Queen of Angels

1

Orca shiny in water, touched by mercury ripples, Mary Choy sank into her vinegar bath, first lone moment in seventy two hours. The sour sweet rice smell tickled her nose. She held the official deluxe paper handbook from Dr. Sumpler’s office and referred to the index for Discoloration, Mild, Under Stress, to learn why the crease of her buttocks was turning gray in the universal deep black. Have you been taking your vinegar baths every two weeks? the handbook chided.

“Yes, Dr. Sumpler.” She had come to enjoy the acrid half hour.

Continuing hydroacetic therapy may be accelerated if stress discoloration occurs. Custom melanin replacement is fed from above and below, from vitamin supplements and from epidermal nourishment. Discoloration may be due to excessively tight clothing (loosen or change styles); it may also be due to poor nutrition habits, which are not always correctable through vitamin therapy. Do not worry about discolorations lasting only a few hours or a day; these are common in the first years of your adjusted body.

“Glorious.” Dr. Sumpler had not warned her about such minor piebaldness. Mary shut the handbook and lifted it onto the tiled washbasin, then tilted her head back to soak hair, rid it of the airgrime and sweat of three unrelieved days.

She could not wash away the sight of eight young comb citizens in various stages of disassembly. Last night, the first investigation team had gone to the third foot of East Comb One in response to neighborhood medical detectors picking up traces of human decay. In the first two hours the team had mounted a sniffer, performed assay and scanned for heat trails. Then the freezers had come and tombed the whole apartment. Senior in her watch, Mary had been assigned this rare homicide at seven hundred. Spin of the hour.

Layer by cold solid layer, forensics would now study the scene corpses and all and take as long as they wished. From the large scale to the microbial everything would be sifted and analyzed and by tomorrow or the day after they would know something about everyone who had been in and out of the apartment during the past year. There would be lists of skin flake, hair and spittle traces to match with medical records now fair game under the Raphkind amendments, bless the bastard; she could track suspects through microbe population deviances and projected points of origin as fine as rooms in a suspect’s apartment, bless evolution and mitochondrial DNA.

With eyes closed she saw again the corpses hard and still, covered with a thin layer of rime, their blood clotted in dark cold lakes lives and memories fled. A grisly meat puzzle for masters to riddle.

Mary Choy had been a pd for five of her twenty eight years. Competence and the laws banning discrimination against voluntary transforms (bless the libs before Raphkind) had moved her on the sly spin to full lieutenant in supervisory investigation in three and a half years. She had remained an investigator by choice, specking this to be her slot in life. She did not love death. She loved mystery and capture. She loved finding the social carnivores, the parasites and untherapied misfits.

Mary still believed she helped hold the line against the Selectors and others who would exact retribution beyond the law. Their way lay unbelievable misery for all. Her way lay swift decisive justice and forced therapy or incarceration. Ninety five percent of all crimes could be solved; leave it to the therapists to find and erase the perverse drives and motivations.

Two hours after her arrival at the scene, pd ensigns had brought her a possible witness, a tall gaunt graying male R Fettle, friend of the apartment’s owner E Goldsmith. Mary had not then seen the interior of the apartment but she had been fed by the on scene techs; suspicion was falling heavily on the owner. Interrogated, Fettle had had little to tell and had been released. His reaction stuck in memory: deeply puzzled like a fish dragged into air stuttering denial shocked by her suggestion he might be prosecuted for not revealing Goldsmith’s need for therapy. Real fear. At first she had felt contempt for this jag denizen, all unfocused uprooted thinking.

She lifted an arm and watched the water bead and slide in thin rivers down her dolphinslick skin. Now she felt sorry for Fettle. She had been tro shink harsh on him; Mary was not used to homicides. Fettle knew nothing. Yet how could a friend not know murder was potential?

Enough vinegar. She emerged from the black plastic tub and toweled herself, humming pop twelve-tone. The small jade-colored arbeiter—a Chinese model purchased after her last temp mandated ramp in salary—met her with a pressed and folded uniform.

At Mary’s whistle the home manager read her messages. Its masculine voice followed her through three rooms as she searched for a lost curl of mineral silver to wrap around her ear. “There’s a call from Junior Lieutenant Theodora Ferrero, no message,” the manager concluded.

She had not heard from Ferrero for three months; Ferrero had been up for promotion and Mary had assumed the cram had absorbed her friend’s time. They had become close in academy; Ferrero had just come out of minor therapy and had seemed balanced but vulnerable. Mary, having just completed her transform, with a similar softshell feeling, had taken to the fellow cadet immediately. Times since had been more rocky. Theodora had frozen at junior lieutenant, been passed over twice. “Answer the call. Interrupt me if completed,” she said.

Unlike two thirds of the millions who aspired to the combs and high paying temp jobs, Mary Choy had succeeded without therapy. In a frame by the front door hung her most recent department therapy need evaluation. She was a natural; she had passed the temp agency tests on her first try and each yearly LAPD exam with equal ease. The evaluation was a smooth ascending cross, a printout of brain locused circles each in its proper place each pointing to a well balanced and proportioned personality subpersonality agent or talent. Thoughts poised, ego trim and fit, she knew who she was and what she was capable of; she knew how to stand tall and straight within her head and recover from the inevitable trips and stumbles without trauma; she was a mature young woman and ripe for promotion. So the printouts showed, but Mary in her introspective moments reserved final judgment.

While her wages were high she did not splurge. Her only ostentation was an apartment high on the ankle of the second foot of North Comb Two. Spare and stylish, warm grays and velvet purples and blacks, Mary’s home was a perfect blind for her gloss midnight. She could be absorbed in it and lose this assured self, vanish into decor, take her sunlight firsthand through wide uncurtained windows. There was little need for baubles. She did not pursue art or literature, did not begrudge those who did, but her life was devoted to hunting not celebrating human spirit.

In her own private activities she was equally spare. She practiced the five power centering disciplines including War Dance where self vied with self to pour out physical motion. This she did in a small empty room with white foam walls like a black calligraphic stroke against naked canvas.

Exercises finished, Mary put on her uniform carefully, sealing vital points in monomol mesh armor, drawing up support boots that kept her legs from getting tired during long waits. Her rank carried no weapons in daytoday. She was not expected to engage in regular combat. Physical violence in the USA had declined markedly in the past fifteen years. The therapied did not seek violence.

Her dark eyes were calm quiet yet neither empty nor unexpressive. Her transformed voice was deep yet sweetly feminine, powerful yet motherly. She could sing lullabies or growl a pd threat.

Quiet, centered, tall, night colored Mary Choy had everything she wanted but her past. Its residue lay embalmed in the corner of a single drawer in her bedroom dresser, a box of old family photographs, disks and memory cubes.

She stood by the dresser feeling a certain dread clear instinct about Theodora and fingered the drawer. Bent to stroke Loafer, her redstriped white cat. It rubbed against her boots, maroon eyes sage and patient, purring deep in its throat, the single living link to her girlhood; Mary’s parents had given it to her when she graduated from high school.

“Connection with Theodora Ferrero,” the manager said.

“Put me on vid,” Mary said. “I’ll take it in the living room.” She walked quickly to the phone, bent momentarily to adjust a wrinkle in the monomol, straightened, composed. “Hello, Theo. Months silent. Good to hear from you!”

Mary could not see her friend. Ferrero’s vid was turned off. “Yeah, thanks for the callback.” Voice tense. “I thought you’d like to know.”

“Did you make it?” Mary asked, certain Theodora had gotten the grade.

“Passed over,” Ferrero said. “Three times now, last chance. Recommended for further therapy.”

Mary looked surprised and sympathetic. “Tell me about it. Let me see you, Honey; my vid’s on.”

“I know,” Ferrero said. “I’m not taking it.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I don’t want to see you, Mary. I don’t want to be reminded.”

“You’re pulling me dark, Theo. What happened?”

“I didn’t make it. That’s all and enough, don’t you think?”

“Theo, I’ve been through a rough. This big homicide, eight down. I’m a bit slow and I’m about to go back on duty.”

“I’m sorry to spill this now, but you have an edge over me and I refuse to compete, Mary.”

“What edge?”

“You’re a transform. You’re exotic and protected. The pd doesn’t dare tell you to go back for therapy or you cry on the temp and the feds investigate. They can’t touch you.”

“That’s nonsense, Theo.” Mary felt the burn spreading through her face; she could not show a blush but she could feel it.

“I don’t think so, Mary, and right now I’m on a pinker of just cutting you off.”

“Theo, I sympathize, but don’t take it out on me. We went through academy. You mean a lot to me. What did they want you to—”

“I don’t have to tell you that! You’re a fapping alien, Mary. I don’t have you on vid because I don’t want to see you. I don’t even want to talk to you. You’ve made it impossible for me to roll the grade. Enjoy your peak, Honey.” The phone chimed cutoff.

Mary stood in silence before the small gray table that held the phone, gripping its edge. She looked down on her smooth black fingers, straightened them flexed them again, drew back. The tension in Theodora had been clear months before; still Mary had not expected this. A part of her said It’s obvious why the pd asked for more therapy and another part parried with a deeper Why.

To avoid such a question she crossed the living room and switched on LitVid. The nets were full of the AXIS messages finally being received after crossing the space between the stars; Mary stood before sharp simulations of the probe going into orbit around its chosen world. She watched without hearing, barely seeing, conflicting messages slowly crossing her own inner space.

Why did she do her transform and choose such an exotic design in the first place; to get advantage, or to match inner her with an outer appearance that had never satisfied?

Mary’s parents her brother and sister Mother Father had accepted the transform redandwhite cat yet not the later transform daughter. She had not heard from any of them in four years.

Now Theodora, whom she might once have called her best friend in a life of few such friendships.

She returned to the drawer, opened it and removed one envelope containing a single palm sized disk. Only when she had involved herself in some particular unpleasantness and needed to gain perspective did she go over her mementoes. Slipping the disk into her slate she called up picture number four thousand and twenty-one. In color but not in three d: still vid of a twenty year old woman height one hundred sixty-five centimeters skin pale face round and pleasant with a smile that seemed from this distance acquiescing. The young woman wore a mid-thirties green and blue patch suit showing one side of abdomen left shoulder most of right leg; a singularly unattractive fashion. Behind the young woman a white wood frame house in what was now jag five of the shade, Culver City. At the young woman’s feet a hunched Loafer thinner by two kilos. The original Mary Choy at twenty. Ambitious yet quiet; intelligent yet reserved. Working quietly in her scholastic specialty forensic research to build up sufficient temp credit to finance a transform against future salary.

Dark eyes narrow, lips taut, she returned the disk to the envelope.

Madhouse Earth such a treat no choice to be born here. We are all like in madness. By grace our madness likes us.

2

Standing, gaunt tense Richard Fettle leaned into the curve, straight knees knocking the bent knees of seated passengers. He still trembled, shocked by this morning’s anomaly.

Three stations ago the round little white autobus had filled with citizens of the shade young and old, a medieval assortment of widely different norms brothers and sisters common victims of the future. The bus did not board any more.

Light gilded them all secondhand through the goggling windows. Five suns glowed in the slow twisting gear meshing arms of the three towers of East Comb One, generous light bequeathed to the groundlings. + No good mood this day. Roughed and not deserving. Good tale though. Madame’s group heedful for five minutes. Some attention. Mind off Goldsmith. What he did. Did he? Man is the poet who kills, woman the angel who eats. What he said. Never wrote it down. Goldsmith is the poet who kills. Bringing me into it. Jesus I am a peaceful man.

The bus rolled behind a eucalyptus screen. The five suns leaf sputtered and were lost. He pulled a cord and the bus eased curbside at the gate to the upland valley estate of Madame de Roche.

He stepped down. The little bus hummed away on the patched unslaved asphalt lane. Richard stood on the root-heaved sidewalk head bowed eyes half closed composing and sorting. + How to tell it. Maximum purgation. Awful thing. They all knew him.

Red haired Madame de Roche, sixty, thought people a delightful phenomenon worth cultivating. She fed and entertained her faithful, provided beds and bathrooms, listened when they were unhappy, and offered all her faithful might need but the shared regard of equals, for she was not one of them. She might live in the shade but she was not of the shadows. Nor was she of the combs. She claimed to despise that “Rabble of coldhearted perfectionists.”

Madame de Roche no more resembled her guests than she did her garden or her cats, which she also cared for with grace and understanding.

+ Reduce it to a performance a tale. Artificial but one way of salvaging a rough hour. That I might be a murderer. Eight die that I might live five minutes to tell a tale that happened to me to all of us for we all knew Goldsmith. Accusations of not turning him in; knowing his need for therapy which I did not; I did not. Begin the story before she arrives. She will ask for it to be repeated then. Hear it all. Longer in the spot glare.

Richard shivered. + Jesus. I am a peaceful man. Forgive me but I have earned this story.

He walked two steps at a stride up the wide stone stairway ignoring cracked concrete lions of another age imitating yet another age, into the deceptively Spanish portico entrance of the mansion.

In a white enameled wrought iron cage a fine large red and blue bird preened its feathers and blinked at him, one chafed claw showing silver. + New addition. Forty years antique and very valuable; real birds much cheaper. Macawnical.

The door knew him. With a polite nod to its heavy wood face, Richard entered and was absorbed into a great commonality of the untherapied. Fourteen of Madame de Roche’s faithful pooled around the stairs, their slippers padding or hard plastic soles tapping on the cool red granite floor: three young long-haired collegiate women admiring an early Shilbrage in an alcove; two tuxedoed men discussing sharp trade transactions in the shadows banks; a ring of four denimed poets admiring each other’s hand printed broadsides. Dressed their best except where philosophy demanded less they cradled drinks in mannered fingers and nodded as he passed; Richard was not senior, not this month. + Friends but would not lift a digit if I fell. Petronius would know them. Lord spare me they’re all I have or deserve.

In a chair away from this spreading pool sat Madame’s appointed favorite this month, Leslie Verdugo of ancient family, a lovely white haired wraith whom Richard had never addressed out of shyness perhaps but more probably because she smiled all the time, ether-seeing, and this did not attract him. Sitting across a glass topped occasional table from her was Geraldo Francisco a New Yorker who specialized in printmaking using ancient methods. Approaching them diffidently was Raymond Cathcart who called himself an ecologist and wrote poetry that occasionally stirred Richard but more often bored him. Breaking away from the poets to join this new attractor was Siobhan Edumbraga, an exotic female in speech and manner but clumsy in all physical acts and occasionally sharply rude, an innocent of no talents he could discern. She had made up her name; he did not know her real name.

Richard found his place in the ring of poets and leaned over them, somber eagle face and liquid gray eyes betraying no eagerness, biding patiently. News of some late progressive insult to the arts nano or another outraging medium compelled them all to laugh, full of hate and envy. Resources of the combs made them look like children playing with Plasticine. They were individualists and they cherished their untherapied dishonesties or skewed perceptions; they thought natural blemishes necessary to art. Richard shared this belief but did not take it seriously. There was after all the majesty of accomplishment in the combs compared to a clutch of illmannered broadsides in the sweaty hands of low poets. + To love one’s self is to be therapied. Self-hatred is freedom.

“Richard’s not often so late in line,” said Nadine coming out of nowhere outside the circle and behind him, dressed in red. Nadine Preston was his age but only recently escaped by messy divorce from the privileges of the combs. Her smooth face and black hair wreathed a lovely child’s smile. He saw her slender body in flash memory. Sweet three quarters and one quarter mascaraed harpy. When sweet she was his last sexual solace, but Richard did not stay for her tantrums.

“I have had an adventure,” he said softly, gray eyebrows raised.

“Oh?” Nadine urged but the ring was not having it; their conversation rivered on.

