Punktown: Shades Of Grey Part 6

Yu sneered down at the crushed eel thing.

"Animal," he told it.

ADRIFT ON THE SEA OF MILK.

There was a small carnival in Oval Square, several blocks from Paxton University, and at night Loring could see its lights from the single window of his room in an old tenement house that had been converted to dorm housing. Over the past four years he had seen the lights glowing variously through rain and fog and falling snow, but tonight it was summer and hot and he had recently graduated, but he stayed on, and the lights drew him out onto the narrow back streets of Punktown, toward the carnival, though his friends who had accompanied him in the past had all gone away like migrating birds.

A spindly runaway with some netlink images scorched into her face, either from accident or addiction (part of a graph and a backwards 4), dislodged herself from shadow to ask him for money, but he murmured an apology, avoiding her eyes. Derelicts and other lost souls grew thick toward the carnival-drawn like moths to the colored lights-where they slept on the old cobbled floor of Oval Square (which dated back to the native Choom town which predated Punktown), keeping considerately out of the way of traffic like trash shunted aside by a push broom, feeding on sc.r.a.ps of burger roll and greasy fried dilky root salvaged from those trash zappers that weren't functioning.

The Temple of the Sea of Milk was here. At the far end of the square from the point Loring entered; he penetrated straight to it without conscious direction, but unerringly, ignoring the friendly summons and the arrogant demands of the game keepers and freak barkers. The Temple was half shrine and half ghost train ride, half fading and blistered and half garish and slick, rusted but glittering, grindingly noisy but strangely serene in its constant, confident motion.

Loring watched as people were loaded into its one small train of four linked carts. The train would be pulled along a track, if only symbolically, by a sled team of four mechanical babies, harnessed and yoked. The mechanical babies had skin of fluorescent pink rubber, cracked and split away around the joints, with glowing green bulbs for eyes, a number of which were blindly darkened. One baby's hairless head, huge even for a fetus, hung on its broken neck so that its chin rested on its chest. The riders were strapped in. A recording of loud, frenetic religious music crashed to life, and the babies began to slide their legs in their grooves laboriously. They dragged the train up an incline and through a wall of black hanging strips like tentacles, into the maw of the Temple. Loring heard women begin to scream like virgins borne up to the rim of a volcano.

It was Nettie who first got him to ride in the Temple. That evening, they had stood on these same sticky cobblestones, regarding the ride together. She had been holding his arm and shouted her explanation of the structure while the music blared and the incense wafted to them.

The Phlotus were one of the rarest of the many varied races that had settled in the Earth colony, and were strangely both very shy and private, and yet fascinated with the cultures of others, particularly those of Earth. That would explain why the sled team of babies more closely resembled human infants than the Phlotus themselves, who were not so plump or pink. But the babies, Nettie told Loring, were a sort of group of angels or spirit guides who bore to heaven the souls of the dead. Actually, however, there were four heavens, and first the spirit team had to see the dead through the four h.e.l.ls. Needless to say, not all souls made it through the filter-like layers of the various h.e.l.ls and heavens. But if they did, in the final heaven they were considered fully purged of their former life and worthy of being reborn.

Loring watched, waiting for the train to reappear. Less screaming now; they must have made it through the four h.e.l.ls. Someone brushed his arm in pa.s.sing and he looked so sharply at the person-a woman-that she seemed more startled than he. An unfamiliar face, very pretty, that turned quickly from his intense gaze and blended away into the throngs. When Loring returned his stare to the Temple, he saw the glow of green eyes through another sheet of black strips, crowning pink heads, and then the babies emerged, pulling the train behind them. Grins of nervous relief. Each person on the train, it became more evident as they disembarked, carried a little doll that they hadn't possessed before entering into the Temple of the Sea of Milk.

Loring saw one man toss his doll into a trash zapper as he pa.s.sed it. His girlfriend swatted his arm and scolded him, but laughed and held her own doll protectively to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

A dozen floating steps, and he found himself in line. He had not been on the ride since that first time, with Nettie, but it had been increasingly in his thoughts, its remembered colors growing brighter, its sounds louder, the incense more suffocating. At night from his flat he had tried to separate its lights from the other distant carnival lights, as if seeking figures in the constellations. Especially now that he had graduated, and had only another two months before he had to leave the dorm apartment. Especially now that he had to find a job. Especially now that Nettie had gone away with all the others.

