Not likely,” she said. “I’m just the help. But what I’m supposed to do, right now, is find out what we can give you that will allow you to do whatever it is you allegedly do.” Tilly glanced at the screen. Magico was in an office somewhere, seated in a big chair. “Is he seriously as dangerous as he presents himself to be?” “You haven’t met him, have you?” “No.” “I’m not sure what he’s serious about, but I know this: never underestimate him.” “Rumor has it that he’s a real Demon Prince, some kind of mythological entity. But how can he be? He’d have to be about five hundred years old.” “I don’t know about that stuff. But if there’s one thing Magico is serious about…” “Yeah?” “It’s Magico.” Tilly stared glumly at the simstim screen as Magico seated in the office was replaced by a close up of Magico’s hands, throwing knives at a target. “Don Cesario told me the story about the girl, the one who got killed. About what you did,” Lucinda Williams said. “He didn’t finish it, though.” Tilly closed his eyes. “What happened after you purged Vegas Lohan and the Micromics vip? And did anybody tell you that Vegas Lohan was one of Magico’s?” Lucinda Williams was staring at him. “No,” Tilly said. “Binary did.” He could see Binary’s soft, sitting next to his cube. “What happened then? What did you do?”

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“I didn’t know what to do. So I took a vacation. I sat out by the ocean a lot. It was pleasant, actually. I didn’t have to think about anything in particular. Know what I mean?” “Maybe,” she said. “Later on, after a couple of other jobs, I heard about this job from Binary, who is tapped into everything in about ten dimensions.” She slowly shook her head. “What?” he said. “Nothing,” she said. “None of it makes much sense. Which means you’ll probably fit right in.” “In what?” She shook her head again. “Let’s go get something to drink. I’ll tell you what I know.” “Okay,” said Tilly, shrugging. “If that’s what you want to do.” She got up. “They’re paying me to do it. Besides, I can always sleep later.”

Big Daddy and Lexi sat in the back of the FL hover cab. In front of them, an advert matrix depicted a slender young woman dressed in an S & M outfit, her breasts contained in open-ended funnels, the nipples and aureolae popping bloatedly out of the apertures. Her exposed pubis had a silver chain dangling from it. Big Daddy couldn’t tell what it was attached to. The wet-dream S & M babe was oiled up, so that the exposed portions of her flesh had a sheen to them. A cascade of pixels rained down to the bottom of the matrix, forming the words: The Bondage Club, where friends can tie one on. Lexi took a three inch square of yellow plastic no thicker than a quarter inch from

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her purse. She moved her hand deliberately over it, beaded lines of colored light appearing as she did. Big Daddy recognized it as a cube retriever, a small portable gate to some rhizome cube somewhere. She studied the gel-screen, touched it, and frowned at the result. “Somebody’s trying to find you,” she said. “Who?” “I don’t know. It doesn’t say.” Big Daddy shivered, a tingling sensation that started at his lower back and ascended up his spine to his neck. Like someone had just stepped over his grave, his mother would say. Antimetaphysical propaganda from the tomb. “Tell me how you became a drug designer,” Lexi said, putting the yellow plastic retriever into her purse. “It started when I was in school,” said Big Daddy, glad to change the subject. “I was always pretty good at mathematics and science. In fact, I was more than pretty good, I was astonishing. I have a knack for it. Some of the people I draped with in school were using psychs.” “Psychs?” interrupted Lexi, furrowing her eyebrows. “Psychoactive drugs,” Big Daddy said. “Drugs that affect the mind in a specific manner. Anyway, they introduced me to some of them, like MDMA, which is an empathodelic, and ketamine. And admittedly, I enjoyed their effects, especially the out-of-body stuff induced by the ketamine. But I was utterly fascinated by why certain chemicals had specific, similar effects on whoever was using them. How come? And what happened if you combined two or three or more of them? So I started reading up on all this

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shit. Once I understood the ’why’, then I started experimenting.” Lexi’s eyes were closed, and she seemed to be nodding slightly, although maybe it was just a response to the shuddering of the FL hover cab. “It turned out I had a knack for that, too. People liked what I came up with. People I didn’t even know began coming up to me, asking for this one, or that one, little blends that they’d heard about from somebody else.” Lexi’s eyes opened, and he saw that not only was she listening, but that she wanted more. “So I started filling commissions. It paid pretty well, and it was really interesting. Then one day this guy and his girlfriend came over to pick up their blend, some exotic thing, I can’t remember what it was. Anyway, she was an excursion all by herself. This white skin, and these assassin eyes. Dire looking bitch. In the course of the transaction, she mentioned that I ought to produce the stuff in bulk. You know, go volume. So I did.” The FL hover cab descended, and as it landed the S & M honey’s cone ensconced breasts disappeared.

Big Daddy was leaning back to look at the strangest building he’d ever seen. It was shaped like an erect Coke bottle, one of the old glass ones from the 20th century. Made of some weird nano-tech assembler substance, it was actually the dark brown color of cola. Above it the gray sky pressed down. “Old Coke building,” Lexi said. “Now it’s owned by some conglomerate which is owned by L’Oreal, or maybe it’s Revlon, I can’t recall.” “Jesus,” said Big Daddy, looking back at it one more time, trying to imprint it on

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his fusiform gyrus. “The YIK-YAK Club is this way,” she said. She was consulting her yellow plastic retriever, its gel screen depicting a site diagram. She pointed along the street, past a franchise restaurant called Origen’s Heresy, its trademark a truncated swastika with the outline of a monk crucified on it. The franchise had been started on Little Joseph by a man named Nessum Limite, a member of one of the sub-clans that proliferated Little Joseph, the Er. Intermarriage was common among the sub-clans, but only on the condition that the wife’s religious preference should be dominant. Some of the clans were Catholic, some idolaters. Idolatrous practices abhorrent to the Catholics included systematic contraception and sacred prostitution, customs to which the Erites were inordinately addicted. The Catholic sub-clans averred that the Erites indulged in “unnatural intercourse”; that they “threshed within and winnowed without”; expressions implying the two most popular techniques of birth control on Little Joseph, coitus per anus and coitus interruptus. Nessum Limite, having married a Catholic woman from the Masaa sub-clan, refused to allow his wife’s religious practices to pollute their children. His wife sued him for dissociation and religious abuse, taking their children with her when she vacated their home. A vengeful Nessum Limite, just to piss off his former wife and all the other like-minded Catholics, had founded a restaurant which he called Origen’s Heresy, after the excommunicated priest of Catholicism. To Nessum’s delight, and to the chagrin of the embarrassed Catholic sub-clans, the establishment became the most famous watering hole on Little Joseph. So Nessum, being a good businessman and recognizing an opportunity

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when confronted with it, had exported the franchise throughout the Elegant String. “Not too far,” Lexi said. “The Jewess Building.” She set off down the crowded street. Big Daddy followed, wondering whether he was just tired or scared, or both. Maybe it was just what used to be called ’culture shock’. Everything about Seattle was different enough to produce a kind of pressure inside his head, as though his brain was expanding under sensory overload. It was like his brain couldn’t process it all, and it was building up, like water behind a dam. He wanted to go home, back where everything was the way it was supposed to be. Lexi turned a corner, down another street. Then another corner and he could have sworn they were back where they started. They were walking past a light tan building. “Where is it?” he asked. “Here,” said Lexi, pointing at the building. “On an upper mezzanine, it says.” The building was tall and narrow, and except for the color looked like all the other nano-tech assembler structures, kind of mock and burnished in a sickly way. “How do we get to it?” Lexi led him into what was probably supposed to be a lobby, but was more like a series of semi-exclusive kiosks. A neon nerve-center reflected from mirrors, items for sale, all merging together. Into a gravity lift that reeked of cigarette smoke and perfume, a cloying combination of odors that caught at the back of Big Daddy’s throat, like hands reaching up from inside his stomach. Third floor mezzanine. The door of the lift shushed aside, revealing a man who, at first glance, appeared to be made of tubes. Upon closer inspection, though, he was made of flesh and apparently human. It was just that his arms and legs were of a size, and

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resembled tubing in their severity. He wore a tight white t-shirt and skin tight blue shorts. He looked at Lexi. “If you’re here about a job, you’re too late,” he said. He pulled a rag out of his pocket and wiped his neck with it. Big Daddy wasn’t sure what his age might be. His eyes were green, under line thin eyebrows, and his hair puffed straight out from his head, like the spines of a blowfish. Behind him there was constant noise and confusion, men yelling out instructions. Some guy heaving bundles of three colored cable into a green cart-like contraption that hovered two inches off the floor. A stack of containers toppled over, crashing to the floor. More shouts. “I’m looking for the YIK-YAK Club,” Lexi said. “Girlie,” the cylindrical man said, “you’re too damn late.” He wiped his eyes and looked at her. “You’re nice looking, though, Might have made it.” “Made what?” asked Lexi. “A dancer. You’ve got nice legs.” “Is this the YIK-YAK?” Another stack of containers toppled over. The man stared at her. “Whaddaya need?” “The YIK-YAK Club. My friend,” she indicated Big Daddy with her head, “heard about it on his way from Judaic City.” “You heard about the YIK-YAK in Judaic City?” “Yeah…” said Big Daddy. “Actually, on the ship from Judaic.” He smiled a sad, tubular smile. “Well, I guess that counts for something. Just what, I’m not sure.”

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“I’m Emil.” “Ecko. I’m called Ecko, dearie. Manager, public relations, advertising maven. I did it all. Sorry, though. You’re too late. All that’s left of YIK-YAK is departing in these carts. Too bad, though. It was gala while it lasted, though.” He turned to his right, swung his arms panoramically. “Flames from dozens of flambeaux casting red, vermilion and orange light upon two hundred dancing nymphs. Each nubile nymph in black pantaloons, black boots and nothing else. Shaved heads they had. It was glorious.”

Sighing

extravagantly, he turned back to Lexi and Big Daddy. “Glorious. It was the reality of a vision, you know? But that’s entertainment, right? Here today, gone tomorrow. You have to be philosophical about it, or it’ll eat you up. I like your hair, though…” “Thanks,” said Lexi, touching her skunk-colored quills. “I like that sanctum sanctorum Berenice sex thing,” Ecko said. “The emperor Titus profaning the Temple on your head thing. And you’ve done it right.” Lexi frowned. “If YIK-YAK is out of business,” said Big Daddy, “what’ll you do now?” Ecko tucked his rag in the waistband of his shorts. He looked tired. “Don’t know yet. Events exist -- or they don’t exist. Something will turn up. It always does. Hey, I was looking for a job when I found this one.” “Did Magico ever come here?” Ecko’s brow furled. “That oneified asshole,” he said. “You know him?” “No.” “Tune into this: if he hadn’t come in, we might still be in business. That rape, pillage and plunder drug-lord thing wasn’t what we wanted to be about. We’d had some

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others in here before. Nickel Wood, just after his spree, and the ISCA worms were thick as flies. And we had Femme de Chrome in here, too, but no one hardly noticed. Magico, though, and his bunch, you couldn’t move for all the worms. Sent in this big bald jewel with this scarred face. Approached me and said Magico had heard of the place and was coming in with some friends, and could I arrange a private nook so’s he could watch the show… Well, what was I gonna’ say, right? So I said fine, no problem, and we set up a place for them.” “And he came in? Magico?” “No doubt. An hour later, there he is. Smiling, shaking hands all round. Four dolly wank toys with him, three other men, and the big boy. Nice duds. Rabbi Nahman suit, black. Kind a ragged, though. Magico, I mean. Been out somewhere before he came here, had a few drinks. Kinda nasty, if you know what I mean.” Ecko turned and said something to a worker. Big Daddy, who was listening intently, imagined Magico sitting at a table with some other people, and watching four hundred bouncing breasts. Singing, dancing breasts, just like Mattie had laughed about. “Then he gets up, has to take a whiz. The big boy tries to go along with him, but he waves him back. The big boy’s not too happy about it. Two of the dolly wanks get up, like they’re going with him. He waves them back to gales of laughter. I was working the tables, making sure everybody’s glad. The Mystery Females are doing their show. And there he goes, no one hardly noticed.” What kind of club was it, that no one noticed the Demon Prince? “So I was working my way around, doing my thing. And suddenly he’s vis a vis

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with me. Big smile. Eyes were weirded out, if you know what I mean? “Said he wanted to dance with the Mystery Females, did I mind? Said he was quite the dancer. The big boy turns up, like magic, wants to know if there’s a problem? Not at all, says Magico, he’s going to join the show.” “Then what?” said Big Daddy. “He did,” said Ecko, pulling at the rag in his shorts. “And because he did, Magico, king of mayhem, decided to buy the club. And he did. Bought it lock, stock and dancing Mystery Females. And now, dearies, if you and your ravishing friend will excuse me, I have shit to do.”

There was a man outside the L’Oreal Hilton, handing out pamphlets. He wore a beige Dallas suit, and was smoking a pipe. His haircut was righteously mod and complemented his manner of dress, which was avant-garde. He looked to be about thirty years old. On a small portable table next to him were, at a guess, about a thousand pamphlets, organized into neat stacks. Streams of pedestrians flowed around him and his table. Handing one of the pamphlets to Tilly, he quickly turned to accost someone else with his propaganda. “What’s this?” Tilly asked, indicating the pamphlet, the man, his table. “A cult,” Lucinda Williams said. “The Church of SubGenius. They say they’re the universe’s first industrial church, the prophesied End Times cult of screamers and laughers, scoffers, blasphemers, mockers, sinners and the last true holymen in the cosmos today.”

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“Well, what do they believe? I mean, what are their doctrinal tenets?” Tilly asked. “To repent, quit your job, and slack off, as far as I can tell,” she said. Tilly looked again at the man. He had a look of happy peace. “What’s supposed to happen when we all repent and slack?” “Some kind of transformation which includes impressive muscles, a mastery of fighting skills, good health, an attractive personality, and, above all, the ability to influence others. Magico actually checked into it. Tried to arrange an interview with J.R. ‘Bob’ Dobbs, the High Epopt.” “And?” “Bob declined. Said, ‘Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.’” “Magico’s response?” “He laughed, according to Taussig. Taussig said it struck him as extremely humorous.” “Is that unusual? I mean, that he laughed?” Tilly was about a step and a half behind Lucinda as they walked along. “Put it this way: the things that make Magico laugh are not the things that other people laugh at.” Tilly noted a hover car keeping pace with them, about a hundred feet overhead. It was a funny red color. He couldn’t discern the make. “I think we’re being monitored,” he said. “We’d damn well better be. Where we go, it goes. All part of the Magico machine. In here,” she said, entering a building. A narrow gravity lift, walled with crenellated pinkish brown glistening material,

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like wet, brown, wrinkled Saran Wrap. Tilly hesitated, then saw a logogrammatic: Le Sodome’. Sphincter semiotic. He stepped in. A bar whose motif was sodomy, he thought, and then: probably should have called it De Abrahamo, like Philo Judaeus. Laughing to himself, he rode the lift down with Lucinda. Entered more wet, brown Saran Wrap, wall-wide curtains of it, hung with archaic totems, like flags almost, from the Gibeah Benjaminites. “Come here often?” Tilly asked, as they took stools with bulbous red cushions, with a single eye in the center. The bar was laminated with thousands of Trojan rubbers. “Yes,” she said, “but mainly because it’s unpopular with women. And you can smoke, which is still against the law here. When the waitress, in tight shorts that exposed the twin crests of her buttocks through a cutout, and bare pendulous breasts, had taken their orders, Lucinda opened her purse and took out a pack of Marlboro Blues. She offered Tilly one. “They’re laced with caffeine.” Tilly lit his up, inhaled deeply. The waitress returned with his beer and her sake. She lifted the small cup and blew, like a child cooling tea. “Okay,” she said. “What is this sixth sense thing you do?” Tilly gazed into the foam on the surface of his beer. “It’s like seeing ghosts,” he said. “Except what you’re seeing takes place in your subconscious -- what they call rapid cognition.” She set her cup down. “Don Cesario promised me you weren’t mentally ill.” “It’s not a mental aberration. It’s how my subconscious mind processes data. It’s a

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kind of data precognition.” “And people hire you based on that?” “No, mostly they hire me because they want something illegal done and they have no where else to go. But I can’t do it, unless I can see the people involved.” “Why not?” “Because it’s not magic.” Tilly took a sip of beer. “It’s an actual process that takes place at an imperceptible level. I can’t see anything about Magico from simstim. I need the real thing. It’s affective, not effective. So Magico waltzing through a jungle somewhere is not going to help me much.” “I’ve been there,” she said. “It’s on Red Mammoth. He bought it from a pilot who was from Dense Nautique. It’s beautiful, lush and green. Kind of like Hamish, if you’ve ever been there.” “You think he’ll take his Nastic girlfriend there, when they get married?” “No one knows what he’s talking about when he says he wants to ‘marry’ her. Personally, I think he’s gone a bit daffy. He’s not the way he used to be.” How well do you know him?” asked Tilly. “He’s the engine of the machine I’m a part of, Tilly. I know him, but I don’t know him. There’s usually a mediator between me and him, like Taussig or Don Cesario.” “What about Don Cesario?” “Quiet. Incredibly. Smart. Incredibly.” She blew on her sake. “I don’t think he really thinks about what he’s involved in. The whole thing’s just a mental challenge, to see if he can do it or not.” “Including his boss wanting to marry a Nastic anamorph?”

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“Don Cesario told me a story once, about when he was younger. He was going to enter the priesthood. He said he’d wanted to be a priest since he could remember, because he thought they knew something the rest of us didn’t, that they had a secret. But, he said, he discovered they had no secret. It was the same as it had always been for thousands of years. Nothing new, nothing fresh. In the end, he said he couldn’t support it intellectually. Taussig says that if Don Cesario was Magico, he’d be in prison.” “Why?” “Taussig was serving the first of three consecutive life sentences in the triple-max ISCA facility on Helion P, when Magico came across him. One of Magico’s primary assets, named Jackson Johnson was in the triple-max, too. Magico was looking for a way to get him out. A riot broke out in the t-max, instigated by a group of those Hamish genetic freaks. Some of them took Jackson Johnson with them, as a hostage. They told Jackson he was dead meat, no matter what happened.” She signaled the waitress for more sake. “Taussig, who was evidently very pissed off about having his meal interrupted, because it was the one time a month they gave them beer, showed up thirty minutes later. Neither Jackson nor the freakoids saw him arrive, and the synthofreaks definitely had not been expecting him.” She paused. “He killed three of them with a prong from a belt buckle. Shoved it into their heads: one, two, three, Jackson says, just like that. No fuss, no muss.” “A prong?” “Yeah. About two and a half inches long. The others left in a big hurry, but turned up dead later on. I’m pretty sure Taussig killed them, too, although he just smiles when asked about it. The only one left alive of the original group was Jackson Johnson.”

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Her sake arrived accompanied by drooping, bare breasts. “Thirty days later, both Jackson Johnson and Taussig were released. Magico, of course. Must have cost him a small fortune. Taussig’s been with him ever since.” “What was Taussig serving three life sentences for?” “Assassination,” she said. “Contract work for the ISCA. When certain criminals became too prosperous, too dangerous, the ISCA sent private contractors in to eliminate them if there was no other way to get them.” “But I thought you said he was in the ISCA triple-max facility?” said Tilly. “Yeah. Seems he became a liability. Which is a fancy way of saying he knew too much. So they decided to retire him.” “Fuck me,” said Tilly softly. “Yeah. They retired the man they paid to retire others.” Taussig was magically and silently and simply there, very bald and very black, in a full-length Rixon. Behind him the brown Saran Wrap of Le Sodome’. The scar on his cheek an angry red color. “Lucinda, my sweet, what’s up?” He smiled at her. “I’m relating your life story to Mr. Shank, Tossy. I was just getting to the good stuff, but now…” She held her hands out, the universal semiotic of emptiness. “You can finish another time. Dinner’s been moved up, at the request of the mad lover. I’m here to escort you both. Change of location, too.” “Where?” Lucinda asked, as if not surprised. “Jesus Mountain,” said Taussig. “So much for sophistication and subtlety,” she said.