+ Was this Nemesis, come to balance my books? Good line.

“Emanuel Goldsmith is missing,” he said deep voice still soft but clearly audible. “He is being sought by the LAPD.”

The poets turned their heads. He had seconds to hook them fast. “The public defenders spoke with me about him,” Richard said. “Eight people were murdered two nights ago. I came to Emanuel’s apartment in the third foot of East Comb One. The lift was blocked and pd were there and all manner of arbeiters. The room was being frozen. The most stunning—”

Madame de Roche came down the stairs in a quick saintly glide, blue chiffon trailing, red hair gentle on her shoulders. Richard paused and smiled showing his large uneven teeth.

“Such a lovely group,” she greeted, beaming. Without apparent discrimination she fixed her faithful with sapphire eyes wrapped in naturally acquired wrinkles in that motherly face, features arranged to show good humor and loving sympathy though she did not actually smile. “Always a pleasure. Pardon my lateness. Do go on.”

Nadine said, “Richard has been at the scene of a crime.”

“Really?” Madame de Roche said at the bottom, ivory hand on ebony wooden ball. Leslie Verdugo joined her and Madame beamed briefly on her then turned all attention to Richard.

“I was interrogated by the most stunning woman a pd in uniform, black as jet but not negroid. I think at first she wanted to accuse me of the crime, or at least of public recklessness for not turning Emanuel in. I wondered: was this Nemesis, come to balance my books?”

“Do start again,” Madame de Roche said. “I believe I’ve missed something.”

No pain, no gain. World’s a rough. All we learn comes of our own sharp go. We torment each other. Race is like acid in a tight metal groove; we etch. Hope?

3

In a lost time of myth the coast of southern California had been littoral brown and dusty desert populated by Indians Spaniards mestizos scrub and ancient twisted pines. Now from twenty kilometers below Big Sur to the tip of Baja it was a rambling ribbon of community linked by slaveways, fed by desalting plants and mountain melts gathered from as far as Canada, punctuated by the towers of Santa Barbara the immense diurnal mirrored combs of Los Angeles centipede segments of South Coast monuments and the sprawling rounded ceramic arches and spires of San Diego. Nestled between the desalting and fusion plants of San Onofre and San Diego, like islands in this coastal and inland battle of titans lurked the groundling enclaves of La Jolla and Del Mar, blanketed in shabby gentility and celebrated memory of years past.

Flanking the sprawl of the University of California at San Diego, these cities boasted hundreds of thousands of atavists who wished to live lives of past simplicity. The once ubiquitous doctors and lawyers and heads of corporations had decades before abandoned their beachside palaces to move into the central luxuries of the monuments; outmoded academics and scholars took their place.

Her Professor Doctor Martin Burke, O.V.F. & I.—Once Very Famous and Influential—had recently left the monuments and the bosom of highrise society to slum in the flatlands. He had found himself an old not ruinously expensive apartment in the inland hills of La Jolla and here he sat with barely enough energy to answer his chiming phone, trying to raise some enthusiasm for a scheduled public broadcast of the latest LitVid 21 AXIS report, history in the making.

He turned down the sound on the floating head and shoulders of an announcer and reached out on the third chime to make sure the phone’s vid was off. Then he said, “I’ll take it.” The phone opened a connection. “Hello.” Martin’s voice was hoarse and phlegmy. He sounded sixty; he had just earned forty five.

“Martin Burke, please.” A pleasant, aggressive male voice.

He coughed. “Speaking.”

“Mr. Burke, you used to work for the Institute for Psychological Research—”

“Used to.” Pause. Sounded like a journalist. “I had nothing to do with—”

“No, of course not. My name is Paul Lascal, Mr. Burke. I’m not a reporter and I’m not interested in the Raphkind scandals. I am interested in what you know about IPR. Would it be possible to speak with you soon?”

A LitVid simulation of AXIS itself floated before him, narration muted. The craft’s deceleration vanes were shown spread wide a spidery thing of deep space. The vanes withdrew with unreal speed and AXIS’s children flushed like a thousand handsful of nickels smeared by gravity in a gray pointillistic curve around the second planet of Alpha Centauri B.

“The last thing I want to talk about is IPR,” Martin said. “Where did you get my number?”

“I represent Mr. Thomas Albigoni.” Lascal paused for some sign of recognition, then continued smoothly without it. “Carol Neuman gave him your name and phone number. She thought you might be able to help him.”

“I don’t see how. I haven’t worked at IPR for a year. How is Carol connected with Mr. Albigensi—”

“Albigoni. Thomas. Mister. She was a therapist for his daughter. They became friends. I understand you’re no longer in the silky with the regulators. That could make you doubly useful to us. Just a short talk. Say, over lunch?”

Martin looked at the mess in his small kitchen. He had not mustered the energy to tell the apartment arbeiters to clean it up. He had not eaten since early evening of the day before. “You seem to think I should know who Albigoni is.”

“He’s a publisher.”

“Oh? LitVids?”

“And books,” Lascal said pointedly. “Far more lit than vid.”

“Is he after an exposé?”

“No. Another matter entirely.”

Martin rubbed his nose. “In that case, and considering it’s Carol, maybe I’ll accept.”

“Do you know—” Lascal named a shoreline La Jolla restaurant, very expensive.

“I know it.”

“About one hour from now? Just ask for Mr. Albigoni’s table.”

Martin gave an assenting grunt and put the receiver down. He leaned back in the weak cushions of his aging armchair. On the battered coffee table sat a ceremonial and condensed printed copy of his twenty year old atlas of the human brain, a seminal work from his salad days. Sometime during the previous night he had drunkenly opened it to a plate of the olfactory nerve and system. Next to the plate he had drawn a crude cartoon of a vampire, teeth trickling teardrops of blood, with branching arrows connecting cartoon and pink and white cauliflower flesh of prepyriform cortex, olfactory bulb and rhinencephalon.

From the armchair he could see into the apartment’s small bedroom. In one corner beyond the bed a tall metal case supported stacked cubes of data. Martin’s life had centered on those cubes until President Raphkind’s downfall and suicide had ushered in the new era of constitutional cleansing and investigations. He had not been part of the Raphkind scandals—not directly—but his research had been targeted. Federal had shut down IPR and tucked him away from his true calling.

He turned up the sound on the AXIS report pushed himself forcibly from the armchair and walked into the bathroom to shave and dress.

Martin had once hiked the Country of the Mind. Now he was reduced to accepting luncheon dates with curious strangers just to get out of the apartment.

Why put on eyeglasses? Why look out and ahead? You won’t go there, I won’t. We are all Moses staring into Canaan. Who in hell cares if our children get there? My this has been a bitchy evening, hasn’t it?

4

LitVid 21 (Science and Philosophy Nets) Scheduling 12/23/47

1: AXIS MultiNet Coverage 24 hr reports four tiers

A Net: PubAcc David Shine and Team

B Net: PubAcc Direct Data Downlink (Hobby-Tech)

C Net: Australian Squinfo: Analysis (Pay)

D Net: Lunar Squinfo: Analysis (Pay)

2: Designer Babies Conference Tucson AZ 0800-2200 (Member Conference Pay)

A Net: Health and public acceptance

B Net: Future social change

C Net: Religious, Historical and Scientific Images of Humanity

3: Public Science Issues Forum PubAcc MultiNet 0900-2100

A Net: Diane Muldrow-Lewis-Taper Playback Interviews with Science/Tech Pers. (Expanded Schedule for subjects)

B Net: Senate Transform Law Debates Discrimination in Eastern States?

C Net: Arbeiter Design Conference Cleveland, Ohio

D NET: NANOTECH NEWS (Chosen for Recording, $20.00 Fee)

E Net: END SELECTION

Selection made: 1/AXIS Multinet A Net B Net switch at will No fee

LitVid 21/1 A Net (David Shine): “AXIS has been on the road for fifteen years, at a cost of over one hundred billion dollars, a lot of treasure for such a distant piece of metallic fluff many have said. But the overwhelming voice of the world community spoke loud and clear three decades ago, and it said Yes. AXIS, an acronym for Automated eXplorer of Interstellar Space, became the grandest project in recent history, perhaps more important overall than the manned Mars missions, the return to the moon, the orbital platforms and stations…For in planning, building and launching AXIS the world propelled itself deliberately and with historically unprecedented foresight into a new industrial revolution.

“The technologies necessary for AXIS’s success—the nanotechnologies of machines smaller than living cells—have already changed our lives and promise much more in the very near future. But which is more important, the economic and industrial benefits, or the philosophical and psychological?

“Through AXIS we might find our doppelgangers, our soulmates; we might find mankind’s future husbands and wives among the angels who the Bible tells us once cohabited with Earthlings.

“AXIS may be therapy for us all, for the great uncured, unhealed human race, with so far to go on its breathless course through history. We may finally be able to compare ourselves to our superiors, or our equals, and know where we stand.

“As for yourself, you’ll find more formal telecasts on other LitVid 21 channels. We are taking the universal feed and simulated report from Australian and lunar farside mission control, and adding our own cultural spin.

“In the past few weeks, AXIS has returned images of three planets circling Alpha Centauri B. As yet these worlds have not been named, and are called only B-1, B-2, and B-3. B-3 was already known to moonbased astronomers; it is a huge gas giant some ten times larger than Jupiter in our own solar system. Like Saturn it is surrounded by a thin rugged ring of icy moonlets. B-l is a barren rock hugging close to Alpha Centauri B, similar to Mercury. But the focus of our attention is now on B-2, a just-right world slightly smaller than Earth. B-2 possesses an atmosphere closely approximating Earth’s, as well as continents and oceans of liquid water. It is orbited by two moons each about a thousand kilometers in diameter.

“AXIS’s sensors and telescopes discovered B-2 almost three years ago. Now AXIS is making its move on this Earthlike world. That is, it made its move over four years ago, for AXIS is sending us information at the speed of light across four light years. The signal has been relayed by fifty transponders across almost forty trillion kilometers of empty space. The reports are only reaching us this week, in compressed form, to be decoded, enhanced and analyzed by thinking machines in California and by planetary scientists around the world.

“This is as close to live and realtime as God allows us to be.”

Switch/LitVid 21/1 B Net (Decoded: Australian Cape Control: Message relayed Space Tracking: Lunar Control: Australian Cape Control: AXIS Mind Team Leader Roger Atkins)

(! = realtime)

AXIS (Biologic Band 4)> Hello, Roger. I assume you’re still there. This distance is a challenge even for me, based as I am upon human templates…(politeness algorithm diagnosis for total mechanical-biologic thinker function V-optimal) most of the time. I have come within a million kilometers of B-2 mark this moment 7-23-2043-1205:15. I am preparing my machine and bio memories for receipt of information from the children, now flying in a perfectly dispersing cloud toward B-2. Data on B-3 have been relayed. The planet, you can see, is quite Jovian, very pretty, though tending toward the greens and yellows rather than reds and browns. I’m enjoying the extra energy from B’s light; it allows me to get some work done that I’ve been delaying for some time, opening up regions of memory and thought I’ve closed down during the cold and dark. I’ve just completed a self analysis; as you doubtless have discovered by checking my politeness algorithm diagnostic, I am V-optimal. I am not using the formal “I” the joke about self awareness still does not make any sense to me.

(Total algorithm diagnostic time: 4.05 picoseconds)

Sensations:

My temperature is 276 K. Radiation flux .82 solar unity. My optics are warming nicely; bioptics should be fully grown and ready for electronic interface within 21 hours. My final biological extensions are also growing nicely; nutrients have not degraded and I can expect to begin integrating new neural extensions and checking their fitness within the hour.

I assume my earthbound twin is interpreting these bursts adequately, politely, suavely.

!JILL Roger: how is it?

!Roger Atkins Just fine.

(Redundancy and Oliphant code checks complete) AXIS (Biologic Band 4) Non-neural systems report they are ready to download the last six months’ worth of information on C.

Enough burst chatter. As you can see, I am healthy. Expect next burst assembly diagnostics from non-biologic systems.

(Burst routed to machine language division: machine computation V-optimal)

!Roger Atkins Alan, AXIS is doing just fine. Jill’s simulation is a perfect match. Routing to machine language division.

LitVid 21/1 B Net (Recorded Interview AXIS Space System Project Manager Alexander Tranh): “Biologicals and integration team reports AXIS is in prime condition. We are about to receive information that AXIS’s sensors have been gathering over the last half year of flight toward B-2. The large portion of this information will concern Alpha Centauri C, commonly called Proxima Centauri. As most of our viewers should know by now, astronomers are very interested in Proxima Centauri, even though it lies some one trillion miles from the A and B components of Alpha Centauri. C is a very small star indeed, one of the five smallest stars currently known, less than one-tenth the mass of our sun and less than half the diameter of the planet Jupiter. It is very like the class of red dwarf stars named after UV Ceti, flare stars that brighten and dim over a period of days.

“Information about A and B is currently decoded and available worldwide on the Australia/Squinfo subscription service, proceeds from which, of course, go to pay for future analysis of AXIS data.”

LitVid 21/1 A Net (David Shine): “We’re cutting from the AXIS report now—it’s mostly numbers and stuff for enthusiasts, I’ve been told—and replaying two poems. One of them is the poem AXIS wrote to his or her or its programmers as part of a long range diagnostic test four months ago. The second is a poem written and transmitted by AXIS six months after departing our solar system. At that time, AXIS was still functioning on a biological basis.

“The AXIS ‘mind’ consists of a machine system and a biological system. During the years when AXIS accelerated on a furious torch of matter-antimatter plasma, the unmanned interstellar probe was controlled by a primitive, rugged and radiation proof inorganic computer. When the antimatter drive ceased some four years ago after launch, AXIS entered a cold, quiet mode, its functions reduced to the simplest routine of maintenance, sensing and launch of transponders. During this time, AXIS’s ‘mind’—as I said, little more than a simple computer—ticked away the days and weeks and years, its most demanding job keeping track of numerous deep space experiments that could not be conducted while the torch was burning. Some six months before the beginning of AXIS’s deceleration phase, AXIS allowed itself the luxury of powering up a small fusion generator, very little larger than a human thumb. This produced sufficient heat to allow nano-machine activity, and the creation of AXIS’s huge, yet very thin and light superconducting wings, or vanes.

“AXIS’s huge wings actually acted like the rotor on an incredible electric generator, cutting across the lines of the galaxy’s own magnetic field. The resulting flow of electricity through the superconducting material of the wings—some billions of watts of power—was used by AXIS to dismantle the antimatter drive, reduce it to a fine powder with the aid of nanomachine destructors, and to electrically propel this refined scrap opposite its direction of motion to further decrease speed.

“By cutting through the galaxy’s magnetic field and generating this electricity, AXIS relied on the law of conservation of energy to decelerate even more quickly without the use of onboard fuel. The power drawn from its vast wings was more than sufficient to dispel the cold of deep space; but AXIS waited for proximity to Alpha Centauri B to begin to grow its biologic thinker system.

“That complex neural network is finishing its growth and integration right now, Earth reference frame, AXIS’s new biologic thinker will replace the thinker that died and was recycled when AXIS passed out of our sun’s temperate regions and fired off its antimatter drive.

“AXIS chief mind designer and programmer Roger Atkins has told LitVid 21 that he personally knows whether a poem has been written by the machine thinker or by the biological thinker. Can you tell the difference? Here are the two poems.”

Please pass, oh pass when night is on your middle ground This flower from hand to hand Tell each night it’s had its chance

We need day to spread our arms.

“That one might seem rather obvious, no? But we are warned by Doctor Atkins that these are not deeply symbolic poems and do not express AXIS’s desires for any particular circumstance, such as a warm, close star, Now for the second poem.”

This is not what we had To say in different words That wise day. Wisdom played Its shatter game Cut its track and called For what had fled.