While he waited in the queue, he heard a rustling noise to his right, and looked toward the trash zapper there. One might have expected to see a homeless person rummaging for food, but the noise came from within the zapper. Its red bulb indicated that it was not burning the trash as it should and would have to be dumped to be emptied. As the rustling died down inside the zapper, Loring shuddered.

The next group climbed aboard the train. The couple in the end cart were well-dressed young executive types, Loring judged from their emblematic clothing and hair styles. They were as flawless as mannequins, he with his too easy, too confident grin, she with her too easy, too confident (though not wholly natural) beauty. It was difficult landing a good job; some of his friends from school, upper cla.s.smen who had graduated last year or even the year before, were still searching, drifting from one temporary slot to the next, either out of desperate need or at the very least, restless discontent. But these two looked only too safe, only too insulated in their good fortune. Despite their fanatical hard work, how effortless it seemed for some. It was a mystery to him. They jealously seized upon these jobs, and then h.o.a.rded them, kept others outside the fortress.

Look at him laugh. His arm around the woman's shoulders in a show of possessiveness. All that was so easy for him, too, wasn't it? The Phlotus attendant locked them securely in their own little compartment, locked everyone else out.

The train rattled on into the depths of the structure and Loring lifted his gaze to the top of the ride, where on a circular external track four huge, dragon-like sperm-chrome-bright and considerably fanged-chased each other's tails around and around in the endless, voracious cycle of life.

This religion was like so many others, he reflected, as if they were ma.s.s-produced: based on a reverential fear of s.e.x and death, rejecting nature's actual approach to rebirth. Though it was a little less escapist than some of that ilk, in that a final spiritual liberation from the body was never fully, permanently achieved (at least, not in a really desirable way: spirits stranded in the heavens were obligated to become laborers there). Time in the afterlife was as much time in the beforelife: it was a period of purification, of spiritual education for the start of a new existence in the flesh.

Loring reached the attendant, seated at its console. He pa.s.sed the being a ten munit bill (he got three in change; an expensive single ride, but one did get that doll), watching its face throughout the transaction. The Phlotus was much thinner than the slavish overgrown babies, its skin more coral-colored than shocking pink, its green eyes almost black rather than glowng. The toothless black suction cup of a mouth curled upward a bit in what must have been an attempt at a smile. This one was a female, as hairless as the males and indistinguishable from them except for her rather appealing b.r.e.a.s.t.s, high and full, stretching the material of her body stocking.

The train returned to port, the couple in the last cart now clutching their dolls-which were as Loring remembered them: with their pale skin, dark eyes and stick-thin limbs, a more accurate representation of the Phlotus than the team of babies. These were meant to portray the new, reborn souls of the perfect couple, as if they might improve upon their perfection. They looked like proud parents, and no doubt having their children would be just this easy for them Nettie had taken her doll with her, back to her dorm, that night. His doll he had left somewhere in his apartment, though somehow he had lost it...perhaps accidentally thrown it away, or packed it away and forgotten where. (Or maybe, he thought, maybe it had escaped...abandoned him also...) Again, he shuddered, but remembered how Nettie told him she had heard the Phlotus put a kind of large salamander inside the rubbery body of each doll, and that was what caused the movements, enabled them to crawl about and such, until the animal-which could survive quite a long time on the fat and water of its own body-perished at last, and the doll went still.

The dolls seemed to have bendable wires in their limbs, as well, however, and as they strolled away the couple linked their dolls together in an embrace that looked more carnal than romantic. Predators even in love, he thought, sneering inwardly, and then he saw that the ride operator was beckoning for him to step up into his carriage. He was locked inside it alone.

A jarring detonation of music from ruined speakers, a jolt of initial movement and a puff of choking incense and the ghost train was lurching ahead. Loring had been seated in the front car, and except for the screams that were to come momentarily he might have been totally alone on the ride. He watched the cracked backs of the stalwart spirit guards churn and strain as the train was dragged into the darkness beyond the tattered veil.