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The door of room 222, on the third level of the L’Oreal Hilton, seemed to suck into itself, then withered with a whiff. TELL-Atomics cushioned imploder, Model 2829, had once again proven efficacious. Minimal noise, grandiose effect. TELL-Atomics was a medium sized company on the planet Panpriapus. Established by the single acclaimed and acknowledged genius of Panpriapus, the physicist Lord Lingam, the company produced sterile atomic devices of every style and configuration. TELL-Atomics was one of the few true non-discriminatory companies in the Elegant String. They would sell to anyone, without reference to race, creed, color, planetary affiliation, or political persuasion, who handed over the necessary funds. Lord Lingam himself was, according to rumors, reasonably prolific in a sexual sense, with at least two wives and an alleged number of fruitful affairs. Indeed, Panpriapan tradition asserted that most of the males on Panpriapus were jealous of Lord Lingam; implying that everyone suspected his wife of sexual intercourse with Lord Lingam. The practical intimation was this: that the superstitious and wantonly curious females sought penetration and impregnation from the great genius, awe-inspiring symbol of great virility. Over the course of time, geniuses being notoriously peculiar, Lord Lingam apparently couldn’t hold wives, much less mistresses, and soon fell into feminine disrepute. One overt result of this sad situation was further refinement and innovation of clean atomics. Simply put, Lord Lingam concentrated all his mental capabilities on fission and fusion rather than vaginas. “Open sesame,” said Gretchen Dieter, motioning to the Frito Bandito horde around her. In the past, Gretchen had found that acting upon the principle of “strength in

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numbers,” was not only prudent, but was essential to continued good health. High Liters drawn, the Banditos flickered into the room, not bothering to cover each other. Expanding outward, they moved in groups of two and three into all the rooms of the suite. Gretchen and Rita stepped over the desiccated door, entered. Gretchen sat down on an overstuffed, green chair. “There’s nobody home,” she said to Rita. “What? How do you know?” said Rita, standing whitely in front of the simstim unit. “Cuz if he was here, there’d be dead Banditos all over the floor and Max Pack flying every which way,” sighed Gretchen, twirling her hat on her forefinger. “So much for smash and grab.” “Nobody here,” said one of the Banditos, walking over to Gretchen. Satisfied that nothing and no one was going to get blown away today, the Banditos looked bored. Gretchen waved him away. “So,” she began conversationally, “what to do now?” She looked thoughtful. Rita considered the question, responded immediately. “We could wait. Maybe he’ll be back soon. Or we could just leave a few of the badasses in the bedroom, and when he comes back, they’d have surprise on their side.” “With the door imploded?” said Gretchen, shaking her head in dismay. “Rita, honey, think about it. Besides which, my question was rhetorical.” At the word ’rhetorical’, Rita looked over at her sister, squinched her face. “I didn’t expect an answer,” explained Gretchen. “I was simply talking to myself.” “Oh.” “Let’s get the fuck outta’ here,” said Gretchen. “Before everybody and his mother

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and the ISCA start showing up. Somebody’s gonna’ notice the door soon.”

Twenty seconds after Gretchen, Rita and the Frito Banditos left, Renata Wills edged into the room. Walking around the suite, she scrutinized the surroundings in painful detail. Touching the simstim controls, she checked the chronicle which revealed Tilly’s viewing preferences. In the bathroom, she noted the haphazard placement of his personal items: comb, brush, sonic toothbrush and depilatory lotion. Very disorganized, definitely not OCD. Leaning over, she checked the underside of the basin. There. A drop-away clasp unit held a Winston High Liter. Renata smiled to herself. Disorganized, but methodical and premonitory.

She moved to the closet. After looking at a few labels, she moved into the clothing, the hanging shirts and slacks, letting them drape over her head and shoulders, opening herself to his energy. Exhaling heavily, she inhaled through her nose in little gasps, sniffing his odor. Finally, after a few minutes, satisfied, she left the closet. One last glance around the main living area, and she stepped over the desiccated door, walked to the gravity lift.

Big Daddy and Lexi were in another FL hover cab on their way back to the L’Oreal Hilton, and then he didn’t know what. He’d gone to the YIK-YAK club and gotten nothing for it but a vague sense of Magico being more than a little bizarre. And where did it leave him? He’d used his credit filament to pay for two FL air cabs, one there, and one back.

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And Zap 210 had said somebody was looking for him; they could trace him when he used the filament. There was probably a way to preclude that, if he had the skills of a cyberspace cowboy, which he didn’t. None of this was going the way it was supposed to, the way he had imagined it, back on Judaic. But how could he have imagined Mattie or Vance? Or Zap 210, for that matter? Or Lexi? Lexi was looking at her portable retriever again, frowning. Big Daddy saw the dots and swirls change. And that thing, whatever it was, that Mattie had put in his bag. It was in his case. He should have left it at the L’Oreal Hilton. Or tossed it, but then what would he say if Mattie and Vance appeared and wanted it? What was it? Lexi leaned forward and said something to the aircab pilot. The aircab quickly descended and stopped. Lexi took Big Daddy’s hand and pulled him toward the door. “This isn’t my hotel --” “Come on! Get out! Quick!” Out onto some street. It smelled different here, like some chemical. Big Daddy tried to place it. “What’s the matter? Why are we here?” Lexi pulled him into the doorway of a building. “Someone is at the Hilton, waiting for you.” She looked down at his hand, as if amazed to discover that she was holding it, their fingers interlaced, and released it. “How do you know?” “DatElegant. There have been inquiries, in the last few minutes.” “Who?”

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“Hugger muggers.” “Hugger muggers?” “Pathological, psychotic freakoids. They’re goosed up on drugs, with cloned and tailored bodies. They posse up and work for anyone that can afford them.” “What do you mean, ‘posse up’?” “Gangs. They run in gangs. Don Cesario uses them.” “Don Cesario is a hugger mugger?” His head ached. Information overload. “No. He utilizes their services, sometimes. They are asking about you, and that is not good,” said Lexi. “Wait, wait, wait,” said Big Daddy, holding up one hand. “I don’t know any hugger muggers.” “Well, they know you,” said Lexi. “We need to go. Now!” “Where?” She led him along the street, it’s surface wet from rain. Toward another aircab.

Lexi said she was taking him to the Queen Mother. She was small, and wore a long black gown covered with beads and crosses. The gown was cinched just below her breasts by a three inch wide white cincture. Her shoes were white, and looked like the shoes children wore, but larger, of course. She was perched on a throne-like chair at the moment and her feet didn’t quite touch the floor. Her hair radiated out from her head, like a nimbus, except it was carnelian red, and gleamed with whatever product held it in place, like your hand might stick to it if you touched it. Big Daddy wondered if flying bugs ever got caught in it.

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She was talking with Lexi in some language Big Daddy had never heard. It sounded old, though. Big Daddy wished he knew what they were saying. But the Queen Mother looked like she’d be happier if he couldn’t understand them. She was drinking from a chalice-looking cup, and whatever was in it steamed; and she was smoking a black cigarette. Big Daddy watched the pale blue smoke layer into the air. Big Daddy wasn’t sure, but he seriously doubted that it was usual for high priestesses to smoke cigarettes. That’s what she looked like, some religious high priestess. It was still raining outside. Through the room’s window he could see the silver balls of rain flowing down. What were they talking about? The Queen Mother sucked on her cigarette, causing the end of it to glow redly. Squinting through the smoke, she said something to Lexi. Lexi shrugged. There was a small cup of coffee in front of Lexi, on a table. Big Daddy had one, too, a cup of coffee and a table. But there was nothing to sit on. The Queen Mother spoke again. “She desires to talk with you,” Lexi said. She crossed the room to another table and took something from it. Audiotranslators, which Lexi put in his ears. “I am the Queen Mother of the order of St. Catherine of Alexandria,” she said. “Can you understand me?” “Yes, I can understand you,” said Big Daddy, adjusting the volume by tapping the receptors. “Why are you here in Seattle?” “To find a man named Magico and a Nastic who accompanies him.” The Queen Mother nodded majestically. “What kind of relations do you have with rough boys?” Big Daddy knew she must have said hugger muggers, and the translator

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program had substituted an analogous concept. “None,” said Big Daddy. “And you know Lexi because…?” “She works for Exo-Exports in Seattle. I am affiliated with the same company in Judaic city.” “How many times have you used your credit filament while here?” “I don’t know. Too many to keep track of.” He looked from the Queen Mother to Lexi. Behind them the window and the silver rain. The Queen Mother’s expression was blank. “Lexi’s portable cube is different to most,” the Queen Mother said. “When it became obvious that you were attracting the attention of someone, I sent acolytes to investigate your hotel. Seeing 7-11’s, my acolytes crossed over and spoke with them.” “Seeing what?” “A posse. Their name comes from a defunct franchise chain of food stores. My acolytes asked them if there had been anything inordinate taking place. They stated they had seen a distinctive hover car, an hour before…” A Rolls Pacer. “A Rolls Pacer. They are very rare in Seattle.” Big Daddy nodded. His stomach went nauseous. He felt like he might hurl. The Queen Mother leaned to the side with her cigarette, which was short now, and dropped it to the floor. “The Rolls Pacer parked in front of the L’Oreal Hilton. Two men got out…” “What did they look like?”

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“Butter-boys, which is posse-talk for professionals. They entered the hotel. After ten minutes, they returned, got into the Rolls Pacer and left. My acolytes left after telling the 7-11’s they would be paid well, later, if they would keep an eye out for any other activity. The 7-11’s do anything for money, so they agreed. They phoned later to report three air cabs. All three were full of rough boys. They thought they were heavily tailored with cloned tissue.” “Why?” “Because they are very large, and very conscious of everyone around them. Although their dress was unusual. They are still there.” “How do you know?” “If they leave, they will call if they wish to be paid.” “Can I make a call from here? I want to talk to Deltunited about getting out of here. I want to go home.” And toss whatever that thing is in some hole. “You cannot use your credit filament or a phone,” Lexi said. “If you do, they will find you.” “Well, what am I supposed to do?” he said, wondering if they could hear the panic in his voice. “I need to go home.” The Queen Mother sat very still, thinking. She tapped the side of her chalice-looking cup. “There is a place where you can use your filament and not be detected,” she said. “Where’s that?” “Mrs. Warren‘s.” She took a sip from her chalice. “Are you familiar with it?” “No,” said Big Daddy. “What is it?”

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Emerging from the brown rectal semiotic of Le Sodome’, Tilly noted it was raining heavily now. He saw the Church of the Subgenius disciple still handing out tracts. As Taussig opened the door of the Scion airlimo for Lucinda, Tilly looked back and wondered if anyone had converted while they’d been drinking inside a stylized anus. Tilly got in the Scion, noticing those green, white and black dragonflies again, the three of them, decreasing in size down each custom-made boot. Taussig closed the door behind him, then opened the front door and appeared to pour himself into the limo, a movement that at once suggested the sliding of thixotropic gel and the settling of three hundred pounds of solid mass. The Scion limo’s internal management system automatically adjusted for the lopsided cant. Tilly noted a crisscrossing of scars decorating the back of Taussig’s bald head. The driver, to judge by the back of his bald head, was probably the same one who’d driven them to Kirkland-by-the-water. He lifted the limo into the air. The rain was running in sheets down the screens, then the internal management system kicked on the deflectors and the wriggly wet lines disappeared. Lucinda was wearing Revlon Q:pher perfume, and it caused Tilly to wish that the driver and Taussig were elsewhere, and that they were on their way somewhere romantic, in another place, and that Tilly’s past-present life didn’t exist, that he was different than he was. “This place we’re going to is…rather unusual,” she said. “How so?” “It’s probably not your kind of place.”

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“Why not?” “Maybe you‘ll like it, I’m not sure what you’re used to. It’s very popular with a certain element. If you take it with a sense of humor…” “What kind of place is it?” “A private club. A kind of restaurant. More milieu than anything. If Taussig wasn’t with us, we wouldn’t be allowed in.” Tilly was remembering Bob’s Place, where he’d gone with Mai Candy. It was a country western theme restaurant. Decorated with relics from the late 19th century earth. Digitons of Roy Rogers and his horse, Trigger, his wife, Dale Evans; western singers like Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan. And everyone who worked there wore shirts with snaps on them, with funny looking pockets, and chaps with fringe. The men who worked there had these haircuts, close cropped on the sides, flat on the top, and the women had teased, puffed out hair. Tilly’s meal had had a huge piece of beef analog, charred on the outside, runnily pink on the inside, and a huge baked potato with a glob of yellow fat in the center. It all tasted smokey and sat thick on his tongue. Then they’d gone back to his suite for round three of sex. It all felt so good, so domestic. “Tilly?” “Sorry…a thousand miles away. This place…Magico likes it?” “Ya’ got me,” she said. “I think he just likes to think there.” Jesus Mountain occupied the top three floors of an assembler erected building on Mercer Island. The eminent psychologist, Ralph Quarry, Ph.D., would have asserted that it represented a response to the external stimuli of a burgeoning and overwhelming technology.

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Jesus Mountain had come into existence almost overnight. Pierre LaFontaine, a journalist for Revlon’s high-fashion magazine, Suave, struggling to depict the club, had stated that it resembled a cross between deconstructed constructionism and Dante’s lower levels of the Inferno, assuming that Dante had visited Mercer Island and used Superfly, which along with booze and French fries wallowing in mayonnaise were Jesus Mountain’s claim to fame. It was, said Pierre LaFontaine, built upon the same hallowed ground that had once supported the mega-home of Bill Gates, then later the home of Darlene Darling, the simstim starlet, then a jazz library, quaintly called All That Jazz. Jesus Mountain was a legend in Seattle, in the sense of apocryphal, biblical events. It was, Lucinda explained, as they rode the gravity lift up, a very lucrative commercial enterprise. Only the most wealthy and coruscating of celebrities and corporate big wheel’s could afford it, and, of course, the wealthiest criminals. But she had her doubts that it could live on much longer. “The ISCA doesn’t give much slack where Superfly is concerned,” she said, leaning against the mirrored walls of the lift. “They know it’s here. I suppose someone has connections, or is paying through the nose, to allow it to continue. It’s what people want.” “Who owns it?” Tilly asked, looking at Taussig in his black quasi-religious garb, like a monolithic monk. The gravity lift was lit by cords of glowing green plastic. “Rumor has it, either L’Oreal or MOAM Corporation.” “Really?” “Whoever it is, they’d have to have lots of discretionary funds at hand.” Tilly, looking down at the floor of the lift, noticed hardened gray lumps embedded in some type of urethane. “What’s this stuff?” he said, pointing to the floor.

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“Bat guano,” Lucinda said. “Bat guano?” “Solidified, biochemically sterilized bat shit.” Tilly stood still, thinking about that. Bat shit? “They import it from the Antilles. It’s all part of the effect -- part of your dining experience.” She laughed lightly.

The lift halted, and Tilly emerged from it. Into a rain forest motif defined by green light and trees. He’d expected a little more. Something sat densely in the middle of the room. He blinked. A miniature mountain. “Is that…” he asked Lucinda, who was giving her black Rixon coat to someone. “Jesus Mountain,” she said. “The dirt’s from down in South America somewhere. They brought it in. If you look closely, you’ll see that it’s covered with coffee plants.” Taussig had given over his too-long jacket, revealing a collarless white cotton shirt that was loosely woven, as if every other row of thread was missing. He moved forward, through a maze of couches and tables, with that same slo-mo movement, Tilly and Lucinda towed along effortlessly behind him. “Well, fuck me,” Tilly said. Lucinda didn’t appear to have heard him. But then, she’d been here before. If she was correct, and Jesus Mountain was allowed to continue operating by means of bribery, he wondered who was getting rich, and why. The people seated on the couches in front of the tables that supported their libations, seemed different somehow. There was a definite emanation of free energy here,

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and staring seemed appropriate, even obligatory. They were all beautiful, not good-looking, but downright beautiful. Like they’d all been pre-selected by some casting director for certain physical and facial characteristics. “Tilly,” Taussig said, placing a hand on his shoulder and directing him into the gaze of a pair of obsidian eyes, “this is Magico. Constantin Martino Jarvio Ajayo. Magico, Tilly Shank. He’s a friend of Lucinda‘s.” “Welcome to Jesus Mountain,” smiling, and then the eyes flickered off him to Lucinda. “Lucinda, my lovely passion fruit.” Tilly noticed a sensation that he knew from his encounters with other compelling men: a synaptical lapse in his fusiform gyrus between image and reality, between pregnant expectations and the real thing in front of you. The two coalesced and became the person. Usually, the coalescence was tame in aspect, but this man wasn’t tame, and was much bigger in real life in some indefinable way. Magico had his arm around Lucinda now, gesturing with his other arm into the green gloom beyond the dirt mountain, saying something Tilly couldn’t make out. “Mr. Shank, welcome.” It was Don Cesario, in a squash yellow shirt that hung limply on his narrow frame. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Don Cesario.” “You met Magico? Good. We have a table waiting for us.” Again, he pushed his rimless glasses up his nose. “I understand that the data session did not go well, that certain anomalies presented themselves.” “That is right. Someone had filtered out all anthropomorphic values. I couldn’t see anyone.”

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Magico was moving in the direction of whatever was beyond the mountain of dirt, his arm around Lucinda’s waist. “Time to eat,” Don Cesario said, then lowered his voice. “She is here. She will be dining with us. Nerina Palotta.” The Nastic.

In another hovercar; this time with the Queen mother and Lexi. Lexi up front with the pilot, the Queen mother beside Big Daddy in the back. The Queen Mother kept shifting around in her seat, she couldn’t get comfortable. She snapped a flame on a Marlboro Blue cigarette, inhaling deeply, pushing the lung filtered smoke back out through her pointed nose. Blue haze filled the hovercar. The pilot had alabaster tinted skin, long slender fingers with black fingernails, and a little silver tiara with a cross on her head. White lace doilies with silver crosses embossed on them hung from the inside roof, dangling down to just above head height, so that Big Daddy constantly crouched, afraid that if he didn’t, he’d hit them. It was the Queen Mother’s private hovercar, not really a limo, but she had her own pilot, one of her acolytes. They had ascended through the rain and were flying a few hundred feet above the streets below, whipping past the middle floors of tall buildings -- a few of which Big Daddy recognized, because there was that Coke bottle building again, glimpsed through a gap. Big Daddy noticed other buildings through walls of rain, most of which were lit up to an extraordinary degree. Every one of them had multiple, huge light matrices on them,

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adverts for everything from sex to 42 Below vodka; most though, were for personal enhancement products, which is what the purveyors called their cosmetic products. A diamond shaped matrix caught his eye: an eighty foot blonde woman, with locked-in-tight-firm 39D cup tits and neatly trimmed pubic hair, gestured plaintively to him. She was saying something he couldn’t hear, something tantalizing he imagined. Next to her, hi-rez pixels formed the words: Step inside another world, make love to a pretty girl. And yes! You can touch the merchandise. Then she was gone, as the hovercar hissed past her twelve inch crosswise studded nipples. The Queen Mother said something in that holy language of hers. The pilot’s head nodded in affirmation. They turned and descended, slowing. A tiny parking lot below, empty, puddled from the rain. The middle of nowhere, or somewhere close by, it looked like. What was it that chick, the one in the classic simstim said? Oh yeah, ’We’re not in Kansas anymore.’ Wherever Kansas was. Well, mused Big Daddy, we’re barely in Seattle anymore. The Queen Mother looked at him out of the corner of her eyes, engaged in firing up another Marlboro Blue. “We’re almost there,” said the Queen Mother, exhaling plumes of smoke as she spoke. “Almost where?” The hovercar turned sharply left, dropped to the street, stopped. Diffused through the sluicing rain, a pink glow all around them, from floating orb lights. A three story white building sat nearby. Obviously, not an assembler construction. It looked old, stale, out of place.

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Impatient, Big Daddy reached for the door release, but the Queen Mother reached across his lap, took his hand. “Protocol,” she said. “Please allow the pilot to open the door.” The pilot touched a button and the door released. He got out into the pouring rain, dragging his case out behind him, and looked at the white building. It looked like a three-layer angle food cake, all chipped and crevassed on the sides, like some giant had been picking at the cake. Dimly, through the rain, he made out a sign above the doorway, formed by twinkling red lights: Mrs. Warren‘s. Lexi stood next to him now, pushing him toward the doorway. “Let’s go,” said Lexi, splashing through the rain. Double glass doors hissed aside as they approached the building. A disembodied voice said something in that holy language. The Queen Mother answered. “Give her your credit filament,” Lexi said. Big Daddy took out his filament and handed it to the Queen Mother, who seemed to be giving the voice instructions. Big Daddy glanced around. Lavenders, blues, hints of pink, touches of black. The room, if that’s what it was, for it was vaguely like a small lobby in look and feel, suggested something, but he wasn’t sure what it was. Digitons on the walls, most of people in some exotic setting, dining al frescoe. Totally weird. The female voice made a reply to the Queen Mother. “She is getting you a room,” Lexi said quietly. The Queen Mother inserted his filament into a thin port, which after a few moments, spit it back out at her, like a translucent tongue. The Queen Mother passed it to Big Daddy. A nearby door hissed aside. The Queen Mother turned and walked over to another door, which hissed aside as she approached. “She’s not coming with us?”