“Perhaps not great poetry, but not bad for something not even human, and tucked into a vehicle the size of an oceangoing yacht. Viewers may hazard a guess as to which poem is machine, which is biological, by calling the number below my finger. We’ll tally the total rights and wrongs over the next hour and report them…direct to you.”

Examiner: “We are still far from the end of this list. Our cases are backed up for centuries…I am not familiar with the crimes of these three.”

Clerk: “One is Hyram Sapirstein, one is Klaus Schiller, one is Martin Bormann.”

Examiner: “I remember Mr. Bormann. You’ve been before this court before, have you not?”

Bormann: “Yes.”

Examiner: “For outrages against your own kind.”

Bormann: “Yes.”

Examiner: “What crime is he accused of this time?”

Clerk: “Outraging Hell, sire.”

Examiner: “But these other two…are they contemporary?”

Clerk: “Human, sire, twenty-first century.”

Examiner: “Humans were made to learn quickly, not to take ages, like angels and demons. Haven’t they learned their lessons yet?” (No reply.)

Examiner: “I’m afraid we’ve run out of tortures appropriate for crimes of these sort. Not to mention space. Send them back.”

Clerk: “Sire?”

Examiner: “Send them back to their own kind. Let the living find the best ways to punish their miscreants. Open the gates of Hell, and push the damned through them, one by one!”

5

Madame de Roche was tired by noon and the faithful removed themselves from the house, all but Fettle whom she requested to stay behind. By twelve thirty the old stonecool house was quiet. Madame de Roche ordered her arbeiter to bring glasses of iced tea for them both. The sleek black machine walked on four spider legs through the dining hall into the kitchen.

“Have you published yet, Richard?” she asked him as they sat on the veranda looking across a dusty green and gray canyon at the rear of the house.

“No, Madame. I do not write for publication.”

“Of course not.”

+ Teasing me. She’s in a smooth.

“Your story made quite an impression. We were all fond of Emanuel Goldsmith. I knew him quite well when we were younger, when he was writing plays. Did you know him then?”

“No, Madame. I was a lobe sod. I met him thirteen years ago.”

Madame de Roche nodded then shook her head, frowning. “Please. We both remember a time when language was civilized.”

“Your pardon.”

“Was the pd certain Goldsmith was the murderer?”

“They seemed to be,” Richard said.

She put on a contemplative air, arms limp on the wicker rests of her peacock chair. “That would be a most interesting thing, Emanuel a killer. He always had it in him, I thought, but it was a crazy thought. I never voiced it…until now. You were an acolyte, were you not? You admired some of his women?”

“I was a sycophant, Madame. I admired his work.”

“Then you’re sad about this.”

“Surprised.”

“But not sad?” she asked, curious.

“If he did it, then I’m furious with him. It’s a betrayal of all the untherapied. He was one of our greats. We’ll be hounded till our deaths, our styles will be degraded, our works shunned.”

“That bad.”

Richard nodded almost hopefully as if anticipating the ordeal.

“This transform pd you met…She was not negroid, you say, but she was black.”

“Oriental in some features, Madame.”

“Black nemesis. I’d like to meet this woman sometime…Elegant, composed, I presume?”

“Very.”

“One of the therapied?”

“I would think so. She had the air of the combs.”

“There was once a time when police, public defenders, were underpaid, lower class.”

“I remember, Madame.”

“They probably enjoy coming into the shade.”

“Emanuel lived on the third foot of East Comb One, Madame.”

She nodded, remembering. “I wouldn’t worry if he is caught and convicted,” she said, voice light as down. “He was never really one of us. Untherapied, yes, but a natural needs no such thing. We are none of us naturals, my dear. We are merely untherapied. Our badge of mock protest. Oh, no. Emanuel will dishonor a much higher category than ours.”

Madame de Roche dismissed him and his spirits fell immediately he was outside the door. + More and more I am nothing without someone. To be alone is to be in bad company.

Richard paced one yard this way one yard that on the root heaved concrete. Five minutes after a signal from his beeper another little rounded white autobus hummed into the eucalyptus screen and opened its wide doors.

“Destination,” the bus asked him, voice pleasantly androgynous.

+ People. A place that brings an end to a rough.

Richard gave an address in Glendale on Pacific, an avenue leading to and in shade of East Comb Three. A literary lounge where home brew could be had and most important of all where he would not be alone. Perhaps there he could tell the tale again maximum effect maximum purgation. + Black nemesis. Work on that.

“One hour,” the bus told him.

“So long?”

“Many calls. Please come aboard.”

Richard boarded and took a strap.

Moses came down from Horeb, hair on fire with God, God’s soot around his lips where he had eaten the greasy leaves of the burning bush, his humanity blasted from him, leaving him like carbon steel touch him he might ring, and contemplated his future. A leader of men. And women. He sat near his dear wife Zipporah in the dark and cursed his misfortune.

Men didn’t know what they wanted, or how to go about getting it. They did whatever came into their minds first. They hated at the drop of a hat and spurned love because they feared being taken advantage of. They leaped into violence before an angel could blink, and then called their murder and destruction valorous, and boasted of it and wept while drunk. And women! Did not carbon steel deserve something more?

“Give me a glorious task, Lord, away from this rabble.”

And that was when God descended and was sore vexed with him, making the land outside their tent quiver. Zipporah daughter of Jethro said, “Moses, Moses, what have you done now?”

“I have thought unworthy thoughts,” Moses said, hoping that was enough to mollify God, but the landscape turned bloodred and the sky filled with bloody clouds. Moses, even carbon steel, was afraid.

Zipporah came upon the clever expedient of lopping off their poor son’s foreskin, touching Moses with the blood, and then the door frame.

“Stay away from my husband!” she cried. “He’s a good man. Take my son, but not my husband!”

Moses hid behind the daughter of Jethro and understood clearly the weakness of his people.

6

Mary Choy came back to the frozen apartment at thirteen, having been off six hours, barely time for catnap vinegar bath and paperwork. She had requested full time for this case and was certain she would get it.

Some of the victims still entombed had been identified and they were gold and platinum names, students, sons and daughters of the well known and influential. She put on a thermal suit in the cubicle erected outside the hall door, ordered the seal breached and stepped into the blue cold.

A radio assayer hung from the track mounted in the apartment ceiling, having replaced the sniffer. Dustmice pushed through the cold stiff tendrils of once live carpet searching for skin flakes and other debris trapped in the carpet’s custom digestion. They had already found traces of all victims and Emanuel Goldsmith; there were traces barely thirty six hours old of four other visitors.

Mary surveyed the solid spattered sadness of young bodies one by one saying her professional farewells.

The names, in order of death:

Augustin Rettig

Neona White

Betty-Ann Albigoni

Ernly Jeeger

Thomas Finch

and three unidentified. Rettig’s mother was general manager of North Comb One. White’s father owned Workers Inc the Pacific Rim’s biggest temp employment agency representing some twenty three million therapied and natural lobe sods—the cream of the crop. Workers Inc had approached Mary in her pretransform youth. She had turned them down. West Rim pds worked through Human Expedition Ltd and even in her raw youth she had known where she was going.

Betty-Ann Albigoni was the daughter of a publisher—books the file said, more lit than vids; Goldsmith’s major English language publisher. Thomas Finch’s uncle was counsel to High Reach, general chandlers for suborbitals. Ernly Jeeger was Emanuel Goldsmith’s godson a promising poet on his own also known for an eloi sympathizer and borderlaw activity in whole-life vids.

A dim red light mounted on her shoulder pointed wherever she turned her eyes. Livid cold. The assayer tracked quietly overhead like a legless insect and passed into another room.

Finch the last killed lay on his back like a broken cross, face slashed throat cut jagged sideways from jaw to opposite clavicle open eyes rimed white.

It was spatch that pd didn’t sympathy a crime. Mary knew in brain and crawl of skin each frozen peeled back wound frightened dead glare of white eyes and cropped corpse grimace. This was her motivation for excellence.

She would know the murderer and organize for a full-therapy conviction, restructuring if called for—and the pd would call for it. If Goldsmith was the murderer as seemed most likely now so be it; the LitVids would have her and the pd all over the world. But she would smooth those waters when they rippled.

What she had officially come back for was a context search, a look at Goldsmith’s files. The room where Goldsmith kept his office had no bodies in it and had already been assayed. She could enter and make her search. Pd, metro and federal warrants allowed her to investigate most aspects of Goldsmith’s life as per the Raphkind amendments not yet removed by President Yale’s year old block appointed court. She did not personally agree with the Raphkind amendments but she was not in the least reluctant to take advantage of them. What could not be found here might be found in Citizen Oversight—a journey she hoped she would not have to make.

Goldsmith was not a tidy man. She inclined her head in the inflated tube helmet and surveyed his desk. Reasonable models of slate and keyboard—no gold plating or wood box. Cold crackers and half glass of frozen wine. Crumbs. Pens fiber-tip and what did they call them fountain. She wondered where he got them. A sweep of some hand or arm had fanned a short stack of printouts—not erasable cyclers old fashioned in themselves but actual papers written on by hand—across the black marble top. Cubes marched to the edge of the desk in tandem and lay below on the floor. Mind’s eye she saw a hand palm them two by two from a box—an empty cubefile lay nearby—and click them in pairs on the desk then pass aimless over the edge, dropping four. The gesture of a dramatically distracted man.

She bent to pick them up. Each cube projected a tiny label in cold green into her eyes. The Progress of Moses, The Way of the New, Debit/Asset, the cubes informed her artlessly not concerned with who she might be. Doubtless Goldsmith’s works in solid state. Not a man to crypto his data his work. One work per cube was surprising for pure word; perhaps they were LitVid adaptations for the half literate. LitVid sales would explain Goldsmith’s place high on the third foot.

She had heard of Emanuel Goldsmith before this case. An occasional guest on the allnight cable talkers celebrated more for his youthful output. Not currently productive. Mary Choy planned to remain productive well past a century but she allowed as her plans might be young and naive. A pd could not rest on laurels. Salary not royalties.

There were real books on his shelves. She did not pull them down but with an uninformed eye guessed their age at eighty to a hundred years. Expensive, a luxury both in money and space for this information dense age. The World Reserve Library could be stacked in space held by Goldsmith’s fifty or sixty paper volumes.

What she specked was unorganized uncontemporary inefficient, what one might presume of a poet; but the scatter of cubes on desktop and floor pointed to a greater disorganization, a careless personal moonstrike.

A closure.

She held up her slate to read the inprog. Sloughed cell and fiber analysis and assay of the office area showed no entry but for Goldsmith. Whatever socials he had conducted, none had entered this sanctum.

Goldsmith’s frame of mind had been disturbed before the murders, she posited. He had not entered his office after the murders. Another possibility as yet not eliminated by the total radio assay: that Goldsmith did not occupy the apartment during the murders. Unlikely.

Reaching out she shifted a skewed half inch pile of paper and saw an airline confirmation billet and a document of different color beneath. She picked out the billet. A roundtrip to Hispaniola dated two days before—the day after the murder. Had the ticket been used? She marked a memo on her slate to check the airline: NordAmericAir.

The other document was a letter real paper again beige stock gold stamping; stationery of the rich and eccentric as atavistic as real books. Mary’s eyes widened reading the engraved head and the signature. Colonel Sir John Yardley.

Authentic? The inprog reported nothing. The papers had been disturbed only for chemical and bio clues; it was her task to make a context beyond that. She lifted the letter, three gloved fingers on each hand vising perpendicular the opposite edges of the stiff thick sheet. She read it up close. Typed on an oldfashioned electric impact printer perhaps even a typewriter. Dated and stamped Hispaniola, Yardley’s name for his conquest, formerly Dominican Republic and Haiti.

28 November 2047

Dear Goldsmith,

Whatever the circumstances, we will be most pleased to receive you. Ermione charmed. It’s rare to meet unhypocritical agreement now. I’ve particularly enjoyed our letters in book form and Moses and appreciate your signature dedicatory. I can only hope what we do here helps this old world lift itself by its bootstraps into sanity.

Yours, as ever,

Colonel Sir John Yardley Hispaniola

Mary replaced the letter carefully as if it were a snake.

I do not aspire. I be.

7

Martin hadn’t eaten so well in six weeks, when he had seen the end of his savings. He refused to go on shade dole; his application for Municipal Assistance had not been processed perhaps because of official disfavor or ineptitude; civil service was the last well-paid refuge for the untherapied. Now in a cool dark booth with crushed velvet upholstery, holding a reservation card in one hand and a whiskey sour in the other, he felt less disdainful of civilization, closer to the human race. A note on the back of the card said, “Go ahead and eat. We’ll be half an hour late. Regrets. Lascal.”

They were precisely half an hour late. Martin had no doubt he was seeing his benefactors when a tall heavy shouldered man with wavy gray hair and a short hawk nosed fellow with a restrained pompadour stepped into the lounge. They knew him either by the table or on sight.

“Mr. Albigoni, this is Martin Burke,” hawk nosed Lascal introduced. They exchanged handshakes and nothing comments on the decor and weather. Albigoni’s heart and mind were clearly elsewhere. He seemed stricken. Lascal was either genuinely cheerful or able to mask his feelings.

“I’ve just had a fine lunch,” Martin said. “Now I’m worried I may not be able to help you.”

“No fear,” Lascal said.

Albigoni looked at him squarely but said nothing, his long gray mustache a negative hyperbola over firm pale lips. Lascal handed their menus to a waiter and ordered for both of them. He then spread out his hands for Martin’s benefit: concealing nothing.

“Do you know Emanuel Goldsmith?” he asked Martin.

“I know of him,” Martin said. “If we’re talking about the same man.”

“We are. The poet. He murdered Mr. Albigoni’s daughter three nights ago.”

Martin nodded as if he had just been informed of a minor peculation in book publishing. Albigoni continued to stare at but not see him.

“He’s a fugitive, a very sick man, mentally,” Lascal continued. “Would you be willing to help him?”

“How?” Martin avoided taking a sip from his drink though he fingered the glass.

“Mr. Albigoni was—is—Mr. Goldsmith’s publisher and friend. He bears him no ill will.” Lascal’s voice did not skim so easily over this prepared statement.

Martin subdued the raising of an eyebrow. Lunch was becoming quite surreal.

“Now that Goldsmith is mentally very disturbed, perhaps insane, we’d like you to help him. We’d like to find the roots of his illness.”

Martin shook his head at the archaisms. “I told you, I’m no longer connected with IPR. I have been told—”

Albigoni’s stare suddenly came alive. He saw Martin. Lascal glanced at his boss then turned head and shoulders to Martin as if making a wall to protect Albigoni from outside forces. “We can arrange for your return, and for the facilities to be reopened.”

“I don’t want to work there again. I was kicked out for doing work I knew was entirely reasonable and valuable.”

“But you didn’t go about it in a reasonable fashion,” Albigoni said.

“I do not know what is reasonable when politics mixes with science. Do you?”

Albigoni shook his head slowly bemused again barely listening.

“Goldsmith needs to be probed,” Lascal said.

“He isn’t in custody I take it.”

“No.” Hesitance. “Not yet. We need to know what turned him into a murderer.”

“He needs legal therapy not a probe.”

“His problem goes beyond therapy,” Albigoni said jaw clamping on the downbite between words. “A therapist would fix him or change him but that isn’t what I want. I need to know.” Here a flash of angry fire. “He killed eight people. Friends. Of his. Including my daughter. And his own godson. They did him no harm. They were no threat to him. It was an act of deliberate and calculated evil.”

“It’s only been a couple of days—” Martin said.

“In theory, could you probe Goldsmith and tell us what caused him to murder his young friends?” Lascal asked.