Straight to h.e.l.l. This, being the first h.e.l.l before the ascent, was deemed the worst, and so its demons were the most ghastly...and here they were tremendously obese, symbolizing the fleshy prison of matter. In blue-lit alcoves in the dark walls, mechanized monsters turned their heads stiffly on blubbery necks, waving arms with jerky threat, their eyes glowing blue in faces that were not only huge, but horribly wrinkled and aged. One of these gargantuan lost souls-wingless like the rest but airborne nonetheless-swooped low over Loring's head, and he sank down into his seat, more afraid that it would fall and crush him than he was of the great black O of its widely stretched sucker-mouth. Blasts of wind issued from the mouths of some demons, others sporting ooze from sores, the yellow mock pus collecting in the pools in which the behemoths squatted, to be recycled: grotesque fountains. Boils or tumors pulsed on some of the automated mannequins, operated by air bladders.

Loring felt a strange impulse to leap out of the train when the scene grew particularly dark, to crouch down and scurry off and hide within the ride, to search out the mysteries behind its illusions. This sudden fantasy went so far as to have him living inside the Temple, unknown even to the Phlotus, keeping out of the way of their maintenance, sneaking out at night to scavenge food like the homeless denizens of the park. No need to worry about jobs and apartments and relations.h.i.+ps. He would be a true ghost amongst these plastic apparitions.

More demons in the next h.e.l.ls, but they grew progressively less obese, their sloughing skins hanging from them in shreds and ribbons as they apparently shed them, the new skin beneath s.h.i.+ny and less wrinkled, with no more sores or tumors. But the eyes still glared blue, the arms still clawed at the riders who pa.s.sed like Dante and Virgil through their company. A low-flying ghoul swept its tattered skin across the top of Loring's head. He remembered how Nettie had shrieked and crushed his arm in both of hers, pressing it into her soft b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her knees had buried their heads timidly under one of his legs, her face nuzzling into his neck while she whimpered and giggled. He had sucked in the smell of her hair as if it were a drug. That night had been the first time they went to bed. This ride had seemed to bear them toward that contact.

The walls grew steadily less dark, revealing great turning gears, pumping pistons, and no matter how primitive or old this temple was, the machinery covering the walls was obviously bogus: meant to represent the inner workings of the cosmos.

The train pushed through a screen into the first of the heavens, the blue lighting ever growing brighter and whiter. The beings here did not suffer, but-of the same caste as the spirit guides-labored at the machinery on the walls, pulling levers, turning their heads to watch the train pa.s.s with their green glowing eyes. A white rain began to fall. It was a holographic drizzle of milk. The Phlotus held sacred the life-giving milk their females fed their young, but also, their amniotic fluid was just as white, the milk that nurtured life in the womb, the elixir of creation. This manna fell in greater torrents as they ascended through the four heavens, until it began to pool right up to the edges of the carts (the babies wading diligently through it), a convincing effect except for the occasional bursts of static that would break up the illusion.

In clear tanks worked into the machinery of the walls, dolls floated and drifted in water, new souls waiting in the wings. And streams of plastic were seen pouring into molds, and ovens glowing in the walls, and stamps pressing down, and conveyor belts delivering new dolls in a supine procession. The riders were watching the actual manufacture of the dolls that would become each one's prize and icon (though the mechanical angels only appeared to be operating the machinery which churned out the purified, reincarnated souls). One belt pa.s.sed close to the train, following a parallel course, bearing seven of the newly minted dolls. One for each of them. Loring noted, as he reached out for his doll, that he must be the only single occupant of the four carts.

The doll's rubbery skin was still warm in his hands, gave off an odd strong odor. It did not move...to his relief. If a salamander was indeed sealed inside, this hot flesh was a cruel suffocating prison.

The train pushed through the final screen, back into the open air. It stopped, the pa.s.sengers with their alter egos in miniature returning to the corporeal world. Loring held his doll loosely as he walked across the cobblestones, thinking he might hand it to a child, but for some reason he didn't. For some reason he brought it back to his apartment. It could replace the one he had received that night with Nettie, that memento which he had somehow lost.