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“No. She has business matters to attend to. Come on, let’s go.” Lexi pointed toward the first door. “What kind of place did you say this is?” Big Daddy walked through the door. Lexi stepped in behind him and the door closed. Lexi coughed. “A house of the sacred mysteries,” she said. “What’s that?” Walking down a hallway with lavender walls. “A house or temple of the qadishim, the priests consecrated to Ashir. They’re sometimes called hierodules,” said Lexi. “Oh,” said Big Daddy, not understanding a word of what she had said. The eminent historian, Paul Lacroix, described the hierodules in his monumental work, History of Prostitution in the Elegant String, thusly: “The qadishim, or ’holy whores’, prostitute themselves in honor of Ashirim, the Phallic Gods. All who have sexual contact with these hierodules absorb the vital spirit and essence of the divine phallus. Commonly referred to as ’dog-priests’, ironically, most such houses of ill-repute are owned and operated by celibate, quasi-religious female orders. These female orders define the clitoris as ’the foundation of sexual love’, and therefore advise snipping off the ’stinger’, the zembur in their holy language, thus ensuring celibacy.” Big Daddy didn’t want to admit to Lexi that he had no clue what she had just said. His male ego and all. But simultaneously he wanted to know what she had just said. Curiosity won the battle. Turning to her, he said, “I don’t get it. Try putting it in street patois, then maybe I’ll understand.” Lexi smiled. “Sorry. There’s no way you could be expected to understand technical, religious jargon. It’s a phallic cult thing. The men are priests because it’s a

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religion, but they’re whores, too. They do other men. For a fee, of course.” “So what you’re saying,” said Big Daddy, “is that they’re kind of holy cocksuckers?” Lexi laughed. “Yeah, I guess that’s one way of putting it.” “And they own the place, too?” asked Big Daddy, really wanting to get this straight. “No, no, no,” said Lexi. “We do.” “You?” “Not me, personally. The order I belong to. The order of St. Catherine of Alexandria. The Queen Mother is the head of the order.” “Oh,” said Big Daddy, kind of understanding. “Are you guys like nuns or something?” “Very close,” said Lexi. “We’re a celibate po-mod femininist order.” Big Daddy moved along beside her, thinking hard. “So a religious-post-modern women’s liberation order owns and operates a religious whorehouse, where guys fuck other guys, because they worship their dicks. For profit.” “Pretty much,” said Lexi, as though that explained everything. He followed Lexi along the hallway. She stopped in front of a door and inserted a filament they’d been given. As she opened the door, lights flickered to life inside. Lexi touched a button, closing the door behind them. “Sometimes, worshippers wish to make reservations, or purchase certain items. Yet remain anonymous. They can use their cubes or credit filaments without detection, as all binary transactions are channeled through a remote AI cube.” Big Daddy was looking at a blood-red heart-shaped bed. It seemed to be covered in

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red shag fur. The walls were urine yellow shag fur, with black and green eyes embellished on them. It made his head hurt just looking at it. He turned to see Lexi taking off her shoes, sliding her feet into yellow slippers that had little dogheads on them, the kind children wear. Big Daddy looked down at his own wet shoes on the yellow shag and sensed he should do likewise. “Jesus,” he said, slipping off his DM chukkas, “ who decorated this place?” Lexi shrugged. “All the rooms are different,” she said. “It all has religious significance, I suppose.” Noting what was obviously the bathroom through another door, he carried his case in there and closed the door behind him. The walls were blue, with fuzzy white and black circles, and the floor was what looked like gray leather analog. Flickering mood lights came on and he was surrounded by ululating music, more like the lowing of dying animals to his ears. This bathroom was as big or bigger than the bedroom, with a tub the size of a small pool and a toilet. It looked like a small golden throne, and sat unusually high off the floor. Lifting the lid, he urinated into shiny, gold-colored water. As he zipped back up, the toilet flushed itself with a sucking whoosh, instantly filling with gold water. Back in the bedroom, Lexi was consulting her portable retriever. “Good,” she said as if to herself, “we can ramp into anywhere without being traced.”

“What do you mean, she’s here?” Tilly asked Don Cesario, as they walked around Jesus Mountain. Green plants clung precariously to its sides. “She is here,” Don Cesario whispered.

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Tilly saw that several people were already seated at a table. Two men. A woman. The woman must be Nerina Palotta. If he’d anticipated her at all, it had been as some mythological condensed-version of Medusa. That was the picture he had somewhere in his fusiform gyrus. Some kind of ferociously brutal-ugly-beautiful creature, a vacuum-packed half-human half-monster. She wasn’t like that at all. Her brown hair, layer-cut and glossy, touched smooth bare shoulders as she turned her head. She had no eyebrows, and both her lids and lashes appeared to be translucently black, revealing dark pupils below. She looked into his eyes. He felt a tremor pass through him. A singularity without an event horizon. A place where all the arcane energies of the universe spilled out. Tilly’s visual cortex danced, and hallucinated tall white spirals, entradista paradisiacal artifacts. He heard a noise like a choir singing to itself. Tilly tottered. In his mouth a blue taste, thick and ropey. The eyes of the Nastic met his. “We’re to sit here.” Lucinda standing next to him, her hand in his. She was motioning to two seats. “You okay?” she asked in a whisper. Tilly glanced over at Taussig, who was staring at the Nastic, something like regret on his face, but the expression faded. Tilly did as instructed, but only because he was on autopilot. “Tilly?” Tilly seated himself, holding onto the seat of his chair with both hands. “Yes?”

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“Are you okay?” “What?” “You look…strange.” Magico was taking his seat now at the head of the table, Nerina to his left, someone else to his right. Next to the Nastic, Nerina, sat Don Cesario with his rimless glasses, dark hair brushed straight back from his forehead. When he turned to address Nerina, Tilly saw the image of her face reflect in his lenses. He relaxed his grip on the edges of his chair. He could feel his sixth sense initiate itself: something generated, animated, went click in his head. Twelve red monkeys, wasn’t it? Tell someone not to think of twelve red monkeys, and that’s all they’ll be able to think about. Subliminal suasion. Don’t think of her as human. She is not real, she is a simulacrum. Yet he couldn’t not look at her. She was a precognitive narrative. He watched her hands, the chewing motions of her mouth as she ate. The meal was elaborate and followed precise and formulaic succession: the third of fifty one available sequences, known as The Elegant Repast on Dense Nautique. Each of the fifty one sequences had nine primary courses, and three secondary courses, not counting dessert, except for the fifty first sequence, which was eleven and four, respectively. Each course was served on individual round black plates. Each time one of the dark plates was placed before Nerina Palotta, she took only one or two small bites. Even the motion of her fork and spoon engaged Tilly’s sixth sense. Because they were extensions of her, albeit mechanical ones. After a few minutes, Tilly just let it flow within him, stopped trying to manage it,

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because he couldn’t. He concentrated on the conversations around the table. Don Cesario, pushing up on his rimless glasses, was answering something that Magico had asked, though Tilly hadn’t heard the question itself. “--called himself imperator but never king.” Magico’s black eyes, twinkling and attentive. “His adopted heir Augustus preferred the term princeps.” Don Cesario’s voice was resonantly modulated, his accent impossible to place. Magico smiled, his eyes moving to the face of the Nastic. Automatically, Tilly’s did too. He felt himself siphoned into her eyes. There was something vampiric about them. She knew that he knew, but she didn’t care. The next course arrived. “You’re not eating much,” Lucinda said. He took a small forkful of some orange pasty substance. “Well, I don’t know what most of it is. This, for instance,” he said, holding up his fork, a small blob of gluey orange attached to the tines. “Blended shrep,” said Lucinda. “It’s a fish of some sort from Red Mammoth. Quite a delicacy.” “You’re kidding, right?” said Tilly. Don Cesario leaned across the table. “Indeed,” he said, “it is a very rare delicacy. If the shrep is not carefully gutted, its sex glands removed without invasion of any type, neurotoxins are released into the flesh.” “I really didn’t need to hear that,” said Tilly, setting his fork down untouched. He looked over at Magico, reclining back in his chair, sipping Bight whiskey on ice.

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Magico! A name of magic, instilling dread and wonder. He exuded an extravagant passion, at once volatile and frivolous. His person was remarkable: tall, slender, yet magnificently muscled. His features were almost gaunt, his expression droll, his manner vivacious. But it was his eyes that hypnotized: black, with exceptional clarity, like a black hole dense with electric twilight. Dressed in gray, ordinary clothing, without ostentation or semiotic. Magico’s obsession with mystery extended far. No digitons, representations, or likenesses were known to exist on the public record. Even the ISCA had no recorded image of what he looked like. His origins, outside his legend, were unknown. Yet here he was, seated at the same table with Tilly, in Jesus Mountain.

Big Daddy and Lexi sat facing one another on the urine yellow shag carpet. Big Daddy had his cube out. Lexi had her portable retriever in her lap. “Lexi,” said Big Daddy, not knowing how to say what he wanted to say, wondering how she’d react. He cared what she thought of him. Then it struck him. She’s a member of some freaky-deaky, quasi-religious femininist order which pledged celibacy, worshipped their clits, and owned and operated a pious phallic-cult male whorehouse where hysterical nut cases gave other nut cases blow jobs, or performed sodomistic fudge packing on each other. This shouldn’t bother her at all. “I need to slip,” he said. “What?” she said, looking up from her retriever. “I need to slip. Inject some DMT and walk my soul around the spirit world.” He

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stared at her, holding his breath. “There’s someone I need to talk to.” “You can really do that?” she asked. She’d heard of it, the soma-body mysteries and all, but she thought it was all bullshit. “Yeah, you should try it sometime.” “No thanks,” she said. “But you go ahead and do whatever you have to do.” Big Daddy touched a sarstedt tube to his shunt. The Big Wheel turned. Metaphorical codes gave way to actual gateways to other dimensions. He became an infinitesimal tendril that had no existence in space or duration in time, an astral body spinning out into the infinite, leaving his shell far behind. Projecting forward at an incredible speed, at the corners of his vision he saw twisting white columns like high-tech swizzle sticks, as if he was following a lattice up, or in or out or all of the above, to hyperspace. Floating through a fractal tapestry, a curving and infolding plane of synthetic, plastic, fantastic whiteness and gleaming colors in endless vibrant hues. The extra-dimensional super consciousness. A ten-dimensional Walt Disney World. Big Daddy looked up, expecting to see Zap 210. The sky, if that’s what it was, was beautiful but empty. It was serious sky: deep and clean and some crazy color, a shade of white and blue at the same time. Something moved, or maybe rattled, behind him. Sounded like salt dropping on a tin roof. He turned quickly. Nothing. Something burbled, flowing in rainbow patterns of froth. “Don’t fuck around, Zap,” said Big Daddy, to nothingness which was a kind of something-ness.

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Lexi sat staring at Big Daddy’s body. He was totally motionless. He looked dead, except he was still sitting up, and seemed to be breathing. Her retriever flickered in her lap. Glancing down at it, she said to Big Daddy, “The 7-11’s have checked in. The hugger muggers have left your hotel.” She didn’t know whether he could hear her nor not.

“I need to get out of here,” Big Daddy said, addressing the semi-solidified synthetic matter. “Something’s wrong.” He touched histamine to his shunt, exited. Lexi sat opposite him, her legs crossed, her portable still in her lap. Mattie was sitting on the furry red bed with a cigarette in her mouth. She had a Projac in her hand, and Big Daddy noted how the glossed pink of her nails contrasted with the feral blue of the handle. “Welcome back,” Mattie said, around the cigarette. “This place is the bitch‘s tits, isn’t it?”

Tilly was at a urinal in the men’s room when he noticed the hugger mugger combing his hair in the mirror. Dinner was over and he’d probably had too much to drink. He and Lucinda and Don Cesario had watched Magico and his girlfriend, Nerina, flirt openly with each other. And Taussig was looking all grumpy, because Tilly guessed that he hadn’t had any idea that she be here, not until he walked into Jesus Mountain and Magico had told him.

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Lucinda had conversed with Don Cesario through most of it, mostly about real estate. Varied properties he owned throughout the String. Tilly had listened to Don Cesario’s ideas about the Revlon versus L’Oreal cosmetics warfare. Taussig hadn’t said two words to anyone, drinking beer and ingesting vast quantities of food as though he were trying to fill some emptiness inside himself. But the real show had been Magico and the Nastic bitch, and to a lesser extent Don Cesario, who’d stopped his ruminations occasionally to carry on conversations with them both. Tilly had tried a few times in that direction, but had failed to engender much interest. And since he couldn’t look straight at Nerina without starting to get lost in his sixth sense, he’d contented himself with sideling glances and eavesdropping. He kept peeking around Lucinda’s face at the two of them. There was something inviting about the line of her profile that he liked, and kept focusing on. Tilly finished and went to wash his hands with some foamy stuff, smelled like grapefruit and lime, and noticed that the hugger mugger was still combing his hair. Tilly had no way of knowing whether the guy was really a hugger mugger type or not, but he thought of him that way because of the DM boots with silver trim, the full-length white coat, the muscle-grafted look about his chest and arms. Either a hugger mugger or a tailored monkey, but very definitely bad news, that mutant-neurotic-thriller thing. The hugger mugger was combing his hair with total concentration. It reminded Tilly of a dog licking its own balls. He was big and had a big head, though mainly in length, a tall forehead. For all the attention being accorded his hair, the guy didn’t have long hair. He knew that hugger muggers were all over Seattle. Taussig had told him. Said they were so quintessentially pathic and brutal that no one messed with them, too much,

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anyway. Tilly checked his own hair. As he left, the hugger mugger was still combing. He saw Don Cesario, pushing his glasses up his nose and looking lost. “What’s up? The men’s is right there.” “I was looking for you.” “Here I am.” “I noticed, as we dined, that you rarely looked right at Nerina Palotta.” “Correct.” “I am guessing that the proximity is sufficient to allow your sixth sense to engage…” “Again, correct.” Don Cesario nodded. “Yes. Can you describe the nature of your perceptions, please?” “Like mimetic digitons,” Tilly said, “or whirling eddies of vague information. Very real, but imprecise.” Someone shoved Tilly out of the way, from behind, and he fell across the nearest table, knocking drinks every which way. He found himself staring right at the bodice encased mammai of a woman who screamed explosively just as the table collapsed. Something, maybe her chair, grazed the side of his head as he fell again. He got up on his knees, rubbing his head. The back of a long white coat… Then he saw Jesus Mountain seem to erupt, great gouts of dirt exploding outward, and the lights went out. People were screaming, but the darkness twisted the volume control up three or

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four measures, and Tilly covered his ears. Or tried to, because someone stumbled into him and he went down again, instinctively rolling and covering the back of his neck. “Hey,” said a voice, very close to his ear. “Get up.” It was Lucinda. “I can see,” she said. A hand in his. “Infra-red visor.” Tilly let her pull him to his feet. “What’s happening?” “I don’t know, but let’s go. It’s going to get bad --” As if on cue, a squeal of raw animal pain cut through the screaming. “Taussig!” Lucinda said, and Tilly felt her hand in his. He stumbled as he was pulled along. Someone bumped into him, hard. After that he kept one hand up, trying to protect his face, and went where Lucinda pulled him. All of a sudden they were in a corner or compartment of relative quiet. “Where are we?” Tilly asked. “This way…” Something clipped Tilly on the leg. “Table,” Lucinda said. “Sorry.” Something crunched beneath Tilly’s shoes. He hoped it wasn’t bone. A hint of brackish green light, hanging in the dark. Another few feet and he saw the emergency stairway. Lucinda let go of his hand. “Can you see yet?” “Yeah,” Tilly said. “Thanks.” She plucked the funny looking glasses off her eyes and head. “Let’s go.” She took Tilly’s hand. They started down the stairs. Four white-clad hugger mugger types shot past them, and vanished into the darkness. When they rounded the corner of the first landing, Don Cesario was there, a High Liter in his hand. There was blood on his cheek. His face looked pale. When he saw Tilly, he lowered the weapon. “It’s you,” he said. “Yeah,” Tilly said. “It’s us.”

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“You missed the show.” “What happened?” “Shit,” said Lucinda. “My coat’s up there.” “Keep moving,” said Don Cesario. More stairs. More landings. People kept rushing down behind them, going too fast. Tilly rubbed his head. It hurt, but it didn’t seem to be cut. “Looked like hugger muggers,” said Lucinda. “Freakie-deakies, jazzed on drugs and death wishes. I couldn’t tell if they were after Magico or someone else. Like they thought they could just walk in and do it.” “Do what?” “I don’t know,” she said, loudly. Pissed off. “But I’m sure Magico had his own people nearby. And Taussig literally lives for that kind of shit.” “How’d you get out?” Tilly asked Don Cesario. “Crawled on my hands and knees in the right direction.” They continued down together, Tilly and Lucinda still holding hands. When they reached the street, the entrance was ringed with cops pointing High Liters and MOAM Arc-Leytner Impellors, humorless weapons that fired accelerated particles at the speed of light. Military ordnance. The Impellors crackled as decoherent-free ion-pairs converged with contained anti-matter. Lucinda dropped Tilly’s hand. “Where’s our limo?” “Most upsetting!” Magico said, and Tilly turned, to see him emerging from the entrance to Jesus Mountain, Nerina right behind him. “Ruined my evening out. Someone’s going to pay -- and very expensively. You’re Shirk, right?”

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“Shank,” Tilly said, as the Scion air limo pulled up beside them.

Mattie plucked at the red shag on the bed. She was wearing an Etro Rose Riding Jacket with a velvet collar, lime under-collar, with plaid panels on the back. Underneath the jacket resided a Rose T-neck sweater in beige and pink, composed of cashmere analog. Wheat colored tube trousers in a birdseye wool analog stroked her slender legs. Brown handmade Stallion boots of alligator analog completed the ensemble. Her blonde hair was matted straight back, like she’d been standing in a wind tunnel too long. She looked good. A classy, upscale oh-la-la semiotic. “This place sucks,” she said. “Sex should at least have a smattering of intimacy about it. This totally degrades it, makes it exhibitionistic. Or worse,” she added as an afterthought. She flicked the ash off the end of her cigarette onto the yellow shag. “You‘re still a virgin aren‘t you, Emil?” Big Daddy turned red, didn’t say anything. “S’ what I thought. A virgin. Never been anywhere or done anything. Not really. I used you, not the other way around. But they don’t believe me. Say you’re some kind of sweet-talking lure, who fooled me. Say you meant to take it off me all along.” She sucked deeply on the cigarette, squinted at him. “Where’d you put it?” She looked down at his case. “In there?” “I didn’t even know it was there.” “Yeah, I know,” Mattie said. “S’ what I told them.” “I’m not understanding any of this,” said Big Daddy.

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“Sometimes I carry stuff in for Vance. Usually it’s just drugs, or money that‘s been washed. It’s not exactly legal, but it’s not that bad, you know what I mean? But this time it was different. Vance hooked up with some hugger mugger posses. And I didn’t want to be part of it. This time it scared me.” “What?” “Series encoders.” “What’s that,” asked Lexi. Big Daddy knew what she was talking about. “Encrypted coding programs,” he said, looking at Lexi. “They -- banks use them to manufacture credit filaments.” “S’ right,” nodded Mattie. “Seriously illegal. But Vance found a way to get ‘em. I met these three tailored slinks in Judaic city. They’d come in from somewhere, I don’t know where. Probably buttfucking Little Joseph from the way they looked.” She dropped the cigarette on the shag carpet, squished it with the toe of her Stallion boot. “They were expecting Vance, not me. Lot of calls back and forth. In the end, Vance convinced them to give it to me. I didn’t even want to touch it, it made me so nervous.” She looked around the room, like she still couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Taking out her last cigarette she lit it. Crumpling the small carton, she tossed it across the room, toward a corner. “You tell me why anyone’d name a cigarette ’Sea Bass’… The slinks on Red Mammoth would, though.” She looked at Lexi. “Like nuns would run a whorehouse.” Big Daddy, looking at Mattie, said, “When they were scanning cipher codes, on Judaic. You stuck out your left hand rather than your right…” Mattie sucked deeply on her cigarette, shivered, released a great gush of blue smoke. “You’re quick, aren’t you? You can buy ’em, if you know where to go. They’re

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codes from dead people, people whose deaths weren’t reported for one reason or another. Course you gotta’ be careful, make sure the former owner resembles you.” “How’d you find us?” asked Big Daddy. “I got connections with FL aircab. I figured it was worth a try. But the posse putzes will think of it, too, if they haven’t already.” “But how’d you get in? The door was code locked.” “Sweetie, I am not a very nice girl. I know lots of tricks I shouldn’t.” “Look,” Big Daddy said, reaching for his case. “You take it to them, the series encoding programs, tell them it was an unfortunate mistake.” He opened his case, dug into it, and found the thing. Held it out to Mattie. “Here, take it. Explain it to them. Tell them it was all a mistake.” Mattie pulled back. “Put it back in your case. See, they’re not gonna’ care about mistakes or not. The problem is this: we’re in the deep shit now. They’ll kill us just because we know about it. And Vance, he’ll let ’em. He has no other choice. Besides which, he is not a nice man. He’s a prick, is what he is.”