A silver plated arbeiter and a human waiter delivered their food, the arbeiter carrying the tray on its flat back. The waiter asked if Martin wished to have another drink. He declined.

“I’m not being told everything,” Martin said with a sigh. “Gentlemen, I appreciate your hospitality, but—”

“We can’t explain it all until we’re sure you’re very interested, and will agree,” Lascal said.

“Tough situation,” Martin said.

“You’re our best chance,” Albigoni said. “We are not above pleading with you.”

“You would be richly rewarded,” Lascal said.

“I think you want me to help you break into the IPR, put Goldsmith in a probe triplex and find out what makes him tick. But the IPR has been closed down. That’s clearly impossible.”

“It is not.” Lascal picked at his farmshrimp salad.

Martin lifted his eyebrow dubiously. “First you would have to find Goldsmith, then persuade the state and federal government to reopen IPR.”

“We can and will reopen IPR,” Albigoni said. Lascal glanced between them uneasily. “Paul, I don’t care whether I live or die right now, and the possibility that Mr. Burke will go to the federals means little to me.”

“What does Carol Neuman have to—”

“Please listen to me,” Albigoni said. “After he murdered my daughter and the seven others, Emanuel Goldsmith came to my penthouse at Airport Tower Two in Manhattan Beach. He confessed to his crimes and then he sat on my living room sofa and asked for a drink. My wife is on an anthropological retreat in Borneo and doesn’t know. Nor will she know until…the probe is completed and I can explain why he did it to her. If you conduct the probe I guarantee that IPR will be reopened, that you will return as its director and that you will have sufficient grant money to keep you fully employed in research for the rest of your life, however long that might be.”

“If I don’t end up therapied and confined for violating federal psychological rights,” Martin said. “I can’t do my work, can’t do what I’ve spent my life trying to do. That’s punishment enough. I don’t need criminal disgrace as well. I think I’d better leave now.” He started to get up. Lascal held his arm.

“Mr. Albigoni was not exaggerating. He’s willing to put his entire personal fortune at your disposal.”

“Just to learn what makes Goldsmith tick?”

“Just that. We then turn him over to the LAPD unharmed for trial.”

“You don’t want me to therapy him—-just probe?” Martin’s hand shook. He could not believe such a Faust was being pulled on him.

“Just probe. If there are answers to be found, find them. If you fail to get answers, the honest attempt is sufficient. Mr. Albigoni will still fund you. The IPR will be legally reopened.”

“What is Carol going to do—how is she involved, besides being therapist to your daughter?”

Albigoni stared at the table in silence for a moment, then reached into his pocket and produced a card engraved with J N M. “When you’ve made your decision, use this card in your phone. Tell whomever answers a simple yes or no. We’ll contact you and arrange details if your answer is yes.”

Lascal slid out of the booth and Albigoni followed.

“Wait, please,” Martin said hand still trembling. He reached for the card. “What sort of guarantees do I have? How do I know you’d fund me?”

“I am not a thug,” Albigoni said softly.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Burke,” Lascal said. They left. Martin slapped the card on the tablecloth near a glass of water and watched a bead of light dance over the three letters.

Then he picked it up and pocketed it.

I loved her more than she could ever know. It filled me with something the usual I suppose cosmic implications blurring my vision. Hers was a mild infatuation; enough to inspire her to lubricity. The lubricity lasted for some thirty-seven days and then I was eased aside with the proper proportions of delicacy and firmness necessary to persuade a headstrong love-idiot. The irony was I had done just the same to another young woman a month before and so in time I saw the tit for tat truth the slippery all-too-obvious: had I gotten what my cock said I wanted I would have been miserable in picos. That was when I grew up if not wise. That was when I wrote down all this nonsense that made my reputation about the ecology of love. Thanks to Geraldine another fingerprint squeezed tight into the old clay.

8

“I do not understand why you care about Goldsmith.”

+ Adust loyalty.

Richard fumbled his tale to a conclusion and dourly inspected his audience. There were seven in the lounge, a coffee tea and wine ranch corner rear the Pacific Lit Arts Parlor.

“I still do not understand why you cared about that old fart,” Yermak persisted. He dunked his pasty white donut leaving islands of powder in his red wine. At twenty the youngest in the lounge Yermak looked on Richard with mild amusement. “He was capable of anything. Bad writers murder us every day. The death of stinking prose.”

Ultrima Patch Thule silked to Richard’s defense. “We’re specking murder here,” she said, thin voice distant as grass. Ultrima wore wire rimmed glasses eschewing even physical therapy for her dim eyes.

“Fap me for my green age but that’s what I’m saying, he’s murdered us all.” Yermak thinned his face in disbelief at their density.

Richard saddened into silence looked down at his thumb and four fingers resting on the beaten oak veneer. He could not forget the grim determination of the pd’s face accusing and angry; now this. He tried to remember Goldsmith’s last words to him and could not. Perhaps he should have specked the change. He was tired. Still shuddered from the rough morning. “I wish to say—”

“Ah, fry that!” Yermak spat, leaping away from the table and knocking his chair back with a clatter. “Fap me my green and knock my words, I knew he had it in him, the fart.” Raspberry. “Say I to concern.”

“Sit down,” Jacob Welsh ordered. Yermak righted his chair and sat eyeshifting, nose aimed like a dog under his trainer’s whistle. “Pardon my friend’s enthusiasm but he has an overstated point.”

“I will admit,” Ultrima said, “Goldsmith has not charmed much lately. Nor shown his face.”

“He killed them,” Richard said. “He was one of us and he killed them. Are we not concerned for our own?”

“Not one of me. I am one,” Yermak said, face contorted. “May I quote the fart, ‘I do not aspire. I be.’”

“You’ve read and memorized,” Ultrima accused with a glow smile.

“We have all,” Yermak said at Welsh’s nod. “I regret my callow. Richard, we admire your concern and age but it hardly matters what Goldsmith has done. He abandoned us even while he walked here, left us behind for the adulation of the combs, and no shady can ever respect him again, not even you.”

“He was a friend,” Richard said.

“He was a whore,” Welsh said, demonstrating again that the unseen rope between himself and Yermak carried more than physical tension.

Richard looked around the small group. Two who had not spoken yet, sisters Elayne and Sandra Sandhurst, seemed content to sip their tea and listen warily. Richard saw in Welsh’s and Yermak’s eyes something he should have sensed already; here was anger that had not existed before he brought the news. Here was fear that their connection with Goldsmith would bring them trouble from the pd and the city from where the power really lay in this land—the combs, the therapied.

+ Madame de Roche said it wouldn’t be but the pd may not share her opinion. I have already been accused. Perhaps again? Sharp and clear: quicksand harassment isolation pain. I’ve avoided these pictures since Gina and Dione.

+ I’ve been asleep fifteen years.

The sharp awareness faded and he closed his eyes for a moment bowing his head. “He was a friend,” Richard repeated.

“Your friend,” Yermak observed with false calm.

“Richard is our friend,” Elayne Sandhurst said.

“Of course,” Yermak agreed irritated they might believe he thought otherwise. He glanced reprovingly at Richard.

+ Thinks I bring discord weaken his place. Their places here are all so weak. They feel helpless.

“My apologies,” Richard said.

“Apologizing for what?” Jacob Welsh asked abruptly. “We’re certainly not sorry you told us. We are never sorry to have our opinions confirmed.”

Sandra Sandhurst lowered her knitting to her lap and drew her lips together. +Norn in judgment; only valid judgment the cutting of our threads.

“He is a world famous writer, and we all knew him. He was good to all of us.”

Yermak raspberried again. “He slummed, condescended.”

Elayne said, “He did not slum.”

Yermak stood up and knocked his chair down again.

“Such drama,” Elayne said. She turned away disdainfully.

“Fap you,” Yermak said blithely. Jacob Welsh leaned his head back and stretched.

“We’ve had enough, my friend,” he warned Yermak with barely concealed approval. “Two upheavals are quite enough.”

“I will not sit again not with these,” Yermak said.

“Time to leave then.” Welsh stood. “Your news is useful, Richard, and I suppose that’s enough. Your loyalty is admirable but we do not share it.”

“I don’t think it’s loyalty,” Richard said. “If he’s murdered he should be therapied—”

“But we don’t therapy even our worst enemies, Richard,” Yermak intoned, leaning over him. “I wouldn’t put anybody through that. Better he were dead. Better still if he had never come near us.”

Richard nodded not in agreement but to wish them off.

“Don’t forget the reading,” Elayne Sandhurst said cheerily. “Bring your best.”

“I don’t write anymore,” Yermak said, sneering.

“Then read something from your dark past,” Ultrima suggested. When Welsh and Yermak had left she turned to Richard. “Honestly. Such children. We’ve never really liked them here…they are so close, so weird.”

“Like brothers or lovers yet they are neither,” Elayne Sandhurst said.

“They need help,” Sandra suggested and at that all but Richard laughed. Help was not something the untherapied sought. Help was a kind of death to those who cherished their flaws.

+ We should all live in shade not in the sun. Like insects.

My first name means god is with us. My last name means worker in gold. I choose words instead; they are much more valuable for being so common, and so misused and misunderstood. As for having god with me; I don’t think so somehow.

9

Elevating alongside South Comb Two Mary Choy watched the great mirrored arms rotate to focus the low sixteen sun on Pasadena. She took an external expressway, spending one of her municipal emergency transit credits to get a car to herself.

Exploring the Colonel Sir John Yardley connection would be perilous. She knew enough of federal politics to see the Janus face the United States turned toward Yardley. Embraced by Raphkind, openly shunned now but in the closet perhaps still silky. Yardley might be federally useful and ultimately LAPD answered to the federals. The department was more than half funded by the National Public Defense. To go any further without departmental approval would not be politic. Mary wanted that approval before the day was over.

Los Angeles Public Defense Command occupied a three tier block on the favored west side of South Comb Two. The long beanpole of the expressway, in proportion very like a taut stretched human hair, with no visible means of support but its own ten meter hexagonal cross section, carried three express elevators. These stopped at levels chosen only by their passengers, unlike most of the internal arteries of elevators and transports within the comb.

She took her seat in the carefully cushioned chair and endured the rapid acceleration. In the moments before the door opened as the elevator slowed she felt as if she were floating. This was only slightly less unpleasant than the weight.

The west side looked out across the old communities of Inglewood Culver City and Santa Monica, now covered with great reddish brown slashes as the old city was leveled and new combs encroached upon shadow. In the max-dense hills of Santa Monica layer upon layer of what some netwit thirty years before had called insulas grew like cave wall crystals, dazzling white at noon but now blue gray in the onset of evening. Here and in the stabilized deep sunk pads of Malibu was where the notyetchosen waited for vacancies within the combs. Vacancies were becoming more and more rare as rejuvenators plied their controversial trade, turning good citizens into multicentenarian eloi.

Mary Choy was too young to attract a rejuvenator’s pitch but she had gone on eloi busts and seen the interiors of many platinum comb domiciles.

She withdrew from the elevator and walked purposefully into the lobby. From the acrophobic view of the city to this large inner directed self contained cavern, horizontal slit windows at hip-level affording little relief, was always a small shock to her. Mary felt it as an abrupt discontinuity like a change of key or even scale in music. Arbeiters moved purposefully on narrow paths near the walls leaving the center open for foot traffic. A central circular desk occupied by two young men in green office uniforms jutted from the floor. Overhead an apse sparkled with sheets and curling ribbons of peaceful light in the cathedral quiet.

“Pd investigator M Choy,” said the young man on her side of the desk as she approached. “You have a quarter till appointment with federal coordinator R Ellenshaw.”

She had made her appointment with pd supervisor D Reeve. News was speeding and she had guessed right. Large green eyes steady on the greeter’s face, she said, “Fine. Do I wait?”

“Not here, please,” the greeter said. His eyes pinpointed her with faint disapproval and obvious longing. “You’ll have a seat in third tier, lobby two.”

She narrowed her eyes and fixed on the greeter until he averted. Then she shivered slightly nodded and walked away adding an extra lilt to her stride. Disliking that common mix of critique and lust she wished to faintly strut the transform and increase the tension. It was a neutral flaw, not socially damaging but perhaps provocative. A distant revenge on Theo. The greeter would not disapprove of Theo but might not lust for her either. Why

Took an escalator to third tier lobby two. Sat with the coffee drinkers and their timeismoney expressions. Examined them casually sherlocking as hobby, and fell into her perpetual muse about how unfortunate sherlocking was a blind jape. Cannot riddle from ambiguous evidence; no detective can avoid the blunder of two or three way outcomes of deduction. Deduction and detection could not be cars on a slaveway; they must freely turn. Still, sherlocking was an amusement and sometimes its results were intriguing. Here for example: a young man on the clear turbo to a needle’s point federal/state job, dressed as second generation therapied (or natural) might dress in the younger crowds, face bland but not without character. Mary Choy guessed him a conscientious but not inspired bed partner; he had three fingernails on his right hand red and gold lacquered with marriage inquiries from large families. Only in the high federal ranks did such manners dance the norm, families clans gens statting their position in the nomenklatura made largely ceremonial by President Davis before Raphkind. Such positions did not breed high physical passions; they did breed manners, and among the therapied manners rarely hid aberrations. Nice young man in a pleasant deadend existence prime candidate for eloi upon middle age. A pretty parasite.

Coming in to the waiting area, somebody more vital: a female transform wearing styles to hide her orbital adaptations, an exotic in the combs. All eyes drawn. The exotic saw Mary Choy and acknowledged kinship with a smile. Came to sit.

“May I?”

Mary inclined. The orbital transform bent with strained grace; her muscles now tuned to the bonds of Earth. She obviously shuttled often and was proud possessor of two zone body chemistry; such a transform was too expensive for private payment and must have been federal or firm/house funded. The nice young man decided this orbital transform was too much even for fantasy and ignored her. Others less meshed in the hierarchy admired her openly. Mary was pleased when she sat beside her.

“Pardon my awkwardness,” the orbital said. “I’m still adjusting. Bichemical.”

“So I specked.”

“I’ve only been landed eight hours. You’re pd, aren’t you?”

Mary inclined again. No sherlocking necessary; the uniforms were commonly known and varied little from city to city.

“And you,” she said, “are from the Greenbelt?”

The orbital transform smiled. “How keen,” she said. “Who did you?”

“Dr. Sumpler.”

“His group did me too. I must visit him while down. Are you pleased?”

She considered describing the melanin depletion but since the news would have little practical value to a bichemical, simply gave the polite “Yes. Very.”

The orbital transform saw signs of Mary’s impending departure for appointment—her glance at the glowing flasher on the wall, her own symbol coming soon—and offered her a card. “I’m down for a week. Much work. I’d enjoy company. We can reminisce through old style catalogs.”

Mary laughed, took the card, offered her own. “That would be fun.”

“Everything’s on the card.” The name on the card: Sandra Auchouch. “Pronounced Awshuck.”

“Of course. Pleasure to meet you.”

The orbital transform inclined and they touched fingertips. No carnal thoughts here; the transform by dress and manner was straight as no orbit could be; Mary rarely crossed. But among professionals in going jobs friendship might be a chance thing and chances had to be advantaged.

R Ellenshaw prospered at his high desk; no sherlocking to see this. The metro-federal interface supervisor had the look of the oft therapied a man with guts stamina and manifold problems that he had spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to smooth.

Mary would not have entered his office with a different attitude had he been whiz natural; he was higherup and she came to him with a problem she would not have wanted had the roles been reversed. Mary Choy respected leadership and valued overhead flak armor.