He lay in the dark that night with the noise of an arguing couple a m.u.f.fled rumble above him, while the greasy fried dilkies he had eaten at the carnival rumbled in his guts. At last, however, he slept.

A soft thump awakened him. He lay staring at where the ceiling was lost in blackness above him. In a dream, it had been a ceiling of b.r.e.a.s.t.s like stalact.i.tes (sta-lactates? he thought), a rain of milk dripping from their nipples upon him, and he about to drown in the glowing white pool rising into a sea around him.

He propped himself up on one elbow, groggily reached out to the bedside light, which revealed to him the sight of his Phlotus doll lying in the center of the floor. When he had returned to his tiny apartment, he had set it down on his bureau, a good ten feet from where the doll lay.

Before he could even shudder, he saw the doll move. It lay on its belly, and it was now plainly-if slowly and strenuously-dragging itself across the worn, dirty carpet in the direction of the single window, as if attracted to the lights twinkling beyond the pane.

Was that it, then? Had his first doll escaped in this way? Drawn to the window, the lights, the illusion of fulfillment they promised?

Loring did not ponder a course of action, but on impulse scrambled out of bed and took up a baseball bat he kept close by in case of an intruder. He then lunged over to the doll and swung the bat down on it with all his strength...again...again. Panting, he tripped backwards away from the thing, which now lay flat and motionless.

For several moments. Then, the doll slowly raised itself up a bit, lifted its tiny head, and resumed its slithering progress toward the window.

Loring fought the urge, born of bald fear but also partly a brute reaction to having his will challenged, of launching a second attack with the bat. Another idea came, still spitefully violent but also in its way scientific. He took the chance of turning his back on the doll, whisked into the kitchenette and found a steak knife there. He returned to find that his prize had picked up its pace; it must have dragged itself up the dusty curtains, for when he next saw it the thing was wriggling onto the window sill. There its progress was halted, as he watched it press its head ineffectually against the mesh screen.

Stealing up behind the thing, Loring reached out with the knife and prodded at the doll's back with several darting, anxious lunges. This toppled the doll from the sill to the floor, and Loring followed through with a jolt of courage-dropping to hands and knees beside his victim and pinning its body flat with one hand. He then pressed the knife against the back of the doll, and sank all his weight into sawing with its serrated edge.

He thought he felt a feeble squirming beneath his pinning palm, but in a moment he had cut deeply into the doll and the blade grated on a hard core like bone. Again, panting like a vigorous lover, Loring danced back from the p.r.o.ne figurine, half fearing and half desiring some ghastly, dying convulsion.

For two or three beats, the doll lay still. But the head cranked slowly up. The arms stretched out. It dragged its half-bissected body forward...toward the window with its dreamily stirring curtains.

The room's light was dim, but something glinted in the doll's cleft back, and Loring towered enough over it that he looked straight down into the wound. It would have been hideous to glimpse the damp, glistening flesh of a live salamander inside that rubbery sheath. But worse still, there was no salamander inside. There was a thin black spine of bendable wire embedded in the bogus flesh...and no more.

The revelation terrified Loring. And yet, there was another, unexpected reaction; something like a numb awe.

Awe, that this flesh he had seen poured and baked inside the Temple might not be bogus, after all. More awe, still, if it was indeed bogus. Whatever the case, Loring came to a new decision. He went to his bed. Dumped his pillow from its case. Then, he fetched the bat again...but used it only to guide and poke the doll into the pillowcase, which slowly pulsed and undulated like a dying organ as Loring carried it outside.

When he dumped the doll out on the sidewalk, he jumped back as if he had just released a bag full of tarantulas. And in the dim light the doll did look spider-like as it began scrabbling slowly off the sidewalk and across the street. Loring began to follow.