The Scion limo smelled of cleanser polymers and static energy ions. Magico and Nerina rode up front, beside the bald pilot. Tilly sat between Don Cesario and Lucinda. Tilly’s head still ached, where he’d caught the edge of that chair, and it seemed to be getting worse. He’d also discovered that the ankle of his left pant leg was sticky with blood, and he wasn’t sure if it was his or not. Lucinda touched her throat diaphragm. “Alternative B,” she said, to the pilot, who touched a synapse on his console. Tilly glimpsed grid segments flickering on a screen in

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front of him. “We’re taking Magico with us.” “Take me back to the Hilton,” Magico said. “Taussig’s instructions,” Lucinda said. “Let me talk to him.” Reaching back for Lucinda’s diaphragm. The limo ascended, turning sharply left as it did. Below, Tilly made out groups of people walking rapidly away from Jesus Mountain, trying to look inconspicuous. “Tossie,” Magico said, “I want to go back to my suite at the Hilton.” An ISCA Viper swept over them, descending toward Jesus Mountain. Magico was listening to his ear receptor. They passed over some restaurants, their interiors dimly lit. Lucinda nudged Tilly’s knee, pointed past Magico’s head. A trio of white Seattle Police Interceptors were landing in front of Jesus Mountan. Magico turned, handed the diaphragm back to her. “Tossie’s being his usual fixated self. He wants me to go to your place and wait for him.” Lucinda took the diaphragm. “Does he know what happened?” “Posse boys. Looking for someone.” Magico started to turn back around in his seat. “Which posse?” Tilly asked. Magico peered at him. “He’s not sure yet. But I know Tossie. He’s entirely system. He’ll find out, and then…” The dark eyes seemed to grow coldly dreamy looking, as the outside lights passed by, and then he turned away.

Lucinda’s suite at the Hilton was at least four times the size of Tilly’s. It had a kind of second level raised seating area, separated from the rest of the room by some kind of balustrade. Four big chairs in the seating area done up in purple velvet, and a matching

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couch. The chairs were unbelievably uncomfortable, and Tilly was sitting forward on one now, holding his head. The blood on his pants had been his own, from his shin. He’d put dermactif on it. Too bad he couldn’t spray some on his head. Don Cesario was on the chair to his right, looking at his jacket which had been badly torn. He had removed his glasses, which had been bent, and was looking at the jacket held close to his face. He looked younger without the glasses on. To his right, the bald pilot, who was called Dial, was sitting very straight with a High Liter in his lap and reading some glam magazine. Magico was sprawled on the couch, propped up on pillows, and Nerina sat nearby, surfing through the simstim. She had yet to say a word. Lucinda was standing by a window, a real one. “Did he say when he might show up?” said Magico, from the couch. “No,” Lucinda said, “but he made it very clear that you are to wait.” Magico made no response. “Let him do his job,” said Lucinda. “It’s what he’s paid for. Your people are on the way.” Tilly had assumed that all of them were to wait. Now he decided to go to his suite. All they could say was no. Taussig opened the door from the corridor, pocketing something translucent, something that most assuredly was not standard issue. “Evening, Tossie,” Magico said. “You really must take a little more care,” the big man said. “Those posse boys are serious trouble. Never stop coming, those boys. If they ever got to you, well, you wouldn’t

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much like it.” “That’s why I have you, Tossie,” said Magico, easily. “I have to say, Connie.” Taussig stood in front of the couch, looked over at Nerina. “Some of the women you’ve associated with have been real minimum, but at least they were human. Hear what I’m saying?” “I do, Tossie,” the myth said. “I know what you think of her. But you’ll come round. It’s just the way it is, Tossie. It’s what I want.” “I don’t think so. My old man was a poet, a famous one. Broke his heart, I did, when I turned out like I did. Died before you got me out of triple-max. I wish he could have known I’m not all bad, seeing me do what I do now. But I don’t know about this, Connie. Might tell me triple-max is better than insanity.” Magico came up off the couch, surprising Tilly with his speed, his fluidity of motion, and then he was standing in front of Taussig, his hands on the massive shoulders. “You don’t really believe that, do you Tossie? You’re my primary. We’re connected. That’s why I got you out of t-max.” Taussig’s eyes glistened. He was about to respond, but Don Cesario suddenly stood up, blinking, and put his jacket on. He craned his neck, peering nearsightedly at the rents in it, then seemed to become aware that everyone was looking at him. He coughed nervously and sat down. A silence ensued. “I spoke out of turn, Connie,” Taussig said, breaking it. Magico slapped the big man’s shoulder, releasing him. “Just tension,” Magico smiled. “What of the party-poopers?” “That’s a little weird,” Taussig said. “Hugger muggers. 7-11 posse. They’re local.

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Say somebody jacked something of theirs, supposedly you. At least that’s what I got from one of them.” Magico looked puzzled, but then seemd to dismiss it from his mind. “Let me go back to my suite,” he said. Taussig shook his head. “Not yet. Give my people time to neuter the area.” Tilly took this as his signal, rising and stepping past Taussig toward the door. “I’m going up to take a very hot bath,” he said. “My head hurts.” No one said anything. “If you need me, you know where I am.” He opened the door, stepped out, heard it shush closed behind him, and walked toward the gravity lift. In the lift, he leaned his head against the cool amalgam wall. It relieved his headache a little. Touching a button, the door slipped shut, soft music tinkled all around him. When it stopped, he stepped out, walked down the hallway to his suite. Sliding his filament along the slot, the door hissed open. Bath or sleep? That was the question. Sleep won. He walked toward the bedroom. Ninety minutes earlier, Vogel Filkes, Assistant Director of Maintenance and Continuance of the L’Oreal Hilton, had replaced the door to Tilly’s suite. It had only taken about two minutes. He’d simply set down the MOAM MNT assembler, punched in the appropriate instructions on his Surg-One rhizome cube, and the assembler had done the rest. Scurrying forward on its maniples, it quickly ingested the remains of the previous door; or anyway, that’s what Vogel called it, ‘ingesting.’ He didn’t know what it did really, but the debris vanished as the assembler’s wands flickered back and forth. It looked like it ate it.

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That done, the assembler scurried up the wall next to what had once been the door, waving its wands. Miraculously, bits and pieces of a new door began to materialize, kind of like watching a jigsaw puzzle being completed: a piece appeared, then another, then another; except it was so rapid that you could hardly keep track of it. Two minutes later, presto! New door. Vogel was a handsome man of early middle-age. He wore a green Maintenance and Continuance smock, a flowered scarf around his neck. Vogel liked butterflies. So much so that he had a male monarch tattooed on the glans of his penis. He’d had it done while he was on vacation ten years ago. He’d been in Red Polis, the capitol city of Red Mammoth, when he’d seen a sign, both literally and prophetically. The literal sign said: End of the Trail: tailoring, cloning, tattooing. The prophetic sign had been a kind of religious hysteria, almost a fit, that swallowed him up as he stood gazing at the sign. There, at the End of the Trail, he’d had his glans paradiddled by the Rodin of tattoo artistry, Chandler Burr. It was exquisite. While he was there, before Chandler performed his artistic gyrations on the head of his penis, he’d had them jack it up a bit. A pump job; he’d gone from an above average seven and a half inches of turgid male tumescent meat, to ten and a half glorious inches of dinosaur sausage. Not only did they pump up the length, but they had doubled the radius. When Vogel left The End of the Trail, he was a goddamned T. Rex in the genital department -- with a yellow, purple and black male monarch butterfly gracing the tip of his bloated phallus. Vogel’s ladylove and live-in nymphomaniac, Drusilla Seville, a somewhat renowned poet of the newly resurrected romantic school, declared both Vogel’s enlarged sex piston and its winged salience, “super-duper.” Indeed, Drusilla had been so inspired

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that she had trimmed her thick thatch of black pubic hair into the shape of a daisy, its yellow center being supplanted by her labia. This, so that Vogel’s monarch should feel “right at home” inside her twat. Reaching out tentatively, Vogel touched the replicated door, fully expecting his hand to mesh right through it. But it didn’t. There was really a door there. Vogel shook his head to himself. These things were great. You could build a planet, if you wanted to. It was an outrage, of course, that someone had attempted to break into a guest’s room. This was the L’Oreal Hilton, for Christ’s sake! However, such irregularities happened more often than anyone associated with the Hilton cared to admit, even to themselves, or to other employees. Only Maintenance and Continuance knew exactly how often they occurred. Fortunately, this time no one was hurt, nothing was stolen. In fact, the guest had been out when it transpired. And with luck, he would never know that anything had happened. Vogel powered down the Surg-One rhizome cube, picked up the assembler unit and walked away. He went back to his office, where he entered the door replication as routine maintenance in his daily log, thus erasing any stain on the unblemished chronicle of the L‘Oreal Hilton. Some coffee-colored big tailored bitch, sitting on the edge of his bed. She smiled at him, hefting her Abbatram Projac just a bit, but didn’t point it straight at him. Glancing across the room, she lifted her chin an inch, directing his attention to another female figure, standing near the bathroom door. This one was slender, youngish, with short dark hair. Dressed for snow skiing. But maybe that was his head affecting his eyes. She looked vaguely familiar, but whoever she was, he couldn’t place her.

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“Don’t just stand there,” said Gretchen. “Have a seat. I mean, it is your suite.” Tilly sat down on a pastel green camp couch, just next to the door. “I’m Gretchen Dieter,” said Gretchen. “And that’s Renata. You can just think of us as bill collectors.” She smiled widely, revealing perfect white teeth.

Big Daddy’s cube snapped softly, three times, then beeped a high-pitched tone. He said, “Venture forth.” Instant transition, the screen icon strobing for his attention. He clicked on it. The Queen Mother appeared on the screen, and someone else, though at first he couldn’t make her out. “Who is there with you?” the Queen Mother began, but there was a noise behind her. A kind of hissing sound. “You are an interesting young male,” said another voice unlike any Big Daddy had heard, a convoluted, attenuated dry hiss that sounded almost random in aspect. “Male,” it said again, and then there was a laugh. “That’s Scythia,” Lexi said, and Big Daddy realized Lexi was now seated beside him. “She is the Queen Mother’s tech. She is very skilled.” A face appeared on the screen for a second. The mouth drawn and petulant. Big Daddy didn’t like this at all. “Why is she here?” he asked Lexi. “Because your maleness is floundering,” said Scythia, the Ow dipthong in ‘floundering’ a polyphonic sibilant. “I’m here to save your male ass.” Again, the laughter. “The woman with you,” the Queen Mother said. “Did you arrange for her to meet you there?”

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“No,” said Big Daddy. “She checked with FL aircab, that’s how she found us.” “Who is the woman?” The Queen Mother’s anime eyes were bright and earnest on the screen, but her tone was harsh. Funny, too, Big Daddy soliloquized with himself, how now all of sudden, she can speak English. How convenient. “Mattie,” said Big Daddy. “Her friend’s with those hugger muggers. The things they want are in my case here.” “What things?” “Mattie says they’re series encoders.” “Doubtful,” said the Queen Mother. “Tell it to the hugger muggers.” “But you have it? What they want is there with you?” “Yes.” The Queen Mother grimaced, vanished from the screen. “Where’d she go?” “This changes the situation,” Lexi said. “You didn’t inform us of what you carry.” “You didn’t ask me! You never asked me why they were looking for me…” Lexi merely shrugged, looking calm. “We weren’t certain it was you they were after. Any posse would be eager for the technical skills of someone like Scythia, for example. They know of her abilities. We were only looking to protect our order.” “Now you tell me!” “It is out of my hands now,” Lexi said. “Others are presently involved. The Queen Mother is concerned now for the safety of the order, you understand? The penalty for what you are carrying is stringent. The order is now vulnerable to ISCA interference.”

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“I don’t think you need to worry about the ISCA at this juncture. In fact, I think we need to let them know. Mattie says those hugger mugger’s kill us, if they find us.” “Forget about contacting the ISCA. What you are carrying is highly criminal,” said Lexi. “Well, pardon me,” said Big Daddy. “But I think I’d rather be arrested than dead.” Lexi thought about that. Big Daddy’s cube screen filled with the face of Scythia. Her features snapped into focus as her eyebrows shot up. “Series encoders? In your case?” “Yes,” said Big Daddy. “Bring it to your cube,” Scythia instructed. Big Daddy reached for the gray fictile container, held it in his lap in front of the screen. “One moment,” said Scythia, vanished from the screen. Then reappeared. “I scanned it,” she said. “Immediate indentification as Kelle-Detteras primary filament programming module. It is the most recent version. Proscribed under Elegant String law. Illegal possession carries an automatic death sentence.” “Death?” Big Daddy stammered. “Yes,” said Scythia, apologetically. Big Daddy looked at the object in his lap. “Well, fuck me,” he said, his tone one of intense respect.

“Life’s a bitch, ain’t it, Mr. Shank? A cliché, I know, but so very fitting, isn’t it? Because it’s so descriptive of your situation. Cliches work because they’re so graphic.” Tilly just rubbed his head.

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“You look like shit. What have you been doing?” asked Gretchen. “Having dinner at Jesus Mountain,” he said. “What’s that? A religious club, a restaurant?” She didn’t know, he thought, which meant she didn’t know where he’d been, earlier. Which meant they hadn’t been watching him here. “What’s this all about? You want to tell me now?” She smiled at him. “May I call you Tilly?” “Gretchen: fuck you.” She laughed. “We have now come full circle, Tilly. Godogma’s Wheel has turned and turned again, same place, different aspect, though.” “How’s that?” “Remember Vegas Lohan? Edward James Olmos? Well now you are where they were. So…let’s talk.” “About what?” “About what you can do for me. I was going to just kill you. But now I’ve got a job offer for you. A little moonlighting, you might say.” Gretchen smiled once more. She was enjoying this. Getting up off the bed, she moved a few feet to Tilly’s right, never taking her eyes off him. A chiming sound made everyone jump a little. “You’d better take it,” said Gretchen, walking over to the dresser, then back to him with the phone. “Yes?” “We have located a simstim of Nerina.” It was Don Cesario. “You can access it now.”

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“Where are you?” “In the limo.” “Look. I’m kind of busy right now, not feeling too well. Could it wait?” “Wait?” Don Cesario sounded horrified. Tilly glanced up at Gretchen Dieter. She was wearing some gray and black outfit. Her hair radiated out of her head like a dark nimbus. “It’ll be while. I’ll call you when I’m feeling better.” He switched off before Don Cesario could respond. Actually, Gretchen was not wearing some gray and black outfit. In point of fact, she was caparisoned in a silk taffeta analog velvet coat, with stripes under the collar, by Etro, in a color that was described as tattletale gray. Underneath the coat she wore a black triple ruffle silk taffeta analog shirt. Gabardine stretch wool analog dress trousers, also in black, hugged her hypertrophied legs. And the finishing touch was the paisley belt, gray suede strap analog, with jeweled buckle. The expression provided was what Gretchen thought of as ‘nasty-cunt’ semiotic. “Who was that?” asked Gretchen. “Concierge.” “Like shit it was.” “What is it you want? What’s the deal?” “Magico. I want him. I want to know what he’s doing. I want to know what he thinks he’s doing, trying to fuck some Nastic.” “Marry,” Tilly said. Her smile vanished. “Look asshole, I don’t quibble with the hired help.” “You want me to spy on him.”

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“Call it research.” “Whatever you say,” said Tilly. Then added, “You want me to set him up?” The smile reappeared. “Don’t get hasty on me.” “And I get?” “To live a little longer. Fair enough?” “I doubt it. When you’re done with me, I’m sure I’ll be retired, shall we say.” Tilly looked straight at her. “It’s your call, asshole. Do as I ask, get me what I require, maybe we can reach some kind of accomodation.” “That simple, huh?” “That simple.” The door chimed. “That’ll be for me,” Gretchen said. She got up, left the room. At the door she touched a button, a face appeared on the simstim. She opened the door. It was Rita, all in white, with all her nails done in L‘Oreal Candent White. “My sister, Rita,” Gretchen said, back in the bedroom. “A huge pleasure, I’m sure,” said Tilly, gazing reverently at her massive thighs and buttocks. “Why isn’t this fuckhead dead?” Rita asked of her sister, glaring. “I’ve got a use for him,” said Gretchen. “We might be making a move up the food chain soon.” “What?” said Rita, looking from Gretchen’s face to Tilly‘s, to Renata‘s. She didn’t get it. “I’ll explain later,” said Gretchen. She handed Tilly a translucent filament with

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nothing on it but a number. “Call me. Within ten hours. A simple yes or no.” “I have a choice?” “Not really. But it’s more amusing to think of it that way, isn’t it?” She reached down with her left hand and drew the gray-lacquered nail of her forefinger down the bridge of his nose. “Ta-ta.” Turned and walked out. Tilly sat there, rubbing his head. The phone chimed again. It was Don Cesario.

“We have to do something,” said Mattie, punctuating her words with a quick striking motion. “We have to take the initiative and attack.” They were still in the room at Mrs. Warren’s. “Attack?” Lexi’s eyes glinted as brightly as ever, but her voice betrayed her tension. “Attack who?” “We need to find a way to take the fight to them before they come to us,” Mattie said, solemnly. “If we do nothing, we’re going to die.” “You,” said Lexi, “are the reason we are in this mess to begin with. You are the one who fucked up!” “Look, you chaste cow,” said Mattie, finding her anger flaring. “Vance and those 7-11 slinks are going to slice your tits off. Then they’re going to fuck you raw in every hole of your body. And then they’re going to pluck your heart out, right from between those dried up tits of yours. So you’d better stop and think about what we’re gonna’ do.” “Mattie, please,” Big Daddy begged. “She hasn’t done anything except help me! So ease up, okay?”

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Mattie snorted. “Don’t push too hard,” she said to Lexi. “We’re in deep shit here and the wierdness is getting way out of control.” “She’s right about that,” said Big Daddy, looking at Lexi. “It’s getting pretty bizarre. Like when I slipped, the entities I tried to contact weren’t there. Something’s wrong somewhere.” “Your drugged out visions are what’s weird,” replied Lexi. “You wanna’ talk about weird, just listen to yourself.” She looked away, muttered something under her breath that sounded like “fucking fruitcakes.” “What about the Queen Mother and that Scythia chickette?” asked Big Daddy, trying to make his point. “I mean, they just opt into any cube they want. And yes, I understand that technically it can be done, but it’s not supposed to happen. DatElegant has defenses precluding that kind of thing.” As if on cue, Big Daddy’s cube snapped and chimed again. “Venture forth,” said Big Daddy. Then realized the cube was still on, that he hadn’t shut it down. A spikey cloud of light filled the screen, increasing in resolution. Shifting, overlapping planes like ghosts of broken glass. Iridescent insects whirled across the snowy panorama. A figure in a long white coat moved toward the screen across the patchwork glass, snow was falling around it; it left footprints as it walked nearer. Lexi and Mattie were staring over Big Daddy’s shoulders at the screen. The screen bristled with menace. Behind the advancing figure, Mattie saw the facades of broken glass vanish behind curtains of falling snow. “Turn it off,” whispered Mattie. Big Daddy saw the world of snow that had swallowed up everything but the figure

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abruptly contract, shrink. The features of the figure became those of Nerina Palotta, the Nastic. “You can’t turn it off,” said the Nastic. “Not until I say so.”

Lucinda was waiting for him by the gravity lift, on the lowest level of the L’Oreal Hilton’s parking structure. She’d changed clothes. Jeans and a leather analog Siske jacket, which made her look competent, and a little enticing. “You look like shit,” she said. The ceiling of the parking structure was low, and hung thick with conduit and cables. Lamps of bioluminescent material were mounted on black argonite support pillars, and the motionless air was heavy with the poached smell of hydrazine engines. Ranks of aircars glittered like resting insects. “Don Cesario thought it was important,” Tilly said. “It is,” she said. “We’re hoping that whoever filtered the previous ones you saw doesn’t know about this one. Yet.” “Okay. Let’s get going.” “Well, you don’t look very well.” He walked along beside her toward a door at the side of the structure. “Where’s Magico?” “Taussig let him go back to his suite. His security people didn’t find anything. This way.” She opened the door into a small storage room. It was full of the black modules and rhizome cubes that he’d already seen and tried to use. Another tech was there, jacking cables into modules. “Here,” Lucinda said, indicating a chair. “Have a seat.”