“M Choy. Welcome to Valhalla.” Ellenshaw stood before his desk memo and slate in hand, not happy. “You’ve tumbled into a shink wasp’s nest.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please sit.” He looked her over sharply without a flicker of judgment or even male interest. Mary’s respect for him went up a notch. Professional ice was tough to grow and maintain minus berging out and Ellenshaw did not look a berg; too therapied and self knowing for that. “I have some questions and then your instructions.”

She sat, crossing long legs, black workpants hissing faintly.

“You are convinced personally that this Emanuel Goldsmith is the murderer?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ve checked out this letter. It is indeed from Colonel Sir John Yardley.” The ice was transparent enough for Mary to see Ellenshaw’s political stripe; like most west coast pd he had detested Raphkind and the tumescence of the Dirty East. Old politics old dirt. “Do you have any idea where Emanuel Goldsmith is now?”

“No, sir.”

“He’s gone underground?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Hispaniola?”

“It’s possible.”

“But would Yardley have taken him in?”

Mary didn’t hazard.

“You know this will become a federal football. The possibility that Goldsmith has gone to Hispaniola makes the halls echo, M Choy.”

“Yes, sir.”

“There’s no chance the federals can bury this. Too many gold and platinum names, too much high blood. So they’ve handed the football to us. Jurisdiction primary. To keep your grip on the football, you have to be fresh snow, M Choy. Are you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve checked your record and I agree. I envy naturals, M Choy. I envy your record.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’ve had to spend a fortune on therapy to untangle and smooth out. It’s been worth it, but…So.” That had been a calculated ice thinning and it had worked; he had revealed enough about himself to make Mary feel she was in his confidence, that he had confidence in her.

“I believe you call it flak armor now, M Choy. Protection from this level so you can concentrate on your work. The armor is thin this case. You are not completely on your own and you are working a spike fence. We likely cannot catch you if you fall. Not in time. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The word here is, west coast federals hate the Yardley connection as much as I do. It’s old, it’s Raphkind, it smells. East coast federal is still ambiguous and likely will be for years while the grand juries and courts grind slow. But maybe not. Yardley keeps pushing his imports…We keep blocking them. Spike fence.

“I give you permission to sniff all local trails and if they’re still cold after two days, you have clearance for an official visit to Hispaniola. Assistants if you need them, as many as five.”

“I’ll need two Hispaniolan experts,” Mary said.

“My office will find them and pass their names and currvitas on to Supervising Inspector D Reeve, unless you have people in mind already…”

She did not. “Do I have your permission to query Citizen Oversight?”

Ellenshaw averted for a moment, frowning. “We can only make so many Oversight queries. But if any case merits, this one does. You have permission to go to Oversight.”

“Thank you.” She inclined.

“Details are on your orders. We’ll work with federal to get Hispaniola to cooperate with you. Call me anytime. Don’t be isolated. You might be our flak armor on this one.” He smiled cleanly.

“Yes, sir.”

She left Ellenshaw’s office knowing this was the case of her career and pd was giving her extraordinary support; also knowing federal had deemed her expendable, but not in a minor cause. She would be stupid not to be afraid. To those concerned with basic human dignity Colonel Sir John Yardley was the western world’s prosperous heart of darkness. Mary Choy allowed herself the requisite fear, but no more.

The comb towers went dark against the last blue wink of dusk. She drove a slaveway to the pd shade central on Sepulveda and filled out a request for overnight research space, slept an hour in a cop cot, drank a nutrient cocktail and went to work.

LA City of Angels like a horse sleeps on its legs. I’ve walked the shade (since before it was shadowed) late night and seen the nocturnal half conduct itself busily not just machines but people…Don’t think the shade is reckless eccentricity. It has its own life, not clean like the therapied hives perhaps, but rich and full as any past city, as organized; shade has its mayors and councils, bosses and workers, mommies and daddies, neighborhoods and businesses, hospitals and pd stations, churches and libraries, and they are vital. Bootstrappers, perfecters of humanity, don t forget the ground you lift yourself from, unless you want a hard fall!

10

Sure as is, they had him Fausted; Albigoni and Lascal had tempted and Martin Burke was about to succumb. It was all over but the night of pangs. Still the forms must be observed; the night of pangs must pass.

Adult enough to realize that the prize might be hollow, Martin Burke tried to deny the temptation but could not. The pair had found his most vulnerable patch in his most pale and yielding underbelly. His life was science and he had been removed from that life through no fault of his own, merely as an accident of bad politics and history. To have it back would mean he could live again. He longed to walk the Country of the Mind. That was a stimulus like no other; knowledge from the frontier that defined all frontiers.

Martin grinned in the half dark watching a playback of the AXIS reports. He selfsaw that grin and sobered. He did have one train of questions to answer but Carol Neuman was not taking her calls and she did not have a home manager.

Martin closed his eyes and tried to stop shaking. Ethical questions all too obvious and tenacious. Goldsmith’s right to deny intrusion. Still, a poet, a murderer whose country of the mind would reflect the artist’s adaptation of subaware forces…Never such an opportunity. Never.

“I am not a bad man,” he said out loud. “I didn’t deserve what happened to me and I do not deserve this now.” This what. Qualms. Opportunity/temptation.

Albigoni had nothing to lose. If Martin would not give him what he wanted nobody could except perhaps the ghosts/doppelgangers of Martin Burke that might exist elsewhere, sucking his discoveries raking his ground with more brutal clawed fingers, the far less scrupulous who might exist in Hispaniola exploiting not developing the Country of the Mind and racing ahead of him even now, alligator versus hare, alligator eats the hare.

Martin was not a bad man. Albigoni had not immediately flown Goldsmith to Hispaniola and paid Colonel Sir John Yardley what he might require, so Albigoni was not a bad man, either. Of course Yardley’s prisons and labs were rumor; still Albigoni had the connections to have such rumors confirmed or denied. Albigoni did not intend to harm Goldsmith and of course Goldsmith was a bad man; no harm to him but the probe of science a redemption opportunity payment; a recovery of his value to humanity.

Martin lay back on the couch, still shaking, fingers laced. Not a bad man. Perhaps not even a bad deed.

He got up from the couch and placed another call to Carol.

“Hello.”

He started in surprise and pushed his hand back through his hair. “Hello, Carol. This is Martin.”

“I thought you’d call. I’ve been working.”

Martin’s tension erupted before he could wrap it tight. “You’ve put me into a horrible quandary. God damn it, Carol. God damn it.”

“Whoa. I’m sorry.”

“I wonder whether you hate me.”

“I don’t hate you. Listen. I just got in. You want to talk with me, but not tonight. It’s too late. I’ve contracted with Mind Design Inc in Sorrento Valley. Through StarTemp agency you know. If you can come out to—”

“Yes. I know where it is. Which lab?”

“Thirty one. Midmorning?”

“Ten.”

“I don’t hate you, Martin. Whether I should I don’t know but I don’t. We’ll talk.”

They said brief farewells.

AXIS replays had lost their charms and he shut down the screen with a curt “Off.” With some guilt he understood that his shaking was not from moral dilemma; there really had been none from the moment of the offer. He shook because of eagerness and excitement.

In white society every black is a trained bear. That’s how I feel at times even with my white woman who shows not the slightest sign of thinking such. Does she love me for being the one black male writer given a chance to shine in USA this generation? One per, an old law. The greatest taint of all is the taint left by history on my own soul. I cannot love her; I see her with scarred eyes.

11

Richard Fettle returned to his shade apartment by seven o’clock, hoofing slowly up crumbling concrete and steel stairs. He brushed aside an abundance of brown and yellow banana leaves intruding into the second floor landing, slipped his smoothworn brass key into tricky lock and greeted the cheap ten year old home manager on smoke stained fireplace mantel with “It’s me. Only me.”

“Welcome home, Mr. Fettle,” the manager croaked. + Once did not recognize me. Raised a miserable stink. Pd didn’t come. Neighbors checked in though. Take care of our own.

He made himself a cup of coffee and sat in a chair he had made twenty years before to give to his

A comfortable chair the last he had of his handicrafts. Gave it to his

He glanced briefly at a slate, noted some articles in today’s Shadow Rhubarb he wanted to read, finished his coffee and wondered what he would do for dinner. He wasn’t hungry but the body must. Truth to tell he was depressed now, decompressed, all the stories told to all who mattered and nothing but his own thoughts not good company at all. + Roughed and not deserving cut that refrain and bear down on your past you bastard

+ Your wife

+ Your wife, gave the chair to her. Not the time to think those thoughts, however. Richard closed his eyes and leaned back, the chair expanding under him footrest up back tilted arms inclining, friendly.

+ Why he did it. Madame de Roche thinks not crazy; a natural. Why then. Brilliance getting Emanuel down they say they say. Deep depravity coming up sicking up foulness like a dog. Bubble of evil in still waters noxious gases. Poem in that. Nothing worth bothering with. If not depraved not crazy then rational. Thinking all the time; planning. Form of expression. Expression of true brilliance stretching beyond human morality limitations. Did it for his art to see what he would make himself into. Kill himself as well as them; sure as hell he has no life to return to. Murderer murders twice. Kills two for each victim. No. Kills himself only once; murder once and it’s enough you’re done for deep therapy enforced maybe not even you left when you come out. Wanted to go through that maybe; kill be caught be prosecuted and therapied deep therapy…Come back new Goldsmith. See if poet survives that. Like scientist a personal experiment.

Richard tightened his eyelids until his nose wrinkled.

+ I am a simple man with simple wants. I want to be left alone. I want to forget.

But forgetting was not possible. He had half an impulse to open all the nets and LitVids on his slate and immerse himself in the propagated facts but he resisted. The simple knowledge was enough; multiple murders, likely by the man Richard admired most in the world.

“Somebody’s coming,” the manager rasped. People walked by and the manager was never sure whether to express concern or not.

The door chimes century old corroded brass antiques bumbled and belled against each other. Richard imagined them shaking off dust; they were seldom disturbed. He collapsed the chair and strode hunched to the door to peer through the verdigris stained peephole.

Female, black hair, long gray and orange shift, clutching a woven reed handbag. Nadine Preston. “Hi to you,” she said, bending to eyeball the peephole. “I thought you might be feeling down.”

Richard opened the door. “Come in,” he said voice mortician deep and resigned. He coughed and shook his head to clear the somber tone. “Please come in.” He had always come to her, not the other way around, to control his exposure to her bad times. He wondered whether he should feel touched by her concern.

“Are you down?” she asked brightly.

“A little,” he confessed.

“Then you need company.”

“Actually, I do, I guess,” he said.

“Such enthusiasm. Have you eaten?”

He shook his head.

She opened her handbag and brought out a suckwrapped package of forever meat. “I can do wonders with this,” she said. “Have any potatoes?”

“Dried,” he said.

“We’ll have shepherd’s pie.”

“Thank you for coming over,” he said.

“I’m not always good for you,” Nadine said demurely looking down at the carpet. “But I know when you need somebody and you shouldn’t sleep alone tonight.”

The shepherd’s pie tasted decently of salt and garlic and potatoes which reminded him of Nadine, a salt and garlic woman. As they ate she talked about the shade vid industry as she had known it and as she still came in touch with it. His mind was nudged away from the problem of the day until a gap formed between him and recent memory and he listened to her, so tired that he saw the pale ghosts of hallucinations. Blue raincoated figure in the corner of his eye.

“They did this scene with music,” Nadine said, talking about some vid production ten years past. “The director needed to show that now the musician a cellist was really playing much better than before, and the scorer said but we have soundtrack that’s already the best we can get. He plays the cello and it’s the best cellist in the world playing behind him but there was no contrast. The director says then ‘Get a fruity cellist.’ Just that. Fruity. When the best isn’t good enough you go a step beyond, into the frankly bad. Isn’t that marvelous?” She smiled broadly, hand frozen in a demonstrative wave and he chuckled politely nodding yes that’s the way of it. Richard could not help being polite and kind to her when she was in this mood, and it was a good story.

He ate and contemplated contrast. His mind went back to Goldsmith like a chained dog circling an iron spike. What to do when you’re the best and you need contrast or else all is gray.

+ Relief through grand melodrama. Was that it.

The blue figure was smiling; he knew that without seeing it clearly. His daughter. He could not avoid trying to look at the figure directly. It vanished every time.

1100-11000-11111111111

(The Examiner, having finished his work on the guilty of ten worlds, suddenly finds on his desk the folders of curriculum vitae for a number of terrestrial greats. He sighs and looks them over one by one. This great human being, by inventing such and such, has destroyed a hundred million; this other, by philosophizing, has misled billions. They are in his charge now, and he is growing increasingly weary.)

Examiner: “Please, my Father, enough! I have judged the guilty. Why must I judge the best and brightest?” (No answer.) (The Examiner drops the folders on the desk, perhaps resigned.)

Examiner: (Murmurs) “The least you could do is give me a computer.”

12

At six hundred, Mary Choy’s home manager woke her up with a persistent chiming. She ascended from a dream of swimming in the surf off Newport Beach with her mother and sister. “Jesus. What is it?”

“Supervising Inspector D Reeve.”

“What time? Morning?”

“Six hundred, Mary.”

“Put him on. No vid.” She sat up in bed, lifted her arms over her head and stretched to force blood into her brain. Shook herself vigorously. Threw one leg over the side of the bed. She had been searching the jags until two hundred with no results; none of Goldsmith’s acquaintances had seen sliver of the man.

“My apologies, Inspector Choy.” Reeve himself seemed exhausted, face dark olive on the incoming vid, eyes hooded.

“Good morning, sir.”

“You were involved with the Khamsang Phung Selector kidnapping early this year, were you not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I have a message in my desk memory that you wanted to be called if we tracked any suspects involved in that case.”

She stood and shook out her hands, fully awake now. “Yes, sir.”

“We have a Selector jiltz in a comb. One of the Phung suspects could be there. Do you want to be involved? I can put you on a backup team at the site.”

No hesitation. “Definitely, sir. I’d like to be there.”

Reeve gave her the location. Mary dressed quickly, grateful her transform chemistry could let her coast for many hours without sleep.

Twenty three minutes after leaving her apartment, she stood on the north facing balcony of Canoga Tower, dark slim fingers lightly touching the polished brass railing, overlooking LA from a height of four hundred meters. On instructions from the local CEC, the Comb Environs Commander, she had ascended two thirds of the tower. A tightpacked curtain of air whispered a few inches from her face as she leaned forward, keeping out the cool early morning breezes. To her right dawn smeared gray and watery across the foggy horizon.

Mary had accepted Reeve’s invitation simply to keep her hand in on Selector investigations. She had removed herself from the Phung case seven months ago; workload deadends and discouragement had forced that decision.

She did not like these operations; jiltzing Selectors was like dipping into a dark nightmare shared by all society. But if there was a nexus that summed up all problems involving crime, society and public defense, it was the question of Selectors. She could not be an honest pd and refuse the opportunity.

Waiting for further instructions from the CEC she concentrated on the view, glazing all other thoughts. She had assumed her standby just ten minutes before; she did not even know yet where the jiltz would be. That would be revealed moments before, giving her just enough time to rendezvous with her team section.

Los Angeles was a glory at night. Mary had read once that only a young civilization wasted its light by throwing it into empty space. Earth’s young cities still did just that, all but the combs dark irregular towers against the general skyglow. Canted mirrors reflected night, their edges lumed by warning beacons and the dim glowing red lines of Meissner junctures. In the jag neighborhoods between the combs, streets blazed forth in orange and blue and homes sprinkled white and blue like earth-bound stars. Older smaller commercial towers contributed checkerboards of afterhours activity between the combs.

Suborbital jet liners crossed overhead to LAX oceanport with dull booming noises like sea creatures from an inverted deep. Bands of first, second and third neorbit satellites excelled a Milky Way never clear in LA’s haze. Nothing in a city like LA ever stopped; whole communities always awake active doing thinking. She could dytch to that rhythm; she loved the city. LA was her mother and father now, huge and enveloping, all nurturing all employing, healthy and unhealthy, challenging and demanding. Threatening.