Several times, when it started into the yard of one of the old houses on this tree-lined side street, he had to repeatedly kick it and push it along with his foot to force it in another direction. This was difficult, as the doll was very set on its destination. But at last, they came out onto Beaumonde Street, a block from Oval Square, which had to be the destination of his h.o.m.onculus. So far they had met no pedestrians, but immediately there was a woman ahead of him, watching their approach. She wore a g-string and high heels, her artificially bountiful b.r.e.a.s.t.s exposed; the blue-glowing implanted fibers that swirled and spiraled around them made her naked orbs look cold to the touch. She started cooing to him but he declined with a shy, impatient murmur, afraid to lose track of his companion...though, in calling after him, she offered to service that, as well. She said that those Phlotus dolls squirmed inside a body very nicely.

It would want to get back inside the Temple, he imagined. In there, would it cast itself into some pool of molten rubber, to be reincarnated next time as someone else's traitorous toy? Did they all feel this mindless impulse of migration, or was it only his dolls that wanted to abandon him? He resented the thing. You're supposed to be mine, he thought at it, as if they were telepathically linked, or of the same mind. But he had set it free-out of pity, he supposed. And more than the curiosity he felt in following, he felt some strange obligation to see it safely back to its chosen home.

The doll crossed Beaumonde Street, whoos.h.i.+ng with traffic even at this hour, and Loring cringed as several hovercars pa.s.sed directly over his misshapen child, causing it to tumble and roll in their wake, but it would right itself and continue stalwartly along. One wheeled vehicle actually struck it, however, and Loring lunged into the street, nearly being clipped himself as he scooped the doll up in his hands. But when he reached the far side it was already moving again, resilient as it was, though its head was now half flattened and one of its dark green eyes had been popped out. It paddled the air, this action causing the wound in its back to work open and shut like lips mouthing a secret message to him. Again he set it down, again it guided him onward. Spirit guide, he thought.

When they reached the end of the street, however, it did not cross the next to pa.s.s into Oval Square. Was it confused, now that the carnival lights had darkened for the night, the music of the Temple silenced, its incense no longer carried in the air? Instead, the doll turned the corner and continued on that way. Loring did not endeavor to change its direction, because the doll did not really seem to be disoriented. It had not hesitated at the corner, had not faltered in its course.

Down this dark, urban tributary, a group of youths milled in shadows on the sidewalk, and Loring tensed up inside...but he was not so much afraid of being hurt as he was afraid of being detained and losing sight of the doll...or of the doll being picked up and harmed. He had encountered a few other people along the way (the doll moved slowly and already more than an hour had pa.s.sed since they'd left his apartment), but no one had accosted him yet; the most someone had said since he'd met the prosty was the observation that it was a strange little dog he was walking. It might not even have been a joke.

Yet as he and his doll neared the group, he saw that they weren't youths-but a small knot of Phlotus...maybe the very ones who owned and operated the Temple of the Sea of Milk. They weren't smoking, weren't drinking, and if they had been chatting they weren't doing that either, now; with a s.h.i.+ver, he thought that it was as if they had gathered here solely in antic.i.p.ation of his arrival. They all watched Loring and his doll approach as if with mute reverence, and parted to let them pa.s.s. Loring looked expectantly over his shoulder at them. He had expected the doll to stop amongst them, but it hadn't, and he had expected the Phlotus to say something to him...to explain this to him...but they didn't, only turning to watch the man and his miniature move away from them until the group was again lost in shadow.

But as he faced forward again, Loring felt a wash of realization. Now, as the doll reached the next street, bearing less traffic, and crossed it.

Across the street was the outer campus of old P. U.-Paxton University. And the doll had known the way as easily as he would have, but he had not antic.i.p.ated this.

They moved onto the grounds, across neatly trimmed gra.s.s damp with night dew, foregoing the paths lined with slim trees. Beyond, the outer buildings of the college loomed dark and grim, like a fortress wary of his invasion. Moth-like, the doll seemed intent upon a distant softly glowing object that Loring knew all too well. Unerringly, the doll pulled itself through the hissing gra.s.s in this direction. Loring saw the fountain clearly now; he and Nettie had sat more than once on the benches that ringed it.