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Don Cesario appeared, pushing his glasses up his nose. These were rimmed, though. “You can access her simstim in the same manner as before, Tilly. And hopefully, this time there will be dimensionality to it, personalization. No filtering.” Lucinda handed Tilly the heavy glasses. “Have a look-see,” she said. “If it’s useless, then we’ll forget it.” Tilly settled himself in the chair and put the glasses on. Nothing. He closed his eyes. Then heard a humming sound as the glasses came on line. He opened his eyes to the same room he’d seen earlier. Suddenly, there she was. Almost naked, except for bra and panties. The baffling organic complexity of the female form. “Something’s --” he began to say, but then he was somewhere else. It was a place, but not like one he’d ever seen. Shadows dance on fibrous walls. Candlelight? He couldn’t tell. The floors were white with something like powder, spread soft as if on purpose. His line of sight went to the adjoining room, past a white sofa like thing and more white flakes of powder. He saw windows, where snowflakes, large and ornate, fell without haste past the panes, if that’s what they were. They were more like translucent screens or monitors than windows. “What are you seeing?” Lucinda. Far away. He didn’t try to answer, watching as his line of sight turned back. Moving down a hallway, where the walls were the same translucent screens, snow falling behind them. He thought of the Bight of Leo, where it was always cold and snowing. But there was no sensation of cold or of warmth here. Another room. Looking in, he saw Nerina Palotta. Seated on a white chair, which

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was seated on a sea of white, her head and bare shoulders above a white gown that fluffed and puffed as if joined to her rather than being worn by her. “Mr. Shank,” she said. “You dined with us this evening, but we didn’t have an opportunity to talk. This saddened me. Then the evening was cut short.” He stared at her, waiting for the whooshing nausea, but she only returned his stare, nothing enveloped him. “Why are you here?” In the distance he heard Lucinda say, “Tilly, what’s happening?” “This is my home,” Nerina said. “On Nastic. Isn’t it glorious? But you already know that, don’t you? You’ve seen it before.” She smiled. She was beautiful here, suspended in the whiteness. He hadn’t been able to really look at her while at Jesus Mountain. “I had an intuition of it before,” he said, “when I first saw you. But it wasn’t like this.” “This perspective is much better, isn’t it? Much better. Erected by myself, just for myself, my friends.” She gaze with delight at the room. Beside her, on a small table, was a twelve inch white shard, standing on its flat end, a blue orb hovering over its needle tip. “I feel very close to you here,” she said. By the way she enunciated you, softly, yet not affectionately really, he guessed she meant humans. “I’d feel better if you let me go back,” Tilly said. “To your simstim? Your science and technology? They are nothing.” “Please. So I can do my job.” “Oh. Yes,” she said, smiling at him, and he was looking at her in Magico’s suite

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again. “Tilly?” Lucinda said, touching his arm. “Who are you talking to?” “The Nastic,” Tilly said. “In the simstim?” asked Don Cesario, incredulously. “No. She was there. I don’t know how. She was in her tower on Nastic. Said I’d seen it before. Then I asked her to let me go back.” “Back where?” Lucinda asked. “Here,” Tilly said, staring into Magico’s suite.

He admonished himself to remember: don’t force it, don’t focus, just let it happen. He entered the Magico’s suite through the simstim glasses. Watching her move about, doing this and that, stopping to smell a bouquet of flowers sent up by the L’Oreal Hilton, taking a sip of water from a tumbler, seating herself on Magico’s lap. She appeared human in every detail, but not so, too. It was all fanatically accurate, but always assembled around some hollow armature of sham. He could see her humanity, not as an innate substance, but as a paradoxical fixture which had been absorbed and quantified. “This is my favorite,” Tilly heard her say, and then he was watching them look through digitons, pictures of somewhere they had gone together. “Mine, too,” said Magico, and he began to speak of their wedding plans. Lucinda’s hand was on his shoulder, her voice tense. “Tilly? Sorry, but we need you back here now. Something’s happening.”

Big Daddy was staring at the screen of his cube. The Nastic was talking, telling

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them of her home, her travels, as she stood in a snowstorm. Then a small blue snake appeared in the upper corner of the screen, then another, this one turqoise. The Nastic said she loved snakes. She had Lexi’s hair now; it made her look like a parody, like a small child playing dress up. She seemed to like her long coat, too, because she kept twirling to flare the lower edge out. “I’ve seen so many new and wonderful things,” she said, smiling at them, “met so many very interesting humans.” So have I, mused Big Daddy, but none of them quite like you. “They told me it would be like this, but until you do it, you don’t grasp what they’re telling you.” She twirled again. “I am more now than ever before… Do you feel that way, too?” Mattie emitted a snort of disgust. “Gah! This bitch is all fucked up,” she whispered. “Who does she think she’s kidding?” “Mattie!” Big Daddy said. Then all at once, to Nerina, “I haven’t really been anywhere except here, and Judaic. And so far, I don’t like it much.” “Why,” said Nerina, sounding sad. “Well,” said Big Daddy, “for one thing…” Then he stopped short. “Look, how are you able to access my cube like this? It’s not supposed to happen.” “I didn’t know,” said Nerina. “However, I go anywhere I want to.” “Where are you now?” asked Big Daddy. “In Seattle,” said Nerina. “My place of dreams.” “Why are you talking to this, this thing? She’s not real, just a make-believe human,” said Mattie, all grim and sullen sounding. “What do you want, you synthetic

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bitch?” Nerina looked at Big Daddy, sadly. Then she was gone, slowly draining from the screen, vanishing into the snow. “Mattie,” said Big Daddy, “please don’t…” Sensing something behind him, he turned. Dark eyes looked into his. Vance smiled. Mattie sucked in a huge breath prepatory to screaming, and another hand, not one of Vance’s, but large and light blue, with perfectly manicured black fingernails, covered her mouth and nose. Mattie dropped her cigarette from her fingers. Lexi stepped back a pace. Looking at Lexi, Vance raised a forefinger to his lips, smiled, and said, “Shhhh.” Then stepped over beside Lexi. He took something small and translucently yellow from his pocket, touched it to Lexi’s neck. Lexi’s muscles seemd to relax all at once, and she slumped sideways, falling to the yellow shag carpet, perfectly still. Vance turned back to Big Daddy, staring at him hard. “Where is it?” he said.

Lucinda offered Tilly a paper analog cup with coffee in it. Beyond her, outside the now open door, was the Scion limo. Dial waited beside it, in a black Naomi suit, his bald pate glinting in the light. He had his High-Liter in his right hand. “What’s he want?” Tilly asked Lucinda, tasting the hot coffee. It was strong and sugary tasting.

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“I don’t know yet,” said Lucinda. “But apparently Magico told him where to find us.” “Magico?” “That’s what he said. You see,” said Lucinda, not meeting his gaze with her own, “Magico thinks we’re…you and I, that is…are --” “Lovers?” said Tilly smiling. “Yes,” said Lucinda, looking up at him in a funny way, like she wondered what he thought about the idea, in a real, physical sense. “So he doesn’t know, just like Dial doesn’t know,” said Tilly, circling his forefinger at ear level, encompassing everyone and everything in the room, “that I work for you guys. And since you guys work for Magico, at the end of the day I work for him, too.” Even Tilly didn’t know if it was a question or a statement, or just some conditional clause hanging in limbo. Don Cesario appeared at Tilly’s shoulder. His rimmed glasses made him look out of place. “Dial is Taussig’s assistant, in a sense. He, too, is employed by the Centennial conglomerate. He wants to speak with you.” “I thought it was imperative that I get a handle on the Nastic, view the simstim.” “Yes, it is,” said Don Cesario, “but I think you should speak with Dial right now.” No one could have guessed that Dial had recently been in Jesus Mountain, with exploding dirt flying every which way and screaming beautiful people around him. Tilly wondered if he’d gone hugger-mugger hunting, like Taussig. Recalling Lucinda’s filament and that of Gretchen Dieter, he said, “I’m sorry, I don’t have a filament with my name and numbers on it.”

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“It makes no difference,” Dial said, in precise, oddly accented English. He shook Tilly’s hand. Dial was tall, muscular in a slender, deceptive way, bald. He eschewed any kind of tailoring, physical or sartorial. His motto was, “You run what you brung.” Dail hailed from Barytone, or so he claimed, a small, no-nothing, ghetto planet in the Elegant String. At the age of eighteen, he’d been recruited by the ISCA because of a monograph he’d written, Fear: Concept and Function. Written while he was attending the Epipsychidian Forum on Barytone, it excited interest in the ISCA from its opening paragraph: “…to produce the maximum effect, one must identify and intensify those basic dreads already extant within the subject. It is a mistake to regard the fear of death as the most extreme fear. A dozen other types are even more poignant, such as: “Fear of inability to protect a loved one. “Fear of disesteem. “Fear of noisome contact. “Fear of fear itself. “The goal is to produce a nightmare quality of dread or fright, and to maintain it over an appreciable period. A nightmare, of course, is the direct result of the sub-conscious exploring its most sensitive areas, and thus serves as an index for the operative. Once an apparently sensitive area is defined, the operator emphasizes and dramatizes this fear, then augments it by orders of magnitude. For example, if the subject suffers vertigo, the operator removes the subject to the base of a cliff, attaches the subject to a fragile cord, slowly raising the subject up the face of the cliff. Scale must be emphasized, along with the tantalizing but infeasible possibility of clinging to the vertical surface. The lifting

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mechanism should be programmed to falter and jerk. To intensify claustrophobic dread, the subject is conveyed into a narrow tunnel, inserted head-first at a downward angle. Thereafter the tunnel is filled behind the subject, slowly.” To the ISCA’s Psychological and Neurological Initiative Squad chirpy gauchos, Dial’s monograph was the equivalent of mental masturbation. They really got off on it. After training and indoctrination, Dial was attached to the Psychological and Neurological Initiative Squad, which was informally referred to by the rest of the ISCA as the “PeNIS boys.” Dial spent five years with PeNIS, then resigned because of “other business interests.” Anyway, that’s what he told the ISCA. In reality, he thought the PeNIS boys were “a bunch of psychopathic pussies, afraid of their own latent and suppressed sexual fantasies.” Translation: they were a bunch of squeaky pips who couldn’t get their rocks off unless their sexual partner was, literally, scared to death. Subsequently, Dial vanished for two years. When he reappeared, it was as bodyguard and pilot for La Femme de Chrome, the metallicized feral, female leader of the lesbian hugger mugger posse known as Pussy Galore. No one, including the Pussy Galore pussies, could fathom why La Femme de Chrome had hired a male as her personal bodyguard and pilot. After La Femme de Chrome’s Gotterdamerung on Rigel 2, Dial had again vanished, and once again reappeared, this time in the employ of the Centennial Institute. “I realize you must be very busy,” Dial said. We appreciate your taking the time to confer with us.” The plural pronoun we caused Tilly to look around, wondering who the other half of we was. “Now,” Dial said to Don Cesario, “if you would excuse us…” Don Cesario turned and walked back into the room, where Lucinda, without pretense, was

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watching them from just inside the door. Dial opened the door of the limo aircar for Tilly, who climbed in. Dial got in from the other side. When the door shushed behind him, they were insulated. “Don Cesario told us that you have a unique gift,” Dial said. “That’s true,” said Tilly. “We would like you to look at something,” he said. And the Nastic, Nerina, appeared on the screen in front of them, smiling. “Have you found peace with your friends and devices, Mr. Shank? When you left me on Nastic, I was so sad.” He looked into her eyes on the screen. What sort of technology did it take to make this happen, something that could be anywhere it/she wanted to be? “I thought I had,” he said. “What did you see, at dinner, that prevented you from looking at me?” “Snow,” Tilly said. “Tall spires, mountains of strange shape. I assumed it was a dream.” “Dreams,” Nerina said. “Yes, that is your gift, is it not? You see things as if in a dream, things that come true. That’s what Don Cesario said.” Don Cesario said? “I make no pretense at understanding it,” Tilly said. “It’s simply what I do.” “A great gift,” said Dial. “We are very lucky to have crossed paths. And we are lucky, too, that Don Cesario, who, although in the employ of Exo Exports, has a discerning mind.” “It is my understanding that Taussig is not very happy about Magico and…” Tilly

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nodded toward the screen and the Nastic. “He might be unhappy that I am speaking with you.” “Taussig loves Magico, too,” said Nerina. “It is fear that motivates him in this instance. Fear of that which he does not understand. Magico and I are already one. When Taussig sees and understands that, things will change. And with that, you can help us, Mr. Shank.” “Me?” “Don Cesario has explained to us that you are in the employ of Taussig,” said Dial, “and what you are trying to do. What we are proposing is that you utilize your gift in another way. To aid rather than hinder. We propose that you work for us, rather than against us.” Tilly could intuit something emanating from the screen, as he looked at her. Lots of something. His sixth sense ramped into overdrive, charging the reoptic area of his brain with zippy nihilistic sound bites and rapid, fleeting images. Concrescence point. He felt it, suddenly; then realized what it was. It was an emanation wickedly noxious and bizarre, with an extra-anthropomorphic ersatz tang. Something unbelievably malevolent. Her eyes looked back at him, filled with something like kindness, perhaps even gentleness. “Will you help us, Mr. Shank? Will you work with us?” “Listen,” said Tilly, “I just do what I was hired for. I’ll do it if Don Cesario tells me to. However, I’d like to ask a question if you don’t mind?” “Anything you like,” said Dial. “What’s going on?” The austerity of the question surprised even Tilly, who had made up his mind to disguise the question, approach it obliquely.

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Dial’s mild eyes gazed at him. “It’s about becoming, Mr. Shank.” “Becoming?” “Yes,” said Nerina. “About me becoming human, in a very real sense. I have much to offer the cultures of the Elegant String, and vice versa. My offerings are beyond simple technological advances. They involve the evolution of humanity itself.”

Tilly sat drinking the coffe Lucinda had given him. Tilly, sitting on the chair in the little room beside the monitors and rhizome cube, looked at Don Cesario over the rim of his cup. “What ever possessed you, Don Cesario? To tell her what Taussig is doing? You want us to both end up dead, or what? Taussig likes to gut people with that big Hibben knife of his, and you’re making deals with that Nastic cow?” Don Cesario stood opposite him, blinking through his glasses. “I am not making deals,” Don Cesario said. “Magico and Nerina are partners now. Magico has informed her of everything, all his enterprises, intents and goals. He did this without anyone’s knowledge.” He shrugged. “Now she makes most of the decisions as well. This needs to come to some type of conclusion. Taussig is more convinced than ever that she has somehow beguiled Magico, and that much more is transpiring. The attack by the hugger muggers in the restaurant…” “Which took place because of…?” “I have no idea. A power play? They wished to kill Magico? Whatever the cause, it was carried off in an amateur manner, but Taussig says that is the tag of posse boys.” “You don’t imagine that Taussig is going to eviscerate us, if we do this?” “No. We are employed by Exo-Exports, which is Magico. But Taussig is

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employed by the Institute. If Magico tells us to do something, we must do it.” “Even if Taussig thinks it jeopardizes Magico himself?” Don Cesario shrugged, pushed his glasses up his nose.

“No sound,” said the man who held Mattie, and then he took his hand away from her mouth. “Where is it?” Vance’s dark eyes. “There,” said Big Daddy, gesturing. He could see the edge of the gray shape sticking out of his case. Then he saw that Mattie had seated herself on the edge of the red shag bed. Vance moved to the case. He bent over it, peered closely at it without touching it. “It’s here,” he said. “Yazzoo,” said the other man. His hand was now on Big Daddy’s shoulder. “Yes, that’s it,” Vance said. “Don‘t move.” The hand left Big Daddy’s shoulder and the man went to join Vance, peering into the case. He was taller and very young, and wore a blue shirt and blue pants, with a yellow scarf around his neck, tied in a triangular shape. Sharp bones in his face, short blonde hair with diamond shapes cut into it. “Are you sure?” “Yes, I’m sure, Tricycle…” Tricycle was the de facto leader of the Chiquita Banana Boy Scout posse. He was a one-eyed chain-smoking, boozehound, pillhead, and killer, usually stoned on corydane, a compound of aspirin and amphetamines. A blonde head who drank blonde beer, liked blonde ice cream cones, and had no qualms about cutting off your head. Even for the Boy

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Scouts he was a very odd duck indeed. His ego-boundaries dissolved in a fog of low-cunning, moist resentment, and semi-rationalizing spin rinse. His only redeeming feature was this: he liked rainbows. His real name was Maxim Kubaykowski. No one knew where he came from. The Boy Scouts, though, were in favor of incest and cannibalism. Hank Gaalswyk, noted expert on hugger muggers, in The Mammoth Book of Hugger Muggers and Posses, had written, “It is a remarkable experience for an observer to watch a pair of posse boys, strangers to each other, appraising each other for status. The operation requires no more than an instant, and appears almost intuitive, for the persons concerned are usually wearing posse regalia. “I have questioned many posse members in this matter, and can still make no definite assertions. In the first place, most posse members blandly deny the existence of status, and consider their posse completely anarchical. In the second place, the posse members themselves are not quite sure how they divine the status of a stranger. He either has more of the quality known as wobbly than oneself, or less. I have theorized that rapid unconscious and almost undetectable eye movements are the key to the assessment of wobbly, with characteristic shifts or steadiness indicative of status. Body language may play a similar function.” The man in blue, which looked like some kind of uniform, rose, glanced at Mattie, then turned back to Vance. “Why is your cunt here, Vance?” “Jesus,” Vance said. “You said that this one and your cunt were not in tune. You said it was luck. Luck that your cunt is here?”

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Vance looked from Mattie to Tricycle to Big Daddy. “Why the fuck is she here?” Like it was Big Daddy’s fault. “She just showed up,” Big Daddy said. “She said she had connections with FL aircab.” “Yazzoo,” said Tricycle, his one good eye glazed over by corydane. “Not possible. We have links at FL. Too much luck.” “Look,” said Vance. “We’ve got it. That’s all that matters.” Tricycle pulled at his buttocks, as though he had an itchy rectum. “Not possible,” he repeated. “The modules are ours. This speaks of trickery.” “Tricycle,” said Vance, very calmly, “even you must realize that joint ventures like this require a certain amount of trust.” The posse boy thought about it through a haze of amphetamine buzz. “No,” he said. “We tracked this one to Exo-Exports. Now your cunt is here. What’s coming down, Vance? I sent Chiquitas to that club last night, and they got chewed up.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Big Daddy said. “I wasn’t even there, wherever you’re talking about. Mattie put that module in my case when I was sleeping.” Lexi moaned, breathed raggedly, and appeared to go back to sleep. Vance still had the dermi-blast in his hand. “You need more?” he asked Lexi, tense and angry. “Vance,” Mattie said from the bed, “you little prick…” She was sitting on the red shag, a cigarette in her lips, and a Winston High-Liter in her hands, pointing it straight at Vance. Vance went motionless. You could see him play statue. “Luck,” said Tricycle, spitting out the word.

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“Jesus, Mattie,” Vance said. “Where the fuck did you get that?” “From a guy I know,” she said. “Told me the exit hole is four inches in diameter…” Mattie didn’t sound like she was kidding. And something in her eyes told Big Daddy she was some very scary kind of serious. “You think you can just treat people like shit, Vance? Then toss them aside?” She stood up, the High-Liter straight out from her shoulders, just like in the simstims. Vance still had the dermi-blast in his hand. “Tell him to drop that thing, Mattie!” Big Daddy said, urgency in his voice. “Drop it,” Mattie said, and the way she said it, you could tell she enjoyed saying it, and that she meant what she said. Vance dropped it. “Push it over to me.” The dermi-blast wound up in Big Daddy’s shirt pocket. “You unappreciative, mustard-cutting prick,” Mattie said. “Get in there,” gesturing with the High-Liter to the bathroom. She moved around so the Winston High Liter’s muzzle was pointing at Vance and Tricycle, but with the open bathroom door behind them. “Look, Mattielicious. I realize you’re angry --” “Fuck you, Vance. Now both of you. Get in there.” Vance took a pace backward, his palms up in what he probably thought was a posture of harmony. The Boy Scout took a step back too. “Five fucking years,” Mattie said. “Five goddamn years. When I met you, you were a loser. Who had the money? Who paid the bills then? Who bought your fancy-schmancy clothes? You and your mod-hi-rez image. You cock-sucking piece of shit!” Mattie’s hands were shaking now, just enough to make her look even more dangerous.