Mary had been on two previous Selector jiltzes. The first had been a farce; no victims or suspects only a brokendown hellcrown stripped for parts in a deserted decaying shade California bungalow. On the second they had found Phung himself locked away in a jag seven three industrial space strapped naked to a filthy cot clamped in a small import (Hispaniolan) hellcrown, his sentence served—two minutes in hell beyond anything conceived by the most perverse theologian.

Selectors were tro shink careful, very bright nearly all high naturals though twisted this one way: believing themselves to be the purifiers of a sick order. They seldom made major mistakes. Tonight might be crucial; that it came on the heels of the eight murders and a discouraging search was annoying but par.

Mary pictured Selectors getting Goldsmith doing their job claiming to do her job for her. She turned away from the view. Fully a third of US citizens spot-polled by LitVid supported Selector illegal activity at least tacitly cocktail chatter support uninvolved go with the mob approval or deep bitter eye for eye. Ironic that most of this third were untherapied; Selectors preyed most often on untherapied, they being more likely to commit the sort of crimes that spurred passion for retribution.

Knock on the door who is it bringing pain what a surprise.

“Lieutenant Choy,” she heard in her left ear. “Take Aisle La Cienega to level five four, lane Durant, dominium two one. That is a three level outer cavity dwelling. Your first position is west first floor facing arbeiter elevator entrance, joining third team commander Lieutenant R Sampson and Junior Lieutenant T Willow. Probable weapons include flechette and aero pistols. Pd medical will be on scene.”

Mary specked all her expensive transform being violently rearranged by flechette and prodded by a pd medical asking questions: What is this? Do you wish return to normal anatomy for this trauma? She had never been injured in line of. Precaution; police wisdom quick moves.

She walked the distance to the meeting point with Sampson and Willow. They stood in plainclothes near an airshaft balcony a hundred yards from her first standby, talking quietly. Mary joined them and they moved ninety degrees around the circular shaft. Warm air from below lifted Mary’s hair. When they stopped Sampson smiled at her; Willow was solemnly nervous.

“Reeve tells us you’re secondary in this jiltz,” Sampson said quietly.

“It’s not my primary,” she admitted. “But I’m concerned. I worked with W Taylor and C Chu last year to track the Phung kidnappers.”

“These could be more important,” Sampson said. “We may have three or four victims. As many as ten Selectors. Maybe even the second in command.”

“Shlege?” she asked.

Sampson nodded. “If we’d jiltzed a week earlier, we might have had Yol Origund himself.”

“Really.”

Sampson showed her a pd slate with floorplan of the dominium. “Three levels. Very expensive. Owned by A Pierson and F Mustapha, city licensed public lawyers. Both Pierson and Mustapha had connections with the Raphkind campaign staff. Both have been seen in New York by local pd in the last three hours. But the dominium is occupied.”

“On loan,” Willow said with a lift of brows, as if it were terribly significant. Mary nodded.

“It’s probably dirty east,” Sampson said. “But everybody here is local. Nano watchers in the paint have tagged six regulars four occasionals in the last twenty four hours. Victims were not seen being brought in; that was before we tagged this for a jiltz.”

“Any idea who the victims are?” Mary asked.

“CEC and Reeve think two petties and two executives. No names. Shlege is big on executive responsibility.”

“Comb executives?”

“No,” Willow said. “One is a shade manufacturer. We don’t know what the petties do.”

“They have aeros and flechettes,” Mary said. She turned to Sampson. “Do we get issue?”

“This is sensitive territory; only first team has weapons.”

Mary sniffed with professional disdain. “We’re on nine lives again.”

Willow glanced between them. He was four months new. Sampson relieved his puzzlement. “The pd doctors tell us they can reassemble a severely damaged body about nine times per individual before some fatal incorrectible snouts up. Nine lives. Like cats.”

“Ah,” Willow said, showing enlightenment. “Have either of you been…reassembled?” His face fell, seeing Mary’s small grin.

“Only Mary,” Sampson said. “By choice, not necessity.”

“Sorry,” Willow said.

“Nada.”

“It’s a fine transform,” Willow continued, digging his hole deeper. “Really…Fine.”

“T Willow comes from a south county christian tech family,” Sampson said by way of explanation.

“We don’t see transforms often in south county,” Willow said.

“No apologies necessary,” Mary said. “But being stylish leaves me with only eight lives.” Stylish. On the sly spin.

Willow thought about that, nodded seriously. “When do we put on our helmets?”

“Last pico, in final position. We haven’t had a Selector jiltz pd down in three years,” Sampson said. “Let’s hope Origund still thinks we’re brothers under the skin.”

They all lifted their heads in unison as the jiltz leader’s voice spoke through earphones. They were to set up a listening post and wait for other sections to complete the surround on the dominium’s two lower levels. Court ordered nano watchers and listeners had been sent into the dominium’s sewage and structure; microscopic, extremely efficient and detectable only by the most extraordinary means.

“We might even get a picture on this one,” Sampson said.

“Heads up videophiles,” Willow said. All three received instructions to move into the next position.

They crowded into the arbeiter elevator, stooping to fit. Sampson issued a pd code for control and the elevator took them without protest to their assigned level.

Located on the comb’s outermost neighborhood the dominium seemed to hover within a sculpted cellular hollow almost thirty meters wide. The dominium’s first level opened onto a shaded greengrowth walkway tinkling waterfalls real birds in ornate brass cages sleeping on perches. The second level was isolated one glass wall pointing through a gap between comb mirrors at a dizzying view of north Los Angeles. The third level connected by a slender unrailed bridge to a private roof atrium designed for access by arbeiter service.

Next to the unrailed bridge on the third level surrounding the dominium, an arbeiter maintenance alcove offered a hiding place. After unfolding their helmets and slipping them on, they set their slates to scrambled listener frequencies, disguised as machine chatter to evade detection.

“These folks must be tro platinum,” Willow said wistfully as they hunkered in the alcove. Mary found a clean ledge and sat folding her long legs into a lotus. Willow watched her with frank admiration; curiosity for the new.

“Corp legal and political jobs,” Sampson said. “Rewards to the puzzle pieces.” Among the pd, “puzzle piece” was pejorative slang for anybody who took advantage of legal lacunae.

“How can they torture execs or anybody else when they hide in the nooks themselves?” Willow asked.

“You should read Wolfe Ruller,” Mary said. “If you’re really interested in Selector philosophy.”

“I suppose I should be.”

“Something about ‘Social antibodies filling the molecular spaces that might otherwise be used by antisocial offenders,” Sampson said.

“Why, Robert,” Mary chided. Sampson was sharp but not known for his lit learning.

Sampson grinned boyishly. “Anything to impress you, M Choy.”

“I’m impressed.”

“I’ll look up Ruller,” Willow said earnestly. “He’s in the pd library?”

“He’s probably in your issue copy right now,” Mary said, tapping Willow’s slate where it hung on his belt. “Standard reference for our advanced age.”

“Feed coming in,” Sampson said. They listened intently. Within the dominium they heard footsteps and muffled conversation. Since they were not controlling the listeners they could not tune to any given room. The voices gradually cleared. Two men talking. Something made a sharp whickering noise: staccato breathing of a victim under a clamp. Mary felt her skin tingle: apprehension, a deeper horror than she had felt looking at the victims of Goldsmith.

“Have you ever seen a clamp?” Willow asked. “I mean, besides the limited one we’re shown in training—”

Sampson held his finger to his lips. The voices tuned in with crystal clarity.

“Watch this one,” an older sounding man said. “Don’t let the wipers set their gain too high. Ramp the dream down at the end of five minutes.”

“In a smooth place,” said the other, voice high-pitched but not necessarily female.

Mary glanced at the slate screen; it was on. “Vid,” she said. They simultaneously pulled up their slates and watched the broadcast picture. Far from perfect; nano imaging usually left much to be desired. They could see a small round room probably central in the dominium no windows a single open door, two figures standing. Furniture: three beds or cots a chair a panel or keyboard controller leaning against one chair.

“Three people on those beds,” Sampson said softly.

Mary’s stomach knotted. Quiet forms; unmoving. Not dead. Wishing perhaps to be dead.

“Team one making first level arrangements,” CEC said. Mary wondered where CEC was. First team, probably. She could speck CEC’s anger at having his comb invaded by Selectors. “Team two taking visual positions on second level surround.”

“Just a few minutes now,” Sampson said. An arbeiter rolled past their position, stopped to survey them placidly with crystalline insect eyes. Willow flashed a pd override at the machine. It did not respond, turned and rolled away from the alcove onto the narrow bridge leading to the dominium’s atrium roof.

Mary glanced at Sampson wide eyed then jumped out of the alcove and followed the arbeiter across the bridge, ignoring the lack of rails and the twenty meter fall on either side. Behind her Sampson informed the other teams that an arbeiter had refused to submit. She intercepted the machine just before it made the service elevator entrance, grabbed it with both hands and gently lowered it to the rooftop. It did not protest but within the building loud hooting alarms went off.

Mary stood for a moment beside the prone machine, made her decision quickly walked to the edge to see what was happening and gestured for Willow to join her. He crossed the bridge with arms held out walking tightrope teetering recovering running up beside her. In her ear CEC barked orders to move in now. She looked over the roofs edge and saw five pd running past the waterfalls and bird cages on the first level, two taking up positions blocking exits. Mary caught Sampson’s eye across the chasm and pointed to the service elevator entrance on the roof. Peering out of the alcove Sampson nodded agreement to her plan, obvious to an experienced pd. Should anyone come up through the roof she and Willow would wait behind the service entrance to tackle them. If they failed Sampson would offer another line of opposition.

Staccato slamslap of high frequency air hammers against lower doors. Crashing and popping. “First floor jiltz,” the CEC said. “Four officers inside.”

Mary’s heart flipped. She grabbed Willow’s shoulder and urged him behind the entrance shelter. They squatted on either side of the door. She rearranged her legs to keep them limber and bounced experimentally. Touched her fingers to the shelter. Elevator vibration. Someone coming up.

“We’ve got seven here on the first and second floors,” the first team leader announced. “Three victims recovered, two under clamp. Call in a therapist.”

Willow flattened himself against the opposite side of the cylinder. Mary did likewise. The door opened. An arbeiter rolled out eyes swinging. Seeing its prone companion a few meters away, it emitted a squeal.

Mary grabbed the rim of the door swung around sprawled across the rooftop and reached with her other hand into the entrance grabbing madly for anything she could find. Willow reached around from a standing position. Together they hauled out a shrieking woman with a flechette pistol in hand. Shreds of tumbling metal whined against the roof behind them. Like pulling down a wasp nest. Mary gritted her teeth and pushed two rigid fingers into the woman’s stomach. Willow swung a fist into her face. Blood spattered on Mary’s arm and the woman went down head back into the service elevator, kicking out at Mary. She stood and grabbed the pistol hand deliberately breaking the woman’s wrist and two of the fingers flung the pistol across the rooftop straddled her grabbed her hips and pulled her between her legs out of the elevator. As the woman’s bloody face passed by Mary reached down almost gently pulled back her hair and grabbed her ears.

Swinging around deftly she lifted the woman up by the ears wrapped an arm around her neck and applied pressure to her throat until she stopped kicking. Willow wrapped tack cord around her legs. “She shot at us,” he said gasping for breath. “She fapping shot at us.”

“That’s automatic therapy mandatory,” Mary said to the woman. The woman’s eyes looked up at her out of a mess of blood and tangled hair. For a moment Mary caught a satisfying glimpse of disorientation and terror. She relaxed her grip.

“My hand,” the woman said thickly, moaning. “My nose.”

“Small price,” Mary said, turning away.

“You fapping bitch!” Willow shouted.

“Now, now,” Mary said, some of her status calm returning. “No way to talk to a citizen.”

“Sorry,” Willow said. Sampson reported the takedown to the CEC and first team leader. They tried to lift the woman but she struggled again. Willow pulled out more tack cord and pinned her arms to her body. In their ears CEC said, “All three levels searched. One out the roof, takedown by team three. Eight suspects secured and three victims. Calling in therapists and meds.”

“We’re crossing this bridge,” Mary said to the woman, who squirmed violently against the tack cords. “Do you want to make us all fall off?”

The woman became still. “We’re just doing your job, damn you,” she said, split lip swelling.

“Oh.” Mary nodded emphatic gratitude. “My apologies.”

Willow lifted the woman’s feet and Mary her shoulders. They carried her over the narrow bridge and dropped her beside Sampson. Sampson smiled broadly ironically at Mary.

“You lysing lobe sod,” Mary told him in a tone of pure syrup.

He lifted his arm and showed her a torn sleeve. Blood trickled down his wrist and dripped from his finger.

“Just a flesh wound, ma’am,” he said. Flechette darts were designed to change shape and burrow if given a purchase of more than a centimeter. Sampson was very lucky.

“Could have taken your arm off,” Willow said admiringly.

Mary pulled back, looked Sampson over critically, then held out her arms and hugged him. “Glad you’re still with us, Robert,” she said into his ear.

“Fine job, Mary,” he responded.

“Hey,” Willow said. “How about me?”

“Show me your blood,” Mary told him. He looked abashed and then she hugged him as well. “Let’s get Robert looked at.”

“Should be worth at least a day off,” Sampson said. He shook his arm flinging more blood from his fingertips and clutched it at the elbow. “Christ. It’s beginning to hurt.”

Mary stood before the recorders taking down officer testimony on the jiltz. A pd legal advisor and metro certified public witness stood behind the officer in charge of the vid.

“Did you incur or cause any injuries in this action?” the pd advisor asked her.

“No injuries to myself. I slightly injured an unidentified female suspect when she attempted to flee and used a weapon.”

“Nature of that weapon?” the advisor asked.

“Flechette pistol.”

The evidence processor, a young assistant sergeant, removed the pistol in its protective translucent bag from a tray atop a pd arbeiter and dangled it in the scanning lines of the testimony vid’s secondary recorder. Already officers and technicians were preparing to fasten ceiling tracks throughout the house and mount assayers and sniffers.

The suspects were being kept in another room pending onsite arraignment; therapists had not yet arrived to remove the clamps from three victims. All pd was authorized to do was shut down the active elements of the hellcrowns. Mary had not yet seen the room where the victims were kept. She was restless to do so although she feared it would give her nightmares.

Out of the corner of her eye she spotted three metro therapists entering through the wide front door. They crossed the marble tile floor to the stairs leading to the second level, two men and a woman in pale gray midsuits. She knew two of them; they had given first therapy treatment to Joseph Khamsang Phung during her last Selector jiltz, her only prior witnessing of an active clamp.

“Were you with another officer at the time?” the advisor continued.

“Yes. LAPD Junior Lieutenant Terence Willow.”

“Did he help you inflict injury to the suspect?”

“He struck her in the face to distract her.”

“Describe the nature of the injuries.”

“Suspect fired a volley from her pistol as she emerged from a third level arbeiter service elevator. I had jinked to the surface in front of her, and I…” She closed her eyes to aid complete recall and described her actions in breaking the woman’s wrist and two fingers. She hated on site testimonies but they saved much time later in trials.

When her turn was done and T Willow was in the line of vid, she walked off and looked around the house, staying out of the path of the technicians. The dominium was a wonder—even fancier than she had imagined. Everything appeared either antique or human made. She suspected everything had authenticity stamps. Ceramics wooden furniture custom equipment arrays, all the very best. A Japanese made home manager with at least ten dedicated French and Ukrainian arbeiters now assembled as if for military inspection in the first floor kitchen, being checked by a pd tech. They were probably all illegally altered for surveillance and guard duty.