In the midst of all the water that sprayed and fell back into its basin, there was a holographic film loop of a beautiful young girl made up convincingly to look like a mermaid. Her hair billowed as if she hovered under the ocean, her arms waving as if in slow motion. Her eyes pa.s.sed unseeing across Loring as he neared her. As always, he admired her delicate naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s, small and dainty enough that one might imagine colorful fish nursing upon them. Nettie's b.r.e.a.s.t.s were small like that, but perhaps he had feasted too greedily upon them.

His approach had disturbed a young couple on the other side of the fountain; he hadn't noticed them before. They rose and began strolling off down one of the paths. Loring turned to watch the students go, guilty that he had intruded upon their romantic solitude, yet oddly satisfied that he had banished them. A small splash caused him to look back around.

Loring experienced a slight panic when he saw that his pet had pulled itself up to the fountain's edge and slipped into its pool. He saw the thing paddling darkly under the surface. Then, as it pa.s.sed under the foaming spot where a jet of water rained back into the basin, he lost sight of it. He was almost tempted to take his shoes off and go into the pool after it.

But he caught sight of the doll again. The mermaid had briefly darkened, as the doll must have pa.s.sed in eclipse in front of the lens that projected her apparition. The doll had reached the center of the pool, where there was a black hole that was obviously a drain. As Loring watched, the doll put its head into the hole, and began to squeeze the rest of itself in after.

For a moment, it seemed stuck. Again Loring was tempted to wade into the pool...not to pull the doll out, but to help push it all the way in. But the doll worked its way through, and slipped into the orifice out of sight.

Loring was left standing there, alone, the mermaid a slow cavorting illusion, seducing him but unaware of him all at once. Would his doll dwell forever beneath the school, in its dark guts, never evicted, never at a loss for a home, never in need of occupation? Or had it pa.s.sed into a new world, been reborn?

Loring turned from the mermaid to begin his walk back home. He felt tears coming to his eyes like water splashed on him from the fountain.

He missed his doll.

HYDRA.

Art shot himself in the head.

It was a singular suicide in that he was able to watch himself die without pain; indeed, he enjoyed watching. But from the look in his mirrored eyes, he knew his other self did not share his sentiments. At first, his doppelganger showed shock at their confrontation. Then, fear and agony blazed in his eyes as the gel bullet struck him and spread its corrosive plasma. Like a photograph, Art's double burned away, bubbling black at the edges where a delicate purple fire flickered prettily. Within a minute, only a sizzling pool of grease remained, still casting a slight violet glow.

Art hid away his small gun, grinning down at the stain, no more than a shadow of his double. He then moved out of the kitchen into the rest of the apartment, to see how his double had lived.

Art's retainer, Balser, had seen to all the details. The Teeb Family, the most powerful syndy in Paxton (called Punktown by its populace), had handled the illegal cloning. Each clone had been given sufficient artificial memories to believe he was the particular ident.i.ty he was a.s.signed, and not a clone of Artemis Lerna. This clone had thought he was a security guard named Bill Kansas. Art smiled at the holo portrait of Bill's imagined fiancee, supposedly away at school on Earth. In actuality, she was a hooker for the Teeb clan.

As he smiled at the hologram, however, a feeling of guilt came was.h.i.+ng through Art's body, and he had to look away. Bill must have stared at that pretty face every night, pining for a woman he had never actually met. Art was not without a conscience...which was why he had had himself cloned in the first place.

Art had been fascinated with criminals all his life, collecting books and vids on them. Particularly serial killers. As wealthy as he was, he had even a.s.sembled a small museum of murder in his home; he owned the bloodstained clothing of victims, the bloodstained weapons of monsters. These monsters were outsiders, and Art felt he could sympathize with that; his wealth had cut him off from the great majorities. He had always wondered what it would feel like to kill another human being. Yes, he had stalked an old girlfriend or two, had even spray-painted one's vehicle (taking an almost erotic delight in the act), but could never bring himself to harm them. Art had never even struck another person before today.

He couldn't bring himself to fulfill his dark curiosity, his dark desires. He had been raised a Nouveau Catholic by his parents, and though he didn't attend church anymore he still felt the weight of its teachings. Thou shalt not kill...

But one had more of a right to kill one's own self. Right? And clones were not born and raised in the manner of natural human beings. He was violating no one but extensions of his own body. Right?