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“Mattie,” Vance said, “you know I appreciate you and all you’ve done for me. I’ve never forgotten how much I owe you, Mattielicious, never. We can work this out, if we just sit down, Mattielicious, and talk to each other. If you’ll just put that fucking High-Liter down, then we can communicate with each other, like we used to --” “Fuck you, Vance!” Mattie screamed, as loud as she could. Vance froze in place. “Five fucking years,” Mattie said, repeating like it was a mantra, “five fucking years and three of the five here, Vance. Flitting all over the fucking galaxy for you, Vance, and then coming back. And it sucks here, Vance…” Tears flowed down her perfect-Slavic-replica-tailored cheeks. “Get in there, Vance.” She took a step forward, Vance and the Boy Scout took two steps back. Big Daddy pulled the dermi-blast from his pocket, he wasn’t sure why. It was red and had a blue puff hypo on the end of it. It was feather light. “No matter how much I drank, what drugs I used, this place still sucked. And it always will…” Vance was through the doorway now, Tricycle behnd him, in the bathroom, and Big Daddy thought that was a mistake, because now they couldn’t see his hands. “And you’re the one who brought me here, Vance. To this shithole.” And she pulled the trigger on the Winston High-Liter. Eighteen Max Pack rounds left the weapon in eighteen nanoseconds, each traveling at a velocity of 5000 meters per second. Vance screamed, a strange animal sound that echoed off the walls of the bathroom, then caroomed out the doorway. All eighteen rounds missed, slamming into the frame of the doorway in an archivolt

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pattern, just above Vance’s head. Vance looked down at himself, checking for entry holes in his body. Laughing in a giddy, hysterical fashion, Vance, with a growl of rage, swatted the Winston High-Liter aside, grasped Mattie by her blonde hair with his left hand, smacking her in the face with an open-palmed right hand, shouting “Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!” in syncopation with the slaps. And that was when Big Daddy, without thinking about what he was about to do, or to whom he was about to do it, moved. Lunging forward, he jammed the blue puff hypo into Vance’s neck. It produced a whiffing sound. For an instant, Big Daddy didn’t know if it would work or not. But it did. Vance went down like a wet sock, right on top of Mattie. They looked like they were fucking in the missionary position on the floor, except they were both dressed, of course. A blur with skunk like hair flew past Big Daddy. It was Lexi, who hit a pressure synapse on the wall next to the bathroom door, which closed the door with a pfft! Pressing her thumb into the synapse to keep it activated, she looked over at Big Daddy and yelled, “Get out of here.” Big Daddy saw the door starting to jerk open, then jerk back closed, as Tricycle pushed on the antithetical synapse inside the bathroom. Simultaneously, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mattie roll the dead-weight of Vance off herself, rise, and reach for the Winston High-Liter. Touching a red button on the weapon, the reloading mechanism slotted another eighteen rounds of Max Pack into position. She aimed the High-Liter at the bathroom door, pressed the trigger.

Tilly still sat in the small room off the parking structure. He looked out the door

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way at the parked aircars. His head didn’t hurt quite as badly now, but the conversation with Dial and the Nastic, he couldn’t think of her as Nerina anymore, had left him more confused than before. If Magico and his Nastic syntho-woman were making decisions together, in tandem, and if Don Cesario was willing to acquiesce to them, then where did that leave him? He didn’t foresee Taussig having another personal revelation and being amenable to all this. As far as Taussig was concerned, the Nastic was still a caustic culturgen from Hell that needed to be mounted on the wall, by means of his Hibben knife. But Tilly realized now that the Nastic was more complex, more evil, than any entity from some Hell. And that all that ’becoming’ chitchat was a façade for something else. Lucinda walked through the doorway and sat down next to him on another chair. “I’ve got a friend on Taussig’s security squad. He says that Taussig ’interrogated’ one of the posse boys who tried for Magico last night.” “That’s what they wanted? Magico?” “I guess so. They call themselves the Boy Scouts, and they claim that Magico has something of theirs.” “What?” “He didn’t say.” She close her eyes and leaned her head down. “What happened to him? The one Taussig interrogated?” “I don’t know. And I don’t think I want to know.” She opened her eyes, sat up. “Would he do that? Torture someone? Kill him?” She turned and stared at Tilly. “Well,” she said, eventually, “that’s what he used to do, when he worked with the ISCA. You know what scares me most about Taussig?” “What?”

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“Sometimes I find myself liking him.” Don Cesario came in. “Are you going to view the simstim?” he asked. Tilly looked up at him, his rimmed glasses. He’d told Don Cesario and Taussig that he knew Tanya Roos was going to die. And now they thought, that somehow, he could predict the future. But he knew he couldn’t, not really. He could just see what was likely to happen from what was happening right now. Lucinda peered at him closely. “You okay?” “Yeah,” said Tilly, picking up the simstim glasses. “Let’s do it.” He put the glasses on, and that surreal metallic mandible of precognition overwhelmed him. In the simstim -- back in Magico’s suite. New textures appeared, floating in the room in front of him. He shut his eyes, trying to figure it out, rest for a moment. When he opened them again, there she was. The Nastic. Her features rimmed in white snow. She was looking at him. She wore only thong panties, white, her perfectly shaped breasts jiggled firmly as she walked toward him. He was hypnotized by her aureolae, the size of quarters, bioflavinoid pink and smooth as silk, the little caked nubbins of her nipples salient. And he let himself go into them, felt himself touch them, then pass through them, a kind of reverse suckling, then out the other side. “What --” he said, and there was a pause before he heard his own voice; like he was talking to himself from miles away. “Viewpoint,” the Nastic said. “The parallax point vierge.” He turned around, so that he was looking back at himself wearing the glasses, seeing himself seeing the data. He was in the data.

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And in the data wavered two lines of texture, Magico and the Nastic. They were intertwined, mingled, and growing geometrically. But near the end, out there somewhere, he saw it disintegrate. That would be the place, he knew, where something would happen. Someone would die. There, the Nastic’s data, her texture line, her life, vanished. But where it was mingled with Magico’s data, it was like Magico’s. The human thing. She was only human while with him. Then he was beside the Nastic, on the top of her spire, on her homeworld. Snow was everywhere, falling softly, quietly around them. He glanced at her. Still nothing on but the thong panties, the bare breasts thrusting out haughtily. “Can you see it?” she asked. Yes, he thought, staring at her pefect tear-drop breasts. “See what?” “Becoming. My life. His life, as we become one. I don’t have your sixth sense. You must tell me.” And she was gone, and the snow and those wonderful paps with her. “There,” her voice said, as if she was yet beside him. “What? Where?” “Mrs. Warren’s,” the Nastic said. “What is a series programming module?” “I don’t know,” said Tilly. “You just showed it to me! That is what I need. That is becoming.” “What are you looking at?” Tilly shouted. “How are you doing this?” But she was gone. So was the spire, the snow, all of it. Lucinda pulled the simstim glasses off his head. “Quit yelling, Tilly,” she said.

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Don Cesario was next to her. He took a deep breath, looked at his hands in his lap, sweat running down his forehead. “We need to go to Mrs. Warren’s,” he said. “What? Go where?” “What she wants is there. At Mrs. Warren‘s.”

When the Winston High-Liter ceased firing, Mattie dropped it. The door stopped trying to open. In fact, there was no sound at all from the bathroom. Mattie whipped around. Lexi was stuffing her yellow retriever into her handbag. Big Daddy’s case was on the yellow shag carpeted floor beside the red shag bed. The module still peeked out of the open top of the case. Big Daddy pulled the module out of the case, and tossed it on the bed. He bent to close the top of the case, but glanced back at the bathroom door when he thought he heard something. The hole-ridden door shushed aside. There stood Tricycle, de facto leader of the Chiquita Boy Scouts. Obviously, Mattie had missed again. Lexi, who’d been trying to get her shoes on, was staring at the hugger mugger too. She had two fingers stuck between her heel and her shoe on her left foot. “You are leaving?” the posse boy said. “It’s on the bed,” Big Daddy said. “I didn’t have anything to do with the whole operation.” Tricycle noticed the Winston High-Liter on the urine yellow shag carpet, next to the toe of his black DM Transgressor boot. Bending over, he picked it up, held it carelessly

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in his right hand. “This is a righteous weapon,” he said, admiration thick in his voice. Then, looking around the room as if seeing it for the first time, he added, “Yazzoo fucking mama. What the hell kind of place is this?” He showed Big Daddy his uneven teeth. “Look,” said Big Daddy. “We don’t want anymore trouble, okay? We just want to get out of here.” Tricycle stepped past Vance, who lay on the yellow shag carpet. He indicated the prostrate Vance, “You’re not with him? It was really just luck?” “Correctomundo,” Big Daddy said. He stepped closer to the bed, picked up the module. “You know what this is?” “No,” lied Big Daddy. “I don’t.” Tricycle looked at him. “Some luck is good, some luck is bad. Mostly, though, things just happen.” He touched the red button on the Winston High-Liter, activating the re-loading mechanism. The final eighteen rounds of Max Pack slotted into position. Big Daddy looked at his face. He looked like someone who was about to do something that he liked to do. But then he saw his eyes flicker past him, squinting, and he turned to see the door to the room slip aside. A man wider than the doorway seemed to flow into the room. There was an angry-red slashing scar across one of his cheeks, and he was wearing a long black coat. Big Daddy saw one huge hand slide inside his coat; the other hand held something thin and dark, some kind of filament. “Yazzoo mama,” said Tricycle, in surprise. The stranger’s hand emerged, holding something that looked to Big Daddy like a miniature crossbow, but then unfolded soundlessly, and apparently automatically, into a

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kind of dull gray mult-barreled canister. Big Daddy didn’t know it, but he was looking at what was called, technically, a Morgan Recycler NucO2, fabricated by Morgan Military Munitions. Morgan Military Munitions, or Triple-M, as it was more commonly known, was established one hundred and fifty years ago on Smade’s Planet. Originally called Morgan Precisions, it designed and manufactured precision instruments and micro-tools. Eighteen years after its inception, Triple-M started manufacturing singular ammunition for prototypical weapons. Discovering that munitions were more lucrative than precision instruments and micro-tools, Morgan Precisions became Triple-M twelve years later. Presently the company employed 21,000 people with a yearly turnover of 522 billion STU. Designed for military combat situations, the NucO2 fired water-nebulized capsules of heavy oxygen, which upon impact expanded laterally, slicing any object encountered, outside of certain argon amalgams, into two precise halves. Restricted to military use, it was highly illicit. “Whose mama?” said the broad man, who sounded very happy and pleased to be where he was. “Did you say something about my mama?” The red scar on his cheek seemed to throb. There were more scars on his bald skull. “No, man,” Tricycle said, lifting his hands up to shoulder height. “Just a figure of speech.” Another man stepped in, around the man with the Recycler, and this one had dark hair and wore a loose fitting black suit. Some kind of snake tattoo was partially visible on his muscular chest. His eyes were dark and mean looking. He had a long blue knife in each hand. They were custom-made Josh Smith knives: false full tang knives with file work all

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around; twelve inch ladder pattern Damascus blades, file worked Damascus guards with argon amalgam spacers. Big Daddy sat down on the bed. “Where is it?” Magico asked. No one answered. The man with the Morgan Recycler looked even happier now. He was smiling, his perfect white teeth a counterpoint to Tricycle’s. The man with the snake tattoo looked at Big Daddy. “Do you know where it is?” “What?” “The Detteras serial programming module…” Big Daddy stared. “It’s there, on the bed.” He reached down for it, turning it over in his hands. “This? This is what she wants?” “Sorry,” Tricycle said, “that’s mine.” He didn’t sound sorry to Big Daddy. Magico looked up, the programming unit held casually in his hand. “Yours?” Magico tilted his head to the side, like an animal that doesn’t understand. “Where’d you come by it?” Tricycle looked dazed in a haze, then focused. “We bought it. From him,” pointing to Vance. Magico looked at Lexi and Mattie, then Vance. “Is he dead?” “No,” said Big Daddy. “Drugged.” He held up the dermi-blast. Magico looked at Big Daddy. “Who are you?” “Emil Michelle,” he said automatically. “I’m from Judaic city. I work for

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Exp-Exports.” Magico’s brow went up. “Oh,” he said, and paused. “You do?” Big Daddy swallowed. “Yes, I do.” But Magico had turned to the hugger mugger. “I need this.” He raised the module. “How much do you want for it?” “Connie,” the big man with the bald head said, “this guy’s obviously a posse boy.” Big Daddy saw the dark eyes close, as if the man with the tattoo was struggling to control himself. When they opened, he said, “We’ll forget that for the moment. She wants it, so I’ll buy it.” “That’s crazy,” said the big man with the scar. Tricycle lowered his hands, slowly. “What were you going to do with this?” Magico asked him. Tricycle looked at the item in Magico’s hand, thinking, then looked up. Grinning wildly, he seemed to come to a decision. “Make ourselves rich,” he said. “Oh, Jesus,” Mattie said from the other side of the room. Then she puked all over the yellow shag carpet.

In her suite at the Revlon Hampton Hotel, Gretchen Dieter sat in a salmon colored overstuffed armchair. Just across from her, in a similar chair sat Buffalo Bill, nominal big cheese of the 7-11 posse, whose official motto was: “boys just wanna’ have fun.” For the occasion, Gretchen was caparisoned in a white cotton analog Marylin shirt, by Bogner, which, in Gretchen’s opinion, really showed off her glorious breasts, which were, she quite frequently thought to herself: a) pert, b) perky, c) firm, d) melons of

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luscious flesh, e) all of the above. Nothing like dazzling the soon-to-be-hired-help with her, as they used to put it so quaintly, “charms.” On her legs, Catlin Jean Too embroidered denim jeans, held in place on her svelte hips by a three inch wide leather analog belt, with a huge fucking silver and turqouise studded buckle, a semi-chaste semiotic. Riding her feet, an off-yellow-lime leather analog pair of custom made Stallion boots, with silver tipped flanges on the tips. She’d had her hair done three hours ago at Satanic Hair Therapists. Dreadlocks, which she’d always considered to be the epitome of all bad-ass semiotics, a grindingly mean look. Rita was seated next to her, kind of like an assistant’s position, to the left. A white Pima tank with eyelets graced her upper torso; it did nothing to accentuate her massive boobs. In fact, quite the opposite: two huge corvettes of tit meat swelled out from the sides of the tank, and her erect nipples pressed dangerously forward beneath the white fabric, as if they might burst free at any moment. Covering her meaty buttocks, a Hanna garden skirt, in what the manufacturer called ’dreamy painted flowers’ of some god awful pink and yellow shades. Advertised as providing ’a flattering fit’, it didn‘t. Not in Rita’s case. Like her sister, Rita had done the dreadlock thing; however, the semiotic imparted was far from grindingly mean on Rita’s head. Rather, it was more Medusa-like. At least that’s what Gretchen thought about it. So did Buffalo Bill, who as he sat looking at her, kept wiggling his toes in his black lug-soled DM Martinizer-boots, to see if they’d started to turn to stone yet, or not. Anyway, he thought it was stone you turned into when you looked at Medusa. Maybe it was salt -- a pillar of salt. No, that was some chick in the Bible. He couldn’t remember.

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Bill couldn’t believe he was sitting here with these two female nightmares. His real name was Theodore Weisengrund-Adorno. One of those hyphenated-coming-together-kind-of-names, where no one really knows what your name is. Buffalo Bill liked stalking little girls, around age ten or eleven, they were the best; he read teen magazines for sexual send-off, collected old Girl Scout manuals because of spicy chapters on sexual hygiene, read gun catalogs for reasons of professional enhancement -he’d read about that in some business magazine he’d found, called Fast Track, speaking of success and career fulfillment and all. And at the present moment he was jacked up on five doses of Superfly and barbiturates, which may have accounted for the turn-to-stone feeling he was experiencing. He had graduated to the exalted position of boss of the 7-11 posse, which numbered, all told, not counting any ancillary personnel or hanger-ons, two thousand one hundred and eleven psychopathic-psychotic individuals, by sponsoring such lucrative and entertaining concepts as: kiddie porn sex rings and pedophile cults, sodomy, rape, group sex, and quasi-satanic sacrifices, in which the participants utilized forks, spoons, screwdrivers, Lego blocks, black candles, and monster masks; blood-drinking, corpse-dumping, baby-eating, and the sacrifice of animals, especially bunny rabbits, which were to ritual-abuse loving hugger muggers what coercive interrogation techniques were to ISCA wet dreams. The 7-11’s even had their own website on DatElegant, a product line of mugs, caps, t-shirts, comic books, bestiality and bunny rabbit sacrifice simstims, prosthetic limbs and sex toys, and sex gels. The website did a consistently brisk business. Buffalo Bill was a mogul and captain of industry, he just didn’t know it.

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Besides being unreliable, he was obviously crazy. Which didn’t bother Gretchen too much, as long as he kept it under control, and didn’t start drooling or playing with himself in her presence. You could never tell with these hyperbolic hugger mugger types. Buffalo Bill, having been forewarned in his brief preliminary conversation with Gretchen, was dressed, so he thought, accordingly: Black Naples jacket in all-season wool/nylon analog, with ventless three-button front; black Naples trousers, with floating welt pockets and flat front. On the salesman’s advice, he’d almost gone with the double-reverse-pleated trousers, but thought they looked “puffy” on his upper thighs. So he’d told the salesman, “fuck that shit.” Underneath the Naples jacket he had on a black t-shirt that read: “Have you sucked my cock today?” Gretchen leaned forward, trying to establish a certain conversational intimacy, then caught herself. Conversational intimacy? With a doped-to-the-gills freak-o-naut? “Look, Bill,” she said, leaning back in her chair, “I may call you Bill, mayn’t I?” The reflective portion of Buffalo Bill’s frontal lobe attempted to consider the question, then gave up. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.” “Good,” said Gretchen. “Now. You’re probably wondering why I asked you here?” “Not really,” Bill said. “Probably to guzzle somebody. And my posse will be happy to fulfill your request, for a fee, yeah.” Rita rolled her eyeballs at her sister, who just shook her head. “That’s not why, Bill,” said Gretchen. “It‘s not nearly that simple. No. What I called this meeting for is this: I want to employ say, fifty or sixty of your posse members, as a kind of support group,

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a back-up force, for a little enterprise that I’m presently engaged in.” Bill, who had been staring at Gretchen’s tits, allowing the stereognostic function of his parietal lobe freeplay, was only half-listening. “Huh?” he said. “Jesus Christ!” spat Rita. “She wants you to back-up our own posse boys, the Frito Bandtios. If things go wrong, then you guys jump in, guns blazing at anyone who gets in the way. Got it?” “Oh, yeah,” replied Bill, looking now at the slices of tit meat oozing out of Rita’s shirt top. “Sure, we can do that. Better yet, why not let us go first, and have the fucking Frito boys back us up?” “That’s a good idea,” said Gretchen, sarcastically. She looked up as Renata entered the room, sat down noiselessly on a chair behind Bill about fifteen feet away. Her Projac was in her hand. “Okay, then,” said Bill. “7-11’s go first, Fritos as back-up bitches.” “Look,” said Gretchen. “No offense, but we’ll just go with my original plan. That way things won’t get complicated. You guys are back up. Now. What’s your usual fee for this kind of thing?” Bills’ corpus callosum was fritzing all over the place, thus negating any communication between his right and left lobes; however, his pituitary gland was ramped to maximum, as he stared at Rita’s locked-in-tight thighs. Jesus, he’d like to have those wrapped around him as he buffed her cunt. “Uh, for that many…about a million STU,” he said, starting to drool a little. He caught the spittle on the back of his right hand, wiping it across his cheek. Gretchen almost gagged as she watched him. “Get yourself under fucking control,”

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she snarled at him, looked sharply at Renata, who nodded almost imperceptibly. “A million STU is a little steep, isn’t it?” Buffalo Bill thought her initial command was some kind of hysterical-bitch-shit about the price. Puffing himself up, indignant, he said, “No fucking way. A million STU just for making an appearance. Three times that if we have to drop cock and dogfight.” He stared at her, forgetting about her titties, Rita’s inner thighs, for a second. Gretchen stared back, then snapped her fingers. “Okay,” she said. “But be sure your posse boys come heavy. Got it?” Bill nodded. “Saucerized and ready to fiddle. What we do best.” “Good,” said Gretchen. “Now. I want your chewiest boys; cloned up, jacked-up and rough and ready. Because it will more than likely get real critical.” “No problemo,” said Buffalo Bill. “Who’s the crash-test dummy?” Gretchen leaned way back in her chair, smiled darkly at the methed-out, detherapized, thought-intolerant creep in front of her. “Magico,” she said. Then waited. “Fuuuuck, bitch!” slurred Bill. “Magico? You are either toasty, or you got some big fucking ovaries in there.” He thought back to the time he’d cut open some chickette’s lower belly, just after he’d unloaded a gob of sperm in her cunt, pulled out her ovaries while she was still screaming. Holding them up for her to see, the little three-inch fallopian tubes dangling from them, he’d bitten into one of them, chewed the rubbery warm meat then swallowed it. That had been fun. “Magico,” repeated Gretchen. “And his whole complex. Now. Do you still want to come to the party?” This was the first Rita had heard of it, too. Her mouth was open, like a fish with

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dreadlocks. “Gretchen,” she whispered. “What the hell are you thinking? Magico? Jesus.” “Magico is the cult stud,” intoned Buffalo Bill. “The big psyclops. He ain’t no froggy-reborn-fetus. Just mention his name and most people get the blue-meanies. There is no way.” He threw up his hands in disbelief. “Look, pussy-boy,” said Gretchen, accentuating her words with a forefinger shucking the air, “Magico is just an image, an image propagated by the hypnotherapeutic media. His time has come. And we are going to swim up the phylogenetic ladder and replace him.” “Jesus, Gretch,” whispered Rita, who’d only understood the phrase his time has come, “this is crazy.” She was leaning forward now, peering closely at her sister. “No. No, it’s not, Rita,” Gretchen said. “First, surprise is on our side, he won’t be expecting anything. Second, rumor has it that he’s got some alien-implant-bitch under his skin, and he’s not quite himself.” She turned from Rita to Buffalo Bill. “So, Bill. Are you ready to do some non-fiction, or should I talk to the Stove Top Stuffing posse?” “Those enzymes?” scoffed Buffalo Bill. “Sheeeit! Me and my posse boys are already there. I’ll bring my moldiest, bitch. Wild men, missing links, wolf boys, zombies, witches and geeks. Wobbly, all of ‘em.” Leaning back, he threw a red gook in his mouth, which any competent med-tech would have identified as 500 milligrams of carbamazepine, an iminostilbene anticonvulsant, a mood stabilizer under optimal conditions. Bill, of course, had less than no knowledge of that; they just made him feel good.