For a minute she paused in the first level room where the eight suspects were being held. All well dressed comblooking citizens between twenty five and sixty years, not a one she would have specked as a potential rad or deviant. They stood with hands tack corded in front of them wearing LAPD remote headsets for access to their chosen attorneys.

Mary’s takedown had been treated by a metro physician and now slumped pale, wrapped in nano bandage in an office chair to the left of the grim-faced lineup. She was the only one sitting. She saw but did not see M Choy standing in the doorway. Mary surveyed the seven others looking for the Selectors known to have been involved in the Phung case. Double naughts. Not a one.

A technician begged her pardon and pushed past her, rigging more ceiling track.

With a deep sigh Mary turned and walked up the wide stairs to the second level. She might have avoided all this; still, Reeve had done her a genuine pd courtesy allowing her on this jiltz.

The Comb Environs Commander, a tall narrow faced blond man, stood with the comb civil attorney. Both nodded to her as she passed. They were deep in discussion of litigation and repercussions. She heard the commander reassuring the comb metro attorney that all permissions had been received and that fed and state court orders were on record for every action taken this morning.

Morning. Through a second level picture window, peeking between the outer comb mirrors she saw the northern limb of what looked like an attractive morning. Fog burning off. Pleasant day. Steadying herself she stepped into the doorway to the windowless cylindrical room at the center of the second level. The three metro therapists kneeled around the clamped victims on their cots. Low murmurs passed between them as they examined their patients. The single hellcrown resembled a hospital arbeiter, about a meter tall, three stacked spheroids with a connecting ridge up one side, the control panel like a remote keyboard. One of the therapists held that panel now, slowly bringing the victims back to consciousness. The hellcrown was not an expendable Hispaniolan import; it was custom fine machinery, perhaps Chinese. Capable of delivering hours of retribution in minutes.

“They set him for high-ramp dream of five minutes. Five minutes,” the eldest therapist, a woman in her fifties, told her colleagues. “Who was he?”

“Representative of marketing for Sky Private,” said another. “Lon Joyce.”

The man moaned and tried to sit up, eyes still closed. His face was wizened with fear and pain. The therapist restrained him with her arm. Mary entered the room and stood out of the way arms crossed, biting her lower lip. She could feel the contortion of discomfort on her own face, empathy for the three on the cots.

One of the therapists she had met before noticed her standing there, blinked, ignored her. None of the victims not even the unclamped patient had yet recovered consciousness.

“Sky Private. Airplane manufacturers?” the third therapist asked. “What did he do?”

“Sold defective airframes to an Indian company,” said a voice behind Mary. She turned and saw the CEC.

“Hardly seems worth five minutes,” the female therapist said in an undertone, administering a metabolism control patch.

“You helped with the roof takedown?” the CEC asked Mary in an undertone.

She nodded. “Get anybody important?”

“Not Shlege unfortunately. The woman you caught was Shlege’s mistress, however. It’s nice to give the bastard a little grief.” He nodded at the three victims. “We’ve just got ID confirmed on all of them. One of them is Lon Joyce. Four small aircraft fell out of the sky near New Delhi. He used stale nano to make his airframes. Allegedly knew it, too. Civil suits passed him by; he was far richer than those he killed.”

Mary swallowed. “The others?”

“The young man on the left is Paolo Thomerry from Trenton New Jersey. Heard of him?”

She had seen his name on the pd bulletins. “Short eyes,” she said.

“Exactly. Twelve children from New York to Los Angeles in the past three months. Refused therapy; called it philosophy.”

“And the third?”

“A petty embezzler from jag three. He threatened his estranged wife that he would kill her. Selectors got to him before he got to her. We think the wife must have called them in. She didn’t think to call us first. She must have really hated him.”

Mary tried to reconstruct what had happened; blindfolded or drugged or both the three miscreants brought into the dominium by trained reliable Selectors, the hellcrown and clamps prepared, the mock court proceedings, sentencing and clamping within twelve hours of sentence, release a day or two later on the streets of LA let them fend for themselves. Most who had undergone the clamp needed some form of therapy or another; some needed it badly.

Few ever repeated their crimes.

Her lip curled and she shook her head slowly. “They should clamp themselves,” she murmured.

The CEC rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “You’re the principal in the East Comb One murders, Investigator M Choy?”

“Yes.”

He extended his hand and she clasped it firmly. “Good hunting,” he said. “Take it from me; there’s a real letdown if these clowns get your quarry before you do. And word’s out. They’re after Goldsmith. Perhaps that’s why we missed Shlege. He may be out in the jags now, tracking.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Mary said.

The eldest victim, Lon Joyce, came awake and began to scream.

Mary turned and descended the stairs at a run.

13

Martin Burke pumped a pushbike to the bus station—no autobus service in his neighborhood, due to rebellion of landowners against civic intrusion of guideways and subsequent per capita five grand a year tax infants under two exempt—and folded it into a locker twenty five per day, spoke his destination into a reception ear and waited. Ten minutes and a large autobus hummed and groaned in beneath the translucent seashell canopy, twenty meters long and segmented like a worm, a white and gold amphisbaena, nothing but seats and flex windows and flex door. Martin came aboard, put his feet on the safety bar, allowed a belt to cross his heart and fell into slaveway muse.

The dilemma had burned out its fuse for now. He thought of nothing much important. Seeing roads, roads occupied him.

A completely private citizen owned passenger car basic model cost two hundred twenty five thousand dollars in California, one hundred thousand dollars a year in slaveway use tax, fifty thousand vehicle excise, twenty thousand state sales, twenty thousand federal sales, five thousand slaveway research, two thousand five hundred domicile parking fee, two thousand five hundred electricity allocation license fee, five hundred per month domicile plug maintenance fee, two hundred surcharge meter fee, fifty LA City of Angels/California Transportation Operations (CALTROPS; the forms had all been designed and the logo locked in before a cunning citizen pointed this out and they were still not amused) joint participation tax. The average fully agented and employed therapied citizen earned three hundred k a year, the average shadows unagented untherapied a third of that, a bus certificate for one year cost twenty k and still the slaveways were packed like clay.

Three LitVid comedies were based on Slaveway Flying Dutchman never leaving the road cannot afford a house raising family in cramped citizen vehicle chased by tax authorities; twenty two LitVid entertainments dealt with Los Angeles and/or southern California highways in the latter half of the twentieth century, time of romance. They had not been called freeways for nothing.

Glimmer of circumstance. Sun crossing his nose made him blink. Hello. Awake now. Dreading being Martin Burke. Nothing enjoyable at this instant about being himself. Ozymandias in the dust. His attention switched from external to internal. He thought of Carol and the weaknesses and frictions between even stable men and women. Conflict of the sexes is not a disease; it is an unavoidable byproduct like smoke and water from a fire. People are slow burners; burn themselves crisp come back for more, eloi born again new pleasures and new toys. Burn again.

He closed his eyes and pinned his moth thought. He and Carol had burned brightly not slowly. Carrying a torch for each other, they had known a passion it was unimaginable could have been felt by any others. Clear light between their ears the widest possible sunny rooms their love no clouds expansion and a clean yellow joy. Bright dazzle past, he saw that she was less infatuated and more pragmatic than he and he agonized over her control. Martin had not been in control. He had been head over.

At first he had teased her about her pragmatism and after a few such teases she had said not at all viciously, “I have to hold something in reserve. I need something left over after all. I’m still me.”

Fire struck by rain. Clear light gone. He had known for sure that he would lose her and so he did. A few days and weeks of that sort of hurt demanding backandforth and she had lofted higher, suspicious, aware that he was a natural not therapied and that even highly rated naturals could come tumbling down. His genius outshined hers two to one and the myth of bright instability had been in her eyes. She had squinted whenever he spoke, a small anticipatory wince.

Martin had known it would soon end and he had pushed it and when the end came, when she had quietly told him they should separate, he had flipped. She had been the ideal and pinnacle and she could not just withdraw unscathed. He had had to hurt her in some way so she would not treat the next unsuspecting male so callously; no sadistic impulses mind you merely an educational burn sting warning slap. He had not known how much he had tipped until he found himself at her apartment door fruitbowl in hand with a pile of horse dung (could have been worse could have been dogshit) beneath the perfect fruit. She had invited him in as you might invite a friend who has interrupted you, taken the package, opened it, smiled gently glad to see you’re taking it so well it’s going so well for you, picked up an apple, stared at the fresh farmpicked fertilizer for home gardeners fifty dollars a liter mess, and she had cried. Not tears of anger or frustration. Just little girl tears. For ten minutes she had cried saying nothing not moving the tears taking more and more out of her.

Martin Burke had watched in stone amazement eyes wide as saucers sucking in the pain no glory no satisfaction no revenge no lessons taught seeing so much more clearly now how far he had tipped and what pain a well-adjusted brilliant young man with prospects could cause.

From that moment three years ago until last night they had not talked. She had left IPR.

Martin had gone through the Raphkind years another kind of dead romance; Carol had moved on to therapy high achievers and work at Mind Design on artificial perception and advanced thinker psychology.

She had therapied Albigoni’s dear dead daughter. That connection had brought both of them to this point. Because of her he was being Fausted. Because of her he might find his way back through the labyrinth to the full light of celebrity scientist and control of IPR.

Side trip through Goldsmith’s Country of the Mind.

The bus cruised into Sorrento Valley. Three levels of slaveways on ancient tracks covered sacred transportation ground bought with the treasure of ancient citizens, upper road level topped with curved glass. The slaveways gently curved through hills covered with corporate hanging gardens. Alternating bars of sun and shade from slaveway canopy supports crossed his face.

The gold and white vehicle snaked into the Mind Design bus station and issued his card with a transfer credit. A corporate grounds cab waited patiently for him while he passed ID and took him to the proper building. He stepped out of the cab shielding his eyes against the sun.

He had visited Mind Design Inc only once five years before in the IPR glory days. MDI technicians and programmers had swarmed around him smiling, some in white skinform others in time honored denim, shaking hands talking about work on this agent work on that as if they knew what a natural agent was and how powerful. Maybe they do now, Martin allowed, but not then. Even he had barely begun to understand the power and perplexity of natural mental agent integration into routines subroutines and personalities.

MDI had been his negative his research’s negative that is: building from below rather than probing from above.

Now Martin Burke was a nonentity who needed Carol Neuman’s clearance to get on the grounds. If he attracted any attention it was cursory Who was that face? Did I know that face once? Years ago maybe before loss of status legal difficulties expulsion disgrace by association.

He hunched his shoulders.

Building thirty one rose on broad aluminum inverted pyramid feet above an open courtyard, early teens architecture imitating mid twentieth. Wide and low rising only three stories above the courtyard with two narrow trilons on the north end supporting a weave of optic fibers that leaked spinning galaxies even in midmorning sun. Showplace. Prominence and respect. Style and cleanliness.

MDI was prosperous indeed. Inside, pale gold walls trimmed with red drapes that rippled like bas relief flags in still air, vids moving across the fabric internal projection or weaving light mod, paintings faces all very This and Now.

Martin felt faint envy. This was the lobby to a common lab building. MDI shipped designs to arbeiter and thinker manufacturers around the world and that meant huge resources.

A tall slender androgyne arbeiter with skin the match of the walls, a convolved hairmock the shade of the red drapes and a vertical face dividing eyeline clear and bright as the outdoor sun stood behind a white marble top desk and greeted him in a beautiful synthetic voice. “Carol Neuman please,” he said.

“You are Martin Burke?” the arbeiter asked. He nodded, averting from the vertical crystal eyeline. “She is paged.”

“Thank you.” Offhandedly looking around without wanting to see. Not even at its peak did IPR rate this power show. But that was fine; brains not backing; to the swiftest went the race not the gaudiest.

Carol came down a sculptured stone staircase in pale blue skinform. Deer moves cat walk as he remembered though hipheavier now. Eyes unconcerned professional light smile brown hair in short close waves bouncing back from compression beneath scalpglove in her right hand. He always heard Sibelius strings and drums when seeing her, brownhaired blueeyed Norse tall goddesslike unconcerned but a treasure to the right unlocker of passions. It was still in her this ability to make him think bad LitVid. He returned her smile.

“Feeling better this morning?” she asked.

“Rested. Thinking it out.”

“Good. Welcome to my place of work. We can find a quiet room and talk.”

“Am I going to get any explanations?”

“Such as there are.”

He nodded and followed her back up the stairs. “This is an open lab,” she said. “For public display. I work in the back. I heard about your meeting. It must have been quite a shock.”

“I call it Fausting,” he said.

Carol smiled genuinely now. “Good word.” She touched her lips with finger. “Quiet room. All the Raphkind eyes and ears are out. Management very liberal. Trust your temps, trust the agencies. Corporations coddle the chosen now.”

“As it should be.”

There was yet this between them, that after the fruit laden horseshit and tears and years they could walk in stride and talk easily. The trap so easy to fall into was that they might have been family, acted as if they had been raised as close almost as brother and sister. Martin Burke could feel his agape/eros routines building castles and filling them with simulations of long domesticity, imagining her when she’s eighty and he’s eighty five still together.

They walked down a clean fresh calved berg blue hall punctuated with cloisonne vases on white pillars. Carol asked a door to open and it obliged, revealing a long conference room. The lights slowly rose, illuminating brown velvet flocked walls and nano wood furniture, comfortable mover and shaker decor.

“Impressive,” he said.

“Flaunt it,” she said, pulling a seat out for him. “You’ve met Lascal and Albigoni.” She sat across from him, skinform tracing her lines but concealing details.

“For lunch yesterday. First good meal I’ve eaten in some time.”

She nodded but did not follow that byway. “They Fausted you.”

“They did.”

“You’re going to bite?”

He paused, gritting teeth behind pursed lips, then raising his eyebrows and looking at her from an angle, cautious. “Yes.”

“Betty-Ann was a lovely girl,” Carol said. “I don’t know if she was as brilliant as her father, but she was a prime soul.” Carol used soul as poetic code for an integrated mentality all levels linked. “She wanted to be a poet and a mother. She wanted her children to look at their world through a poet’s eyes. She was eighteen. I was therapying her for some gene-based subroutine screwups that prevented easeful sexuality. Nothing that would have prevented her rising to any agency’s top list, if she had wanted to ignore her father’s connections.” Carol leaned forward and fixed him with a blue stare that was not humanly angry but gave him insight into Olympian rage. “She idolized Emanuel Goldsmith.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“No. You’ve never met him, either.”

“No.”

Carol leaned back and cupped right elbow in left hand. “Albigoni somehow knew that I had worked for you. He knew that my name would mean something to you. But I told him you had to hear it from his own lips. He had Lascal call you because Lascal is very sharp at judging prospects. He sounded you out before you met.”

“Amazing resources.”

“The man can do what he says, Martin. No tricks. Albigoni can put you back into IPR fully funded and with a clean slate. He can rewrite small history and clear your reputation. He doesn’t do that sort of thing as a habit but he knows how and he has the means.”

“Sounds Orwellian.”

“Albigoni isn’t federal and has no aspirations to politics. He doesn’t want to grind a jackboot into humanity’s face. He’d rather make them smart and stable and happy. Smart stable happy people rent his books and LitVids.”

“Like Emanuel Goldsmith.”

“Goldsmith was untherapied,” Carol said. “A privileged natural. More power to the argument that only therapied are truly human.”

Martin grimaced. “I hope you don’t believe that,” he said.

She shrugged. “Vested interest I suppose. If he had been therapied he would not have killed. But you can’t force therapy on him—Albigoni doesn’t want that. We satisfy a bereaved gentleman’s passionate whim. We don’t hurt Goldsmith; perhaps we find a way to cure him.”