The clones didn't even have his personality, for the most part, but those programmed bogus histories. Though there was bound to be some similarity, in that much of the human personality is based on electro-chemical activity in the brain, and the brain literally changes on the microscopic level each time a new memory is added to its infinite library-these being physical properties that would be reproduced to some extent.

Art saw decorations in Bill's flat that he would never tolerate in his own apartment; a painted nude, for one. On the other hand, the woman in the painting was just the kind of woman he would most crave, if he could have any in the known worlds.

There were eight clones made; seven remained, spread throughout Punktown. Balser had hidden them well from his boss in the teeming city, in no doubt all walks of life. It might take months or even years to track them down, to stalk them. To hunt them. But Art was rich; it was inherited wealth, and he owned people competent enough to run his businesses for him. He had to have something to occupy his boundless free time, and to satiate his jaded desires. A challenge. A game...

One down. Seven suicides to go.

Jed Mercer sat in traffic in his semi-robotic garbage truck, its various insectoid limbs retracted and the trash zapper humming as it finished digesting the last load. A man with a chainsaw chased a woman through the intersection but their uniform blue color signified that they were merely holograms advertising a new thriller movie. "Ghosts," Jed murmured, watching them dash down a side street.

He glanced to his right, at a number of buildings which loomed above the trees of the park. One building in particular always held his interest when he came this way, though it wasn't much different from the others. He even found himself taking a longer route to come by this way. He didn't collect trash in this part of Punktown, however. This was the rich sector. Rich people lived in those towers, with the late afternoon sun blazing in their many windows. Still, it seemed to Jed that he knew somebody who lived in that building, if he could only remember who that was.

An irritable beep behind him alerted him to the changing of lights. With a roar, the garbage truck surged forward again.

On Forma Street, definitely not in the favored sector of Punktown, Jed slammed on his brakes so abruptly that a hovercar nearly collided into his rear. The driver, a Tikkihotto, leaped out of the vehicle and yelled in Jed's window, his optical fibers wavering in the air furiously. Jed activated one of the truck's arms, and the alien fled back to his car as it reached for him. Jed pulled the truck over toward the curb, double-parked, hit his blinkers and jumped out.

"Hey!" he called to a woman standing on the sidewalk, chatting with a dolphin-mouthed Choom. "Amy!" he called.

The woman looked his way and seemed to blanch. She said something to the Choom, who glanced at Jed in irritation and moved on.

It was indeed Amy, Jed realized in shock. She was supposed to be on Earth, taking a six-month course in nursing. What was she doing back, and on Forma Street of all places? And her clothes...

"Amy!" he said, reaching her. "For G.o.d's sake, what are you doing?" He gestured at her attire: an open leather jacket over what appeared to be a thong swimsuit, or a little less. "Are you insane? This is Forma Street, not the d.a.m.n beach! When did you get back?"

"Look, mister, I'm sorry...I don't know you."

"What? What are you saying? Are you on drugs?"

"Look, mister...please just go away. My name isn't Amy. Look..." She dug in her purse, flipped open her wallet. "See? My name is Evan Reardon."

"Amy...is this a joke, or what?" He took her elbow, his face glowing hot with anger and confusion.

"Now you've done it," she hissed, looking afraid. "Here comes my pimp."

"Your...?"

A hand clamped on Jed's shoulder, whirled him around. He gazed up into the face of Evan/Amy's procurer-a hulking humanoid with the face of a deep-sea fish, but uglier.

Several minutes later, a man was helping Jed into his car. They drove away, leaving the double-parked garbage truck. Tasting his own blood in his mouth, Jed turned his head groggily to see the man who had come to his aid.

His own face smiled back at him grimly. "Hi," said the stranger. "My name is Lloyd Proctor. I think."

"Amy," Jed breathed, studying the holo portrait in Lloyd's parlor.

"My fiancee, Sandy," replied Lloyd, handing him a coffee. He hadn't had to ask Jed how he took his coffee; light, with one sugar. "She's away on Earth, taking a six-month course..."

"In nursing," Jed finished.

"No; economics. So you're a trash collector, huh?"