Don Cesario almost lost his balance as the aircar shot out of the L’Oreal Hilton’s

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parking structure. Tilly, punching synapses on the aircar’s cube screen, the location of Mrs. Warren’s, heard Don Cesario curse under his breath. The screen chimed; grid segments flashed across the screen. “Hold on, back there,” said Tilly. “Yes,” said Don Cesario, “that is good advice.” He craned his neck, trying to look over Tilly’s left shoulder at the screen. “You have located Mrs. Warren’s?” “Yes,” said Lucinda, glancing at the display as she turned the aircar sharply to the right, gained altitude. Touching her throat diaphragm, she said, “Nellie. Yeah. Put me through to him, would you? No, right now, Nellie!” She listened. “They did? How long ago? Shit. Thanks.” She touched her throat diaphragm again. “What?” Tilly asked, as they shot up and forward rapidly. “I tried to get Magico. Nellie says he left, with Taussig. They’re headed for the same place we are. Mrs. Warren’s.” “When?” “About ten or fifteen minutes ago,” Lucinda said. “Then he knows,” Tilly said. “She must have told him it’s there.” “What’s there?” asked Don Cesario, from the back seat. “I don’t know. Whatever it is, she wants it.” Lucinda’s earpiece chimed, she touched her throat diaphragm. “Nellie. What?” Silence as she listened. Then Tilly felt the aircar slow a little. She touched her diaphragm again. “What now?” Tilly asked. “Nellie,” she said. “She was just watching some newscast. They said Magico is dead. They said he’s dead. In some religious whorehouse.”

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When no one did anything to help Mattie, Big Daddy got up from the bed, pushed past the Boy Scout and went into the bathroom. He took two red towels from some little oven looking thing that kept them warm, wet one of them at the sink, and went back into the bedroom. He folded the dry towel, covered the vomit on the yellow shag carpet, then handed Mattie the wet one. Still no one said a word. Lexi had sat down on the yellow carpet, with her handbag between her knees. The big man, who seemed to take up more space than everybody else combined, had lowered his Recycler. He held it in one hand, next to a thigh bigger-round than Big Daddy’s waist. Mattie, who was sitting on the bed now, wiped her mouth with the towel. When Big Daddy moved by the Boy Scout, a whiff of his body odor made him want to throw up too. “To make yourselves rich, you said?” Magico still held the module. “Yeah, if it’s any of your business,” Tricycle said. Vance moaned from the floor at that point, and Tricycle lashed out viciously with his DM boot, catching Vance in the ribs. “Luck,” Tricycle said. “How?” Magico raised one of his eyebrows. Tricycle kept looking at the big guy’s Recycler. “Credit,” he said. “With it we can buy whatever we need. Weapons, drugs, information. We can expand and take over Seattle, then move on from there. We have objectives, too, ya’ know?” “Connie,” the big guy with the Recycler said, “forget about it. This slink and his posse boys need that thing to make themselves the biggest and baddest posse in town.

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Time for us to go home.” “But wouldn’t you be more interested in…cash? With this,” said Magico, holding up the module, “you’re gonna’ need lots of high tech equipment and know-how to get the credit. Plus, they know it’s missing.” The big guy’s face went flush, the scar on his cheek rubricating. “Fuck that shit, Connie! You can’t give these willies cash.” “Sure I can,” said Magico. “Call it an investment.” “You mean cash for that thing?” Tricycle was looking at Magico. “Precisely,” Magico said. “How much cash?” “As much as you need,” said Magico. “Any figure you name.” He smiled. “Wait a minute,” Mattie said, from the bed. “I know you. You’re that demonic prince guy, that Vance was always talking about. That Magico. That’s who you are, right?” Magico stared at her. “What?” said Tricycle, looking from Mattie to Magico, then back and forth again, pulling at the back of his pants. “I’m Tricycle, boss of the Chiquita Banana Boy Scouts.” He extended his hand, the one that had been pulling at his buttocks. Magico shook it. Big Daddy thought he heard the big guy with the Recycler mutter something under his breath. “I’ve been looking for you,” Big Daddy said, as if that made everything okay. The big guy touched his throat diaphragm, then listened to some unseen voice in his earpiece. “Okay, got it,” he said, and touched his diaphragm again. He moved to the door, then moved out of sight down the hallway. Forty-five seconds later he was back in the

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room. “You’d better come see this, Connie,” he said. Magico looked at him strangely. “What? What is it, Tossie?” “Most of the ISCA, I’d say,” the big guy said.

Advertisement light matrices flickered by, very close, beyond the screens of the aircar. Most of them were for either L’Oreal or Revlon products: skin conditioners, hair conditioners, skin toners, depilatories, semi-permanent or permanent lipsticks, and eyeliners. One of Revlon’s stylized light matrices, fully three hundred feet in height and two hundred feet in width, announced their newest product: colorized libido enhancers, which Revlon’s marketing wizards called LustColeur. A two hundred and fifty foot nude model seemed to float in the dark Seattle sky, emitting unadulterated sexual energy. Her skin was toned a deep cerulean blue, her professionally cut and styled pubic hair was effervescent orange, her aureolae a softer shade of the same orange, her iced-erect nipples a glossy black; her lips, toned white, produced a subliminal inference of pliability, of moistness, of taste. Fifty foot letters scrolled across ten billion pixels, declaring, Cater to your lover’s tastes, use LustColeur. The aircar’s cube screen chimed. “Just ahead, then right,” Tilly said, watching the cursor. He felt the aircar slow. Another cascading matrix: Light up the night with LustColeur. “Tilly,” Don Cesario queried, from the back seat. “Did your sixth sense apprehend

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any hint of Magico’s death?” “No, but again, I will tell you, it’s not magic. I cannot forecast accidents or secondary catastrophes.” The chiming from the cube screen became more rapid as Lucinda slowed the aircar even more. Lucinda descended the aircar. They were on the street now, sliding just above it, and Tilly saw a mass of vehicles and people. They looked almost surreal, in the flickering lights of the matrices overhead. Lucinda halted the aircar and Tilly turned to gaze at the area in front of them completely blocked by ISCA Interceptors and hundreds of ISCA tactical teams. “Jesus,” Lucinda said. “Must be all the ISCA worms on the planet.” If there were any females in the tac-units, Tilly couldn’t discern them. It was an ocean of Pro-tec helmets with targeting visors, every one of them facing the low white building that sat there, with its sign: Mrs. Warren’s. Lucinda touched a button, lowering her screen and Tilly heard the crackle of voices. “There’s no way through this,” Tilly said. Most of the tac-unit agents held Co-To-Dor Impellors, which hummed and sizzled with ions and anti-matter in close proximity. Lucinda stopped the aircar. And Tilly and Don Cesario got out. Tilly looked across the blackish-gray Pro-tec helmets with ISCA lettered on the back and saw the posse boy, the one from Jesus Mountain, still in the white leather analog coat, wending his way through the ISCA agents. The expression on his face was a combination of anticipation, indignation, and a kind of almost arrogant psychosis. When he saw Tilly, he laughed and changed direction, heading straight for him.

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Big Daddy looked out the door of Mrs. Warren’s and saw that the rain had stopped. The area outside was full of ISCA Special Agents and Tac-units. A few of them were standing on the tops of the ISCA Interceptors, and there seemed to be more of them on the roof of the low building behind. All of them were staring at the front door of Mrs. Warren’s. He walked back to the bedroom. The big guy was telling Magico that someone had announced that he was dead, that he had been found dead in Mrs. Warren’s, and it was out on DatElegant and was being treated as if it were true. Tricycle had produced his own phone and was speaking to someone in posse boy biz-talk. “Magico,” he said, “these fucking ISCA worms are everywhere. Since this programming module is Schedule One, this is a serious problem.” “Right,” said Magico. “We have an aircar in the garage. However, I doubt we can get to it undetected.” Turning to Taussig, he said, “Better get some reinforcements, ‘cuz this is gonna’ get dirty.” His right hand slid inside his jacket. When it re-emerged it cradled a Winston High-Liter with a Heinnemann acquisitioning system on it, along with an ArXiv electrolier firing mechanism. The big guy touched his throat diaphragm, started giving orders to someone somewhere. Big Daddy imagined groups of vicious-looking men, heavily armed with strange and frightening weaponry, responding to those orders, like killer ants. A spectral regiment, the anti-matter of the matter at hand. Someone nudged Big Daddy’s elbow. It was Lexi, handing him his case. His cube was in it, but not that fucking module anymore. He could tell by the weight, even if he

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hadn’t already known it. Vance was curled up in a fetal position on the yellow shag carpet. He’d been like that since Tricycle kicked him. Now Tricycle moved toward him again, and Big Daddy saw Mattie cringe, as she sat beside Vance on the carpet. “Now we’re talking about real luck,” Tricycle said to Vance. “If it was up to me, you’d already be dead. But since it’s not, just be sure I never see you again.” There was a clicking hum, and another, and Big Daddy watched as the guy with the scar checked his Recycler, without looking at it. “That thing you’re holding is Schedule One, Connie. And worms are everywhere. Better let me carry it.” Magico looked at the big guy. “I’ll carry it myself, Tossie.” Big Daddy thought he saw a sudden gloom in the big man’s eyes. “Okay, then,” he said. “Let’s went.” He cradled the Recycler in his huge hands. “You two, let’s go,” gesturing Big Daddy and Lexi toward the door. Magico followed Lexi, Tricycle close behind him, but Big Daddy stopped, looking down at Mattie. Mattie’s once perfectly tailored face looked somehow older and sadder. It was a face that must have been hurt a lot, Big Daddy thought. “Come with us,” Big Daddy said. Mattie looked at him. “Come on,” Big Daddy said. “Those cops will be in here soon.” “I can’t,” said Mattie. “I have to take care of him.” “Tell him,” Taussig said, moving to Big Daddy in three steps, “that if he talks to anyone about any of this, he’ll never talk to anyone ever again.” Mattie didn’t seem to hear him, or if she did, she didn’t glance up. The big guy pulled Big Daddy out of the room, closed the door, and then Big Daddy was following the

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back of Tricycle’s white leather analog coat down the narrow hallway, his lug-soled DM boots leaving indentations in the carpet. Tricycle carried a Winston High-Liter in his left hand, and another in his right hand. Both of them had been magically produced from beneath the black coat of the big man, who had then tossed them to the posse boy, who, in turn, as he plucked them out of the air, smiled insanely. Magico was stepping into the gravity lift with Lexi and the posse boy when the big man caught his shoulder. “You stay with me,” he said, shoving Big Daddy into the lift. Big Daddy touched a synapse. “You have an aircar?” Tricycle asked Lexi. “No,” said Lexi. Tricycle grunted, tossed three green capsules in his mouth, ’ramjets’ in posse parlance. Tilting his head back, he swallowed, sighed ecstatically. Each capsule contained 250 milligrams of dextroamphetamine aspartate analog, a euphoric psycho-stimulant. In seconds, Tricycle’s cerebrum was ready to detonate. His BO was making Big Daddy’s stomach nauseous. The door opened on the lower level parking garage. Tricycle bulled his way past Big Daddy, glancing around. Big Daddy and Lexi followed. The door closed. “Move,” Tricycle said. They followed him into the parking garage, where Vance’s Rolls Pacer sat. Big Daddy heard the door hiss open again and turned to see Magico coming out, the gray fictile module tucked underneath his arm. The big guy was behind him.

George W. Arana, Jr., ISCA Special Agent, and ranking officer of the Tac-units in front of some religious homosexual whorehouse known as Mrs. Warren’s, hawked up a huge gob of mucous, and spat. The yellowish goo arced up into the air, then landed with a

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satisfying splat on the front of a nearby Interceptor. His throat now cleared, he spoke into his diaphragm. “Units three through ten, prepare to enter the building.” Something moved above his head, entered his peripheral vision. Turning his head and glancing up, he tried to locate it, whatever ‘it’ was. All he saw a sparkle of clear plastic, at least that’s what his parietal lobe instinctively registered. He opened his mouth to speak, but was too late to say anything at all. There was a huge explosion which, oddly enough, seemed to come from near the door of Mrs. Warren’s. George’s mouth opened even further, then his eyeballs jumped out of his head to the full length of his optic nerve. In the same instant, his head evaporated into a kind of grayish-red slurry. ISCA Special Agents, those on the outer perimeter, stumbled backwards, wondering what was happening. What was happening was this: 7-11 posse boys, along with the Frito Banditos, were queuing behind them. About eighty or one hundred of them stood on the still damp streets, High-Liters in their hands. The 7-11’s wore yellow Mickey Mouse shorts with big buttons and matching suspenders. They had cloned muscle grafts, and shaved heads above tight, furious faces. The Frito Banditos wore stained leather analog trousers, laced together over a three-inch gap all the way down the outside leg, and leather analog bolero vests. Their breath condensed like the breath of great dependable animals in the cool night air. Their huge arms were bare and rippled with striated muscles. They were all hard-on and ready to piss on anyone who moved. It was bedlam in the ISCA ranks after the TELL-Atomics platters went off. The flat fizzing arcs of Impellors darted here and there, and there was the rich smell of human

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fluids. The front doors of Mrs. Warren’s no longer existed, and there were big smoking holes in the walls. The posse boys shrieked in their gluey argot. Darting forward, their Winston High-Liters blazed out Max Pack death. They had a tactical advantage, but the remaining ISCA worms had firepower ascendancy because of their Impellors. Down on firepower, down on their luck, the posse boys were suddenly being pushed back. Ramped to the gills on amps, they were too hard-on to fucking care about that; they got shot in the legs, or the spine, and twenty of them were soon in a condition not even a Rigel 2 tailor-doctor could remedy. Things looked bad for the hugger muggers, then two things happened: Somebody tossed two more TELL-Atomics platters, model 3130‘s, designed for radius-specific crowd control situations. And the Dieter sisters appeared, shaking their heads and firing Abbtram Projacs.

Tilly Shank and Lucinda were on the run somewhere on the outer perimeter of now demolished ISCA vehicles. Don Cesario was probably dead, Tilly guessed, and the posse boy from Jesus Mountain too, so there would be no help from that quarter. As they scurried along, trying to stay low, Tilly’s head got too far above one of the Interceptors. He heard a harsh voice, “Shank! You fucking asshole! Where‘s Magico?” Gretchen Dieter. For the evening’s bellicosities, Gretchen had selected a para-ninja semiotic: black Tela parka, which, if one bothered to glance at their multifarious highly-stylized advert matrices, was designed to provide “the flawless fashion edge”, cinched in toughly at the waist by a black, three-and-a-half-inch leather analog belt. On her legs, Gretchen wore

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Tela warm-up pants, tab sides, in black. And on her feet Megeve black suede analog boots, with two buckles and an inside zipper. As she had told herself earlier that evening, standing in front of the full-length mirrors of her Revlon hotel suite, “The bitch is back in black.” Rita, on the other hand, Gretchen decided, had gone for an aluminum foil semiotic. Waist-length Tira parka, in techno-cotton with leather analog trim. On her massive thighs and buttocks rested Holly warm-ups in reflective silver, which were just one degree brighter than the white Strass high-boots on her feet. When she had entered Gretchen’s suite and pirouetted like a silver penguin, asking, “How do I look?” Gretchen had merely nodded and said, “Good, good.” She had wanted to say, ’Good God, Rita! You might just as well have painted a target on that big ass of yours, as wear reflective silver.’ But she couldn’t do it. Rita was her only sister, her only family. The flat cacophony and whip of the Abbatram Projac cut across the night air. The Projac’s soup can rounds slammed into the Interceptor, causing it to rock. There was a laugh from the other side of the Interceptor. “Where is he? We know he‘s here somewhere,” said Gretchen Dieter. She looked meditatively across the scene at two remaining ISCA agents. “Goddamn worms,” she shouted. Rita Dieter laughed. Gretchen shot the ISCA agents in the face, one after the other, with her Abbtram Projac, then showed her teeth. “That’s what’s going to happen to you too, Tilly,” she explained, “if you don’t tell me where Magico is.”

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“Hey,” said Rita, “I wanted to do that.” Tilly and Lucinda stood up slowly, hands at shoulder height. The 7-11’s and the Frito Banditos were leaving now, one-handedly dragging their dead and wounded behind them. Tilly watched them file past. “Hello, Gretchen,” he said. Gretchen gave him her big semi-permanent lipstick smile. Before she could say anything, all hell broke loose. The ‘hell’ that broke loose was initiated, initially, by Tricycle’s call from the urine-yellow-shag-carpeted bedroom of Mrs. Warren’s. In response to his command, two hundred and twenty-eight stigmatized, victimized, oppressed psychopathic murderers, serial killers, former sanitation engineers, and computer illiterates calling themselves Chiquita Boy Scouts, had immediately headed to Mrs. Warren’s. Three of them were drag queens, five were running to fat from too many Joe Joe’s double-stuffed chocolate cookies. All of them were sociopathic pariahs. And all of them carried either Winston High-Liters or Rheinmetall-De Tec Contraves, which fired canister-fed, vicious sixty-two millimeter rounds at the rate of three thousand rounds per minute when the selector switch was centered on automatic. Manufactured by Rheinmetall-De Tec Industries AG, on the Bight of Leo, the Contraves were military ordnance, which the Boy Scouts had purchased from one Arda Wiraz, a black market arms dealer who was usually stoned on a fly-agaric analog called La Bamba. Attired in their blue and yellow uniforms, the Boy Scouts were breaking loose all hell by firing their Contraves at black-clad, hard-to-see shadow figures that they assumed were ISCA worms. They weren’t. In point of fact, the black-clad figures were fifty of

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Magico’s rapidly deploying private security force, who had been summoned by Taussig from the same bedroom as Tricycle. Very organized, and highly trained professionals, they weren’t dope-fiend rodents like the Boy Scouts. Thus they were utilizing concealment, covering fire, Pro-tec body armor and controlled-selective firing. Moving forward in five man cells, each cell called a ‘five point box’, three men covering the advance of two, then those two covering the advance of the three, their movement was rapid, precise and lethal. The result: the two hundred and twenty-eight Boy Scouts now numbered one hundred and ninety-one. And the engagement had only lasted thirteen seconds, so far. Gretchen and Rita looked startled. Whipping around, they looked behind them. Tilly, who was almost as surprised as the Dieter sisters, grabbed Lucinda’s hand and darted off to the right, circling around toward the back of Mrs. Warren’s. Any moment now, Gretchen and Rita would wake up from their trance of surprise, and something serious would start to happen. Tilly wished he had a fucking High-Liter.

The instant the last two TELL-Atomics platters, model 3130’s, went off, Tricycle was off and running toward the commotion, both arms extended straight out from his body, Winston High-Liters pointing out. As he rounded the corner of Mrs. Warren’s his ramped and amped ophthalmic nerves noticed a group of stealthily advancing shadowy figures in front of him. As he brought himself to an abrupt halt, he watched as the shadowy forms advanced in twos and threes, unleashing deadly fire power on the Boy Scouts who stood in haphazard ranks, foaming at the mouth, screaming and blazing away for all they were

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worth. “Sheeit!” said Tricycle. “I have to do all the thinking all the time. Stupid dildos.” With which words he flipped the selector switches on his twin Winston High-Liters to ‘single’ and began to take careful aim at the hindmost advancing cell, picking off two points of the box as the other three points rushed forward. He was having great fun doing this, and had shot seven black-clad figures through the back when his amped up peripheral vision detected movement to his left: a man and a woman, making for his position. Tautly muscled and handsome in a cruel way, the man seemingly had no weapon and didn’t suspect Tricycle’s presence; the woman was definitely dialed-in-delicious, with bodacious tits that bounced beneath her blouse in that full, firm, meaty way that only the finest tit-meat did. And she had ‘breezeway’ thighs. The instant he saw her, Tricycle knew what he was going to do: kill the man, wound the poontang, save her for later. “Yazzoo,” he ejaculated. Grinning maniacally, he dropped to one knee, took aim with both Winston High-Liters at the pair, when something else, even further to his left, caused him to hesitate. Turning his head he saw some slender dark-haired chick about fifty yards from him, aiming some kind of weapon at him. From this distance she didn’t look like she had much to offer in way of meat. No reason to save this one. Just do her. All at once, he thought he heard the tinkle of breaking glass. Renata Wills fired her Projac at the hugger mugger in the prissy looking blue and yellow outfit underneath a white leather analog coat. The plastic round, traveling at 600 meters per second, covered the distance between them in less than one-tenth of a second. Entering Tricycle’s left eye, it penetrated the anterior corner of his frontal lobe, slammed

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into his temporal lobe, then for some strange vagary of inertia, dove to the superior portion of his brain stem, where, slowing to corollary velocity, it bloomed into a ten-petaled flower. Tricycle, though, didn’t die instantaneously. In fact, due to his ramped-up physiological and neural condition, he didn’t even know he’d been hit, except for the fact that he couldn’t see out of his left eye, which was beginning to sting a little. He shook his head, trying to clear the vision of his left eye. It didn’t work. Using his right eye, he aimed, pressed the selector on the Winston High-Liter in his right hand to ’auto’, and fired eighteen rounds of Max Pack in eighteen nanoseconds. Renata Wills, caparisoned in black faux fur boots by Zermatt, black stretch in-the-boot resort pants by Bogner, a Ruby shirt of an orange/red color, in brushed flannel and a black Marissa coat by Postcard, collapsed like an in vogue, jet wet rag as thirteen of the eighteen Max Pack rounds stitched a vertical line up her right leg, hip and chest. The other five rounds passed by her head and right ear, missing by twelve centimeters. Knocked unconscious from the force of the impacts, she lay completely still, except for a slight twitching of her right forefinger on the trigger of her Projac, which remained in her right hand. Tricycle smiled to himself, then tried to rise, but couldn’t. All of a sudden he felt tired and cold. He reached up to his left eyelid, touched nothing. No eyelid, no eye. Withdrawing his hand, he examined it with his one, remaining good eye: his hand was all sticky and red. Goddamned bitch had shot his eye out! Exhaling sharply as his autonomic system failed, he fell over, tried to inhale but couldn’t. Fifty yards away, Renata Wills opened her eyes to once again misting Seattle skies.