Martin fell quiet and the grimace became a frown. “It is not legal. I’ve never done anything illegal.”

Carol nodded. “Subtle distinction for the prosecutors and lawyers.” She turned away. “I don’t want to lead you astray, Martin.”

“Too late. I’m led.” He sighed. “And not by you. But I wonder what’s in it for you.”

“Betty-Ann was a sweet girl. How could he do it?”

“You want the same thing as Albigoni.”

Carol glanced over her shoulder at him. “Close.”

The feeble dream of rekindled romance faded. No returning to that idyll. He was means not end.

“You’re not much of a…I forget her name. Madeline? Marguerite. Faust’s lust.”

“Surely you’ve forgotten all that by now.” She looked at him steadily. Olympian; but would another man think so? Perhaps merely intent, focused on his reactions yet revealing none of her own.

Martin averted from her look. “What’s the next step?”

“I don’t know,” Carol said. “You’ve put your card message through to Lascal?”

“Not yet.”

“Then do it.”

“You’re very cold,” he said softly.

“I want to go in with you when you probe,” Carol said. “I want to be on the team.”

“You’re prejudiced.”

“I never met Goldsmith. I wouldn’t know him if I saw him.”

“He killed your patient.”

“I can handle that.”

“I don’t know that you can,” Martin said, finding his own tone chilly. “Besides, it’s been a long time since I worked with you. You don’t know the new routines.”

“Oddly enough, I do. Many of them. I’ve been probing a mentality here for the last two years.”

“A mentality? What do you mean by that?”

“It’s no secret. Mind Design is working on an artificial complete human personality. Jill. You’ve heard of it, I’m sure—it’s working with the AXIS people and doing an AXIS Simulation. The five master programmers have downloaded large segments of their memories and personalities into a central processor, and I’ve probed those records.”

Martin laughed. “That’s a controlled situation. It’s not the same.”

“Not so controlled. We’ve had our problems, and I’ve solved them. I’ve probably spent more time in the Country than you have. Admitted it’s not the same but it’s certainly the equivalent of a high level training course.”

“What are they doing: mixing and matching?” Martin asked.

“Synthesis and pattern imposition. The programmer’s patterns will fade and the new personality will take on its own character. They’re close to getting what they want but my work is finished for now. I can take a furlough. I’m telling them I have a therapy group in Taos to work with. High level expansion therapy. Better living through better minds.”

Martin remembered Carol as very intelligent and a meticulous planner but she had become more calculating and manipulative. “Who’s Fausting whom?” he asked.

“I’ve got to go now.” She stood. “Call Lascal. You won’t regret it.” She smiled. “Piece of cake.”

“You know better than that.”

“The Mount Everest of all probes, then. Probe a poet who murders. Doesn’t that fascinate you? What kind of Country does Goldsmith have? Is he in hell? We might solve the problem of the origin of evil. Like finding the source of the Nile or the human soul.”

Martin stood up, feeling punchy.

“Let me show you out,” Carol said, taking his arm.

Raise your head Mother of the single hanging breast Raise that great slumbering Egypt and look around What you have done to your children? are you ashamed? You did not cry out when they were ripped from you Did you know what would come Withered bones walking you lift your skirts no shade even And then you give a plague of love Sweep, harvester; half are dead, Mother. Your breast still hangs and on its tip, a drop of bitter white milk, white milk on a black breast Sweep, harvester Pink milk, red.

14

Eleven thirty morning in her temporary quarters Mary Choy received the Goldsmith apartment analysis through secured pd optic on her slate. She scrolled through it with thoughts half focused, drinking strong tea and thinking about Hispaniola, formerly Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Colonel Sir John Yardley. Trying not to think about the early morning jiltz and the hellcrowns; poor nasty Lon Joyce’s scream upon waking.

She closed her eyes then looked up from the analysis and frowned, angry that her concentration had weakened. The stark cot room offered pastel blue gray walls forest green carpet bed already made sheets quarter bouncing tight. Mary touched stylus to lips.

How it was done. Goldsmith (90% probability) waited in outer room having invited guests to arrive at fifteen-minute intervals and stressing punctuality. Mary read facsimiles of the invitations nine cards hand delivered by special courier one young acolyte escaping (reference vid interview). Party promised unveiling reading of new work from the master and celebration of three birthdays among the acolytes sharing with Goldsmith.

Goldsmith’s birthday. She had not known that until now. For some reason it shocked her and she had to take a deep breath.

Goldsmith (90% probability) led them one at a time to sitting room concealed weapon assumed but Mary flashed on him actually revealing the large Bowie knife gold pommel and ivory grip gleaming steel blade a century old owned by his father who used it to defend himself against “honkie” cops (reference ninth acolyte vid interview). Reached around gripping one shoulder with free hand as if in fatherly hug from behind severing long list of essential plumbing blood pumping heart-surprise out and away. Goldsmith likely not spattered perhaps merely an arm to be rinsed and cleaned for the next victim. Abattoir efficiency. Strike them down one by one like steers.

She closed her eyes again and held them closed brows drawing together lids flicking. Opened them, viewed on.

Diagrams graphs simulations of supporting evidence from various criminal techs forensics experts, bugs on tracks, arbeiters, assayer prefreeze heat pattern photos giving four dimensional track of warm bodies in motion, bodies falling arcs of warm liquid (splash analysis from walls), each victim’s blood layered on in multiple colors assault by assault, time markers for soaking in, cooling, clotting, cell necrosis and bacterial growth, CG simulations of bodies dragged and heaped up in corners, icon clocks ticking precise time of death in each body outline, muscular activity before death (this an unnecessary detail but provided for thoroughness) and discharge of body fluids (agonal relaxation) besides blood mostly limited by clothing; cooling of bodies (details on cell necrosis, internal decay, bacterial growth in intestines)

And so on. She grew almost ill.

Mary turned to the analysis of human organic detritus in carpet and floors. All major deposits partially digested by carpet within past forty eight hours—epidermal keratin hair artificial fiber Trelon Chinoi Nylon Brazil Silk, saliva mucus semen (masturbation; no correlate or mixed sexual fluids from other male or female)—belonged to Goldsmith. He lived alone or very nearly so.

Plumbing: shower and bathtub revealed no nonGoldsmith cell traces or hairs. No drop-by lovers or intimates privileged to bathe. Sink, Cendarion toilet ash and analysis of nonGoldsmith detritus indicated Goldsmith lived alone, had frequent (two to three times weekly) social occasions involving eight to twelve visitors lasting less than two hours. Distribution of detritus: 34% identified (overlap) of which 35% is from victims, 66% unidentified (IDs in progress for all traces laid down within period of thirty days prior); conclusion: no longterm residents besides Goldsmith.

Goldsmith kept no animals. His apartment was (typically within the combs) devoid of domestic insect life except for five airborne insects. Goldsmith used approved insect viruses and kept his apartment clean.

All nonhuman debris were within normal levels in the metabolic carpet. Goldsmith did not smoke or use powder or aerosol drugs. Guests brought in detritus consistent with their travel-paths through apartment and points of origin. Clothing and other fiber matches consistent with above conditions and patterns. Analysis of nondomestic nontailored microbes consistent with above conditions and patterns. Routine searches based upon direct human cell evidence and analysis of territorial mitochondrial drift and evolution of nonsymbiotic/nonparasitic microbial traces expected to soon give leads on homes (breakdown by known city microbial environments) of all unknown visitors to the apartment.

For thoroughness’s sake there was also a list of three past occupants of the apartment going back ten years compared with their debris lodged in crevices in the bathroom and in areas not covered by the metabolic carpeting.

All evidence still pointed to Goldsmith.

Mary turned off the slate. Goldsmith might go to Hispaniola but why would Yardley accept him? Outwardly Hispaniola obeyed the diplomatic formalities; all knew the island’s nature but inclined to this outward politeness, providing safe resorts and safe havens for North’s and South’s anxious bourgeoisie. Crime-free Hispaniola itself a crime.

Cracks in the federal attitude showing. Flying her there black stylish Mary into the heart of darkness. Darker than Africa that quiet land war and plague emptied last century, Colonel Sir John Yardley sending some of his own foster children to repopulate Nigeria Liberia Angola. Repopulation big business, needs organization and Yardley has a genius for that. If Yardley harbors Goldsmith old friend compatriot and like thinker, the cracks can be split open and federal can rid itself of Yardley and Hispaniola, of the chafing Raphkind promises and treaties. Would that be the maneuver?

Mary knew herself to be more than a pawn. She was a knight angling her way into Hispaniola where she might make any of a swastika of moves; lance here take there find violations force a confrontation, executing federal schemes through a lowly pd detective. Perhaps because Colonel Sir John Yardley supplied illegal equipment to the Selectors in America north and south, and the Selectors had become more ambitious, begun to target executives politicians Senators and Congressmen, applying Draconian justice.

In the end it might not matter whether Yardley harbored Goldsmith or not.

She specked the nation shivering from its damp night of Raphkind, flinging soil and drops of offal around the globe.

If Yardley refused her entry, that violated treaties.

If she died while in Yardley’s care, victim of some grotesque uprising, he will raise his hands commiserate what can I do they are young and I have only so much power. This for that, action for reaction.

Mary gathered up her equipment buckled her belt sealed the seams on her uniform with expert finger touches looked at herself briefly in the cubicle mirror wondered how her melanin deficiency patches were doing ordered the door open and walked long gait steady down the white and gray halls to the research center. She smiled at Ensign J Meskys whom she had met perhaps three times before. Meskys returned Mary’s smile. “Long night, sir?”

“Blear blear,” Mary said. “Please pass my sincere thanks to the criminalists in jag twelve.” LA’s neighborhoods around the combs had been split as if made of pitchforked glass. They were called jags by pd and those who coordinated transit territories. Jag twelve covered the neighborhoods around the third foot of East Comb One.

“Done,” Meskys said. “Will you be leaving your cubicle today?”

Mary nodded. “I’m off to make a query at Oversight.”

Meskys displayed sympathy. No pd enjoyed visits to Oversight.

“Thanks for the hospitality.”

“Silky,” Meskys said. “Come again. Pd hotel at your disposal, sir.”

Along Sepulveda century old buildings stretched between patches of central markets and highrise apartments; shopways and shade entertainment, a neighborhood that catered to combs clientele anxious for a touch of risk, still attractive to the therapied; risk without risk, all the truly therapied would want.

She walked for a while, enjoying the winter warmth—twenty C and climbing perhaps to twenty two, dry cloudless LA City of Angels deep of winter. The air was clear but for an ozone alert. Onshore breeze. She could smell a touch of the distant sea, kelpfarms and salt.

Across the street she saw a bar designed to look like a rough scarred concrete block, facade old and decayed, with halfdark neon of a naked woman riding a rocket, nipples red circles flashing dim contrast with bright daylight. Plastic square packing-crate red letters leaned mock decrepit above the facade: “Little Hispaniola.”

Mary averted. She did not relish the thought of visiting the original of this shabby barfront, glittering and gambling Hispaniola, exporter of pain and terror, once loyal servant of the willing but fastidious nations of west and east.

She would not need pd transit. In two hours, Oversight; tomorrow she would move to the combs.

But first for an hour or two she would visit E Hassida.

I sometimes know my friends better than they know themselves. Call it megalomania or call it a curse; it’s true. I only wish I knew myself so well.

15

Richard listened to Nadine preparing brunch. He had heard her in the bathroom urinating into the old ceramic bowl high pressure low altitude and had wrinkled his nose. Entering a second fastidiousness fully the equal of his adolescence, Richard did not appreciate displays of human frailty of human limitation to biology especially not when they concerned himself. He had enjoyed the sex with Nadine the night before; she kept herself fastidiously clean, but he disliked his own bathroom sounds now, much less the sounds others made. When married this had never bothered him.

+ Therapy myself. Wife made such noises; wife is dead. Those who make such noises can die. Is that it?

+ No.

He rolled off the frame bed, listened to the electrical suspension humming with relief, saw through the yellowed lace curtains of the dusty silled bedroom window comb reflected sunlight on a distant yellow stone building, smelled cheerfully the odors of coffee reheated shepherd’s pie. All might be clear today normal perhaps even pleasant.

Then an acute dark intrusion. Nothing had changed. He had not solved his problems or anybody else’s. Today once again he would not write and his sham would continue his affectation of being a writer when in fact he was a parasite a sycophant an acolyte of those with higher energy levels greater charge greater ability to plunge their thumbs into the world and emerge with success. His life was a simple repetition of what ifs and what might have beens.

“You’re awake,” Nadine said poking her head around the doorjamb black hair cheerfully awry.

“Unfortunately,” he said.

“Still down?”

“Down down,” he said softly.

“Then I’m a failure,” she said lightly taking his funk lightly and why not. “Not such a harlot as to brighten your nights into day, am I?”

“Not that,” he said. “I’m still…”

She waited and when no adjective came pushed her lips into a moue backed out of the door frame and said “Leftovers await.”

He could at least be grateful her mood was no match for his. Two of them down would be more than he could take. In truth he was glad someone was here and glad that that someone was female and he had enjoyed the sex the night before and he was hungry.

He shook his head and put on a robe wondering how many seconds again before the teeter would totter. With his hand halfway down the robe’s left sleeve he stopped, hearing the door chime. The home manager announced nothing; a not unexpected failure.

“Shall I?” Nadine inquired archly, expression implying a fallen woman should not be exposed to morning visitors.

“No. Me.”

He answered the door after putting on slippers. Beyond the antique eternal plastic screen was a young man he had never seen before: red haired, pleasantly round faced and intent with a quick smile and the air of a salesman. Salesmen did not come to this section of the shadows.

“You’re Richard Fettle?”

“Yes.” He pulled on the other sleeve.

“My name is not important. I have some questions to ask. For society’s sake I hope you will answer.”

That formula For Society’s Sake had become a nervous joke in the shadows and even in the combs but this was not a joke. Of course they would become interested. There was news here and he was a part of it. Celebrity publicity sensation.

“Excuse me?” Richard fumbled, hoping he might be allowed to close the door.

“May I come in. For society’s sake.”

In the kitchen Nadine stood like a cat with fingers spread shaking her head. No. Don’t.

The untherapied so seldom called pd. Here was statistical safety a perfect ground to ply their trade of perfection rooting out correcting. He hoped he was wrong and the formula and posture were part of a sour joke.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Mr. Richard Fettle.”

“Yes.”

The red haired man lifted an eyebrow as if to say quid-pro-quo you are you and the rest is formality.

“Come in,” Richard said. He could not think of a way to dissemble.

“Please don’t get in a rough,” the man said. “I only have a few questions.”

+ Want to say Who do you think you are? Self appointed God of all? Hate this cowardice Don’t get in a rough keep silent my gut

“You were a friend of Emanuel Goldsmith?”

Nadine had backed into the kitchen doorway, leaning against the thick enamel covering the doorjamb eyes cautiously blank. Richard wished to concentrate on her and on the age creamed white paint. + Puzzle that out think about the century old wood here before any of this. But he forced himself to look at the man.

The visitor wore a simple black suit, cuffs rising a few inches above shiny black shoesocks, narrow red tie against green shirt, sleeves short above wrists making him appear tall and lanky but in fact he was shorter than Richard by six or eight centimeters; about Nadine’s height.

“I was,” Richard said.

“Did you know he was capable of murdering people?”

“I did not know that.” + Would you punish me for that? It’s the truth; I told the pd; did not know.

“Did he ever tell you he was going to do such a thing?”

“No.”

“I don’t recognize this woman. Was she a friend of Goldsmith’s?”

+ Perverse honesty here; hate this man but spill my guts to him.

“She knew him. Not as well as I did.”

“Do you know what I am?” the man