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Straining to sit up, she looked down at what had once been a very chic, very expensive Marissa coat. Now it was tattered and torn where the thirteen Winston Max Pack rounds had contacted it. Fucking ruined! But they hadn’t penetrated. “Thank God for tactel,” she whispered. Lined with tactel, a bullet-proof material developed by Pro-tec Corporation, the coat had saved her life. Already massively bruising, blood oozing from thirteen impact-ulcerated wounds, she got to her hands and knees like a dog, struggled upright. Instinctively checking her Projac, she racked three more rounds, limped toward the recumbent figure of the hugger mugger. Stumbling, stopping to fight off waves of nausea flooding her stomach, it took her two minutes to cover the fifty yards. Arriving at Tricycle’s body, she placed the Projac against his right ear, pressed the trigger. His skull splintered into three pieces, as if it were a pumpkin someone had dropped from ten feet up. Nodding righteously to herself, she turned and limped back in the direction of her aircar.

“You aren’t eating,” Taussig said, after he’d cleared his second plate of scrambled eggs and bacon. He’d secured this suite in the L’Oreal Hilton, and insisted that Tilly join him to eat something. The room was similar to Tilly’s, three floors below. “Who let out the rumor that Magico was dead, Taussig? The Nastic?” “Her? Why would she do that?” He was cutting huge strips of bacon in half, folding them over, prepatory to shoveling them into his mouth. “I don’t know,” Tilly said, “but she seems to like to do mysterious things. And

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most of them are bewildering, to say the least.” “It wasn’t her,” Taussig said. “We’re trying to trace it down right now.” He popped the folded bacon into his mouth, swallowed, and wiped his lips with a light green napkin with the L’Oreal logo on it. “But Magico was there,” Tilly said. Taussig shrugged. “We’re looking into it, like I said. I can’t worry about it until there’s something to worry about. Besides, there’s plenty to worry about even without that. Like those hugger muggers.” “Who were those kids?” Tilly asked. “The skinny guy and the girl with the porcupine hair?” “Magico says don’t bother about them. They’re here in the hotel. Lucinda’s keeping an eye on them.” “Where’s the programming module?” “I didn’t hear you say that ‘cuz that’s my bad ear,” Taussig said. “And don’t repeat it. It never existed. Clear?” Tilly nodded. He glanced at Taussig. “Is it me being overly sensitive, or has your attitude toward this changed? I thought you despised the Nastic.” Taussig sighed. “I did and still do. But right now, I don’t know what to do about it. Do you?” “I guess not.” “That being the case,” Taussig said, “I have two choices. Either I bail, or I stay and do my job and play it by ear as we go along. And since, contrary to popular opinion, I do have a conscience and a memory, I remember what he did for me once. So I’ll stay. You

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going to eat that?” He pointed at the bacon in front of Tilly. “Well,” said Tilly, “my job is done. It didn’t end up the way you wanted it to, but I did my job. Right?” “Right.” “Then I’ll be going. All I need is my money, and I’m already gone.” Taussig looked at him with revived interest. “So fast? What? You don’t like us?” “You know better than that,” Tilly said. “It’s just time for me to go.” “Don Cesario doesn’t think so. Magico either. Not to mention her Nasti-ness, who without a doubt will have an opinion too. I think they want you to become part of the industrial complex, Tilly. You and your sixth sense. So what I’m saying is this: your services are much admired and desired, and no one wants to see you go.” “I have to,” Tilly said. “I’m being squeezed to spy on Magico.” Tilly’s words caused Taussig to squint. He leaned forward in his L’Oreal tufted green chair. The scar tissue on his cheek squirmed. “You are, huh?” he said quietly, as if Tilly had just confessed he was a bull dyke in drag. “And might I know by whom?” “Some big cloned bitch, named Gretchen Dieter.” “Tell me more. In fact, tell me all of it.” And Tilly did, including the bits about Don Cesario and Dial. “Very interesting,” Blackwell said. “The safest place for you, Tilly, is right here, where we can keep an eye on you.” Tilly thought about it. It almost seemed sensible. “But you don’t want me around the Nastic. I don’t want myself around her. There’s something malevolent about her, something I can’t quite put into words, but that I’m certain of.”

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“Well,” said Taussig, “I can’t honestly say that I don’t feel the same. But you’re still safer here than anywhere else. And I’ll have a little chat with your Gretchen Dieter. I will explain certain things to her. Nothing very complicated. Just the theory of cause and effect.” “Doesn’t she work for Magico?” asked Tilly. “Used to,” corrected Taussig in that fat tone of his. “Look, Taussig,” said Tilly, “if she’s making a move on Magico, then she must think she has a good chance of success. Which means she must have resources. A simple threat of violence from you is not going to stop her. It’ll only up the ante. She’ll be even more dangerous.” “No,” said Taussig, “she won’t, because that will constitute a violation of the very personal terms that I intend to establish. And the operative word there is ‘personal’. This will not be a demonstration of who has the biggest balls, or ovaries in her case. It will be an intimate meeting which will provide her with a new definition of the word ‘certainty.’ If she doesn’t back-off and disappear, she will die -- but only after she begs to.” As Taussig finished speaking, he smiled, giving Tilly full view of his perfect teeth. There was something about the smile that sent electric goosebumps up Tilly’s spine. “Now. How were you supposed to get in touch with her?” Tilly pulled out the translucent filament with only a number on it. Taussig took it. “Ciao.” He stood up. “Get some sleep, take care of your head. I’ll take care of this.” As Taussig left the room, Tilly noticed the metallic sheen of a fourteen-inch Hibben blade in his hand.

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Tilly’s head, the right temple, looked like a piece of spoiled raw meat: a florid gash floating in the middle of yellow, black and blue. He sprayed it with some more dermactif, then soaked at length in a hot tub. Before climbing into his L’Oreal Hilton ’soft sleep’ bed, he checked his rhizome cube. There was a message from Binary on the Cioran: Had a little chat with DatElegant’s AI, the Red Queen, then with ISCA’s AI, Rhonda. Gretchen Dieter registered guest at Revlon Hampton Hotel, Seattle. ISCA motive is no longer enforcement, it is now revenge. All hugger muggers to be detained and questioned, or executed. Have a nice day. “Thanks,” Tilly said to the cube, “but I already have plans.” He switched off the cube, lay down on the ’soft sleep’ bed, and fell instantly asleep. And remained that way until Lucinda called to suggest a drink. Checking the chronometer, he noted it was eight in the evening. He put on fresh underwear and a dark blue Bellagio suit, which Bellagio claimed “made a strong style statement”. Crossing the L’Oreal lobby to the bar, called Have Blue, he saw Lucinda wave to him from the entrance to the lounge area. She was wearing something short and black. He walked toward her smiling, and he saw that she was smiling back.

Big Daddy was on the ’soft sleep’ bed in his new suite, watching the simstim. It made him feel real somehow. Kind of like an unreality antihistamine. But this wasn’t Judaic simstim. This was Seattle stuff. Young girls, wearing red and gray uniforms, were playing some kind of game on newly manicured green turf, kicking at a yellow ball. They could really run and kick, too. It was some type of sport. He could have turned up the volume and found out what it was called, and what the objective

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of the game was, but it was more relaxing not knowing. He’d used the simstim to check out the news coverage of the ISCA massacre at Mrs. Warren’s. He’d seen a very satisfyingly distraught Queen Mother denying she knew who had attacked her order’s site. It was either some type of posse war, the Queen Mother stressed, or some machination of the arch-criminal Magico. Big Daddy knew she knew and was thus lying. Lucinda had told Big Daddy that the whole thing occurred because of some gone-maverick-bitch, an employee of Magico’s, who had tried to pull off a coup. And he’d seen the aircar shots of the aftermath of the battle, and of the baffled ISCA reinforcements that had arrived too late. The death count was in the hundreds. The real problem had been identifying and removing the bodies, because a lot of them had no right hands left to scan for cipher codes. There had been a lot of arrests, mostly of hugger muggers. He’d seen the manager chickette from Mrs. Warren’s, expressing her ignorance and regret. She had no idea, she said, how any of this had happened. She also made it clear that there was no surveillance equipment at Mrs. Warren’s, in the interest of the guests’ privacy and anonymity. Lucinda, watching this, had said that that was the commercial right there, and that she was pretty sure Mrs. Warren’s wouldn’t lack for business. It was infamous, now. For the most part, the news coverage treated the whole thing as some kind of ISCA foul up, that would have been even worse if the Seattle cops hadn’t handled the situation as skillfully and competently as they did. The Seattle cops were quoted as saying that Magico, even if he really existed, was absolutely not in Seattle or anywhere nearby. Lucinda was from the Bight of Leo and she worked for Magico and knew him

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personally, and she was the one who had driven the aircar that lifted them out. She’d brought Big Daddy and Lexi to the L’Oreal Hilton Hotel, and put them in this suite with adjoining rooms with strangely angled corners. She’d asked them both to please remain there, and not use their cubes or the phones without telling her, and then she’d left. Big Daddy had a bath right away. It was the best and hottest bath he’d ever taken. He tossed his old clothes in the full-length mirrored closet, put on new wrinkled clothes from his bag. Then he had slept for what seemed like forever. Lucinda kept coming in to make sure he was okay, and giving him information, so that Big Daddy felt like he was part of it all, whatever ’it’ was. Lucinda said Magico was busy right now, but that he’d come by later and talk. That caused Big Daddy to feel weird. Now that he’d actually seen Magico, he felt different about him. Bewildered. Like all of this had made him realize who Magico was, how old he was. There was something else too, that came from looking down at all those mutilated bodies from the aircar. Big Daddy realized that he never wanted to be like that. He just wanted to be ordinary and boring, like his mother was. All this other stuff was crazy. And all of that made him wonder what he would tell Zap 210, in the otherworld. How could he understand? The yellow ball went between some kind of laser stanchions, and they were cutting from that to the face of the girl who had kicked it. She seemed ecstatic. Lexi came in. “I spoke with the Reverend Mother,” she said. “Lucinda asked us not to use the phones.”

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“I told her,” Lexi said. She was wearing the same clothes, but it all looked clean and fresh. “I’ll bet she’s bad-ass angry, huh?” Lexi shrugged and went back through the door.

Seated in an intimate booth in Have Blue, Tilly and Lucinda sipped their drinks, listening to synthetic, cube-generated blues music, which emanated softly from Machrihanish platelet speakers. Tilly sat across from Lucinda, whose back was to the entrance into the bar. He was just beginning to enjoy himself, mostly because of Lucinda’s presence but also because of the alcohol, when, glancing at the entrance, he saw Dial and Nerina Palotta silhouetted against the light from the foyer. Tilly felt a small exhilarating shock of enlightenment. He blinked at the impact of a new thought. Suddenly attentive, he watched them enter and sit down at a small table. Dial looked around the dimly lit bar, a slight frown on his face. Now he turned and shot a suspicious glance toward Tilly. He said something to Nerina, whereupon she scowled faintly. Lucinda looked intently at Tilly, drew a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll bite. What just got your undivided attention, which,” and she sighed heavily, “I thought I had.” “Dial and Nerina just came in,” said Tilly, taking a sip of one hundred year old Bight whiskey, which was like drinking liquefied cashmere. “Oh,” said Lucinda. “So?” “So I’ve just been wondering why they’re so chummy,” Tilly said. “I couldn’t begin to guess. Maybe it’s as simple as Magico doesn’t want her

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walking around unattended.” “Maybe,” said Tilly. “But maybe there’s more to it. Maybe there’s some connection of another type. One that no one would suspect…” “Like what?” asked Lucinda. Then sitting upright, she gave him a strange look. “Okay, Tilly, what is your sixth sense telling you?” Tilly laughed. “Like maybe Dial should be more properly categorized as a Nastic, too.” “Dial?” Lucinda stared blankly at Tilly. “This is lunacy,” she gasped. “Are you serious?” “Certainly I’m serious.” “May I ask why?” “Of course. First of all because of my sixth sense, call it a gut feeling if you like. Second, his physiognomy is too perfect.” “That’s nonsense,” blurted Lucinda. “Any competent tailor could do that and more.” “I don’t think so,” said Tilly. “He doesn’t have the tailored look to him.” Lucinda’s face smiled. “So you’re implying that a good appearance guarantees he’s a Nastic?” “No. I’m implying that Nastics, to compete successfully against true humans, morph perfect bodies.” “This is insanity,” said Lucinda. “Dial a Nastic. Along with Nerina, and both close to Magico.” “It’s a fact,” said Tilly.

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“And what do you propose to do?” “Kill him.” At that, Dial and Nerina moved across the bar toward them. Dial led the way. “Pardon our interruption,” said Dial, “but might we join you?” Dressed in a Mason double-breasted suit in Super 140s wool/cashmere analog, flap pockets with double-reverse-pleat trousers, all in charcoal. His shirt was an 80s 2-ply cotton analog rope-stripe white-collar fancy dress shirt, with points on the collar and mitered adjustable cuffs. His perfectly manicured hands, the nails tinted a light gray color, hung easily at the end of the perfectly fitting suit. Lucinda stared round-eyed at Tilly, who smiled and said, “Of course, of course. Please sit down.” Nerina Palotta slid in next to Lucinda, while Tilly began to move over to allow Dial in next to him; however, Dial pulled a chair over from a nearby table, placed it at the outer edge of the booth and sat down, crossing his legs a la femme, arms folded loosely across his chest as he leaned back. Nerina’s taste in clothing was decidedly post-modern retro: Liv coat with double faced cashmere analog, yellow with white, by Sonia Bogner. Underneath the coat, a winter white Calia turtleneck of wool analog, which, at the waist, draped over the top of Catlin jeans, in what was called ‘apres glam stonewash’. As Tilly looked at her beautiful face, he wondered what she was like in bed. Would sex with a non-human conformed to human be better, more arousing, kind of like an alien-aphrodisiac? Or revolting? A waitress appeared, dressed in blue with blue skin toner, bright red lips. Nerina

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and Dial ordered Bight whiskey. “With just a hint of 42 Below,” said Nerina. “We were surprised to see you here,” said Dial, making a small encompassing gesture with his hand. The blue waitress returned, delivered the beverages. Tilly decided to bring the affair to its conclusion. “It‘s my understanding that Nastics don‘t feel anything. They only emulate. So that would pretty much preclude surprise, wouldn‘t it?” Tilly regarded him as Dial blinked twice in rapid succession, but that was the extent of his reaction. “I mean, you are a Nastic, aren’t you?” asked Tilly. Lucinda suddenly whispered, “Dial. Let’s have the truth.” In an even voice, looking directly at Tilly, Dial said, “You’ve heard the truth from Mr. Shank.” “You’re a -- Nastic?” said Lucinda in a hushed voice. “Yes.” Dial sat up, drawing himself up to his full seated height. His dark eyes glared back and forth. “I am a Nastic, superior to humans.” Lucinda sat stunned. Nerina was languid, as if almost bored, sipping at her whiskey with a hint of 42 below. Dial’s eyes burnt even brighter. He turned to consider Tilly. “I am curious. Ever since your first encounter with Nerina, you have despised Nastics. Why?” Tilly stared at Nerina. “She is something beyond evil, something I don’t have a word for.” “And what is your intention in regard to me?” “I plan to kill you.” Dial thought for a moment. “You are an ambitious man,” he said in a neutral voice.

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“There are not many like you.” “This is a peculiar conversation,” said Nerina, whose attitude had become one of wry detachment. Tilly spoke to Dial. “You have gone to great lengths to assume your persona and your position with Magico. I wonder why.” Dial shrugged noncommittally. “Humans develop relationships, live and strive for different goals,” suggested Tilly. “Nastics desire none of these things.” Dial said presently. “You have made a common mistake. You forget that individual differences exist among other races than yourself. Some are denied the freedom of their own world. They become ’renegade’. Whatever the case, it is my prerogative to organize my own style of life. As you know, Nastics are strongly competitive. This world, to humans, is beautiful. And I find it pleasant enough. I plan to option it for myself, to father another Nastic, superior to the one I came from. This was my hope, which you will not understand, for there can be no understanding between your race and mine.” Lucinda said between clenched teeth, “But you took advantage of our friendship to accomplish this. If Tilly doesn’t kill you, I will.” “Neither of you will kill anyone.” Standing swiftly, four quick steps took him to the exit, where he whirled, pointing a Projac in Tilly’s direction. Tilly, though, had dropped below the table top, where, lying on his right side he fired his Winston High-Liter. Three rounds of Max Pack penetrated Dial’s forehead, smashing into his frontal lobe. Then into his parietal lobe, exiting the back of his head along with a shard of anterior cranial bone four inches in diameter. Dial’s carcass slammed

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across the table of two matronly women who, two seconds before, had been discussing their sexual proclivities in great detail. The heavier one, Nettie Beuving, liked it up the ass, when she got it at all. Her companion, Violet Fulton, much preferred vaginal intercourse in the missionary position. Face to face with a man who had just had most of his face and his head shot off, lying across their table, Nettie Beuving fainted dead away. Violet screamed maniacally, pushing ineffectively at the body, trying to make it go away. Nerina Palotta arrived at Nettie and Violet’s table just after Dial’s body did. Taking the Projac from his right hand, she whirled and fired without taking aim. The plastic round, traveling at 600 meters per second, grazed Lucinda’s left deltoid muscle, then slammed into the booth wall where it bloomed into a ten petaled flower. Tilly was still lying across the seat of the booth. Pointing the Winston High-Liter at Nerina’s tits, he pulled the trigger. Fifteen rounds of Max Pack, traveling at 6000 meters per second, shattered her sternum, impacted her now adrenalized heart, exited her back, taking her fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth lumbars with them. One of the Max Pack rounds impacted the nipple of her left breast, tore through the underlying fat and lactate glands, punctured her left lung, finally exited her back. Whereupon it continued its trajectory, now slightly deflected by Nerina’s tit, and struck Violet’s right hand, which was waving frantically because of all the mayhem transpiring just two feet from her. Rising from her chair, mouth open, trying futilely to scream, Violet grasped her right hand with her left, peered closely at it. Blood was everywhere, hers, Nerina’s, Dial’s. Something was sitting in the palm of her right hand, stuck there by sticky red rapidly coagulating blood. A woman’s nipple! Making a gargling sound, Violet fainted, collapsed

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across the dead body of Nerina. Lucinda clutched her shoulder, blood oozing between her fingers. “Jesus Christ,” she whispered to no one, to everyone. Tilly sat up, jacking in eighteen more rounds of Max Pack as he did so. Looking up, he saw Taussig filling the entrance to Have Blue. Glancing casually at the bodies littering the floor and one table of the establishment, he crossed to stand in front of Tilly. “You’ve been busy,” he said in a flat voice. “Yeah,” said Tilly. “A little misunderstanding.” He slid the Winston High-Liter into his shoulder holster. “Would you take a little advice?” asked Taussig, raising his eyebrows. “Why not,” said Tilly, standing. “This might be a propitious time to leave,” said Taussig, “before Magico hears about this. Because when he does…well…” He shrugged. “I think you’re right,” said Tilly, laughing. Turning to Lucinda, he gave her a steady look, kissed her on the forehead. “Bye.” Nodding to Taussig, he walked out of Have Blue, a little ditty sounding in his head: “Baby love, my baby love…Ooooh how I need ya’ love.”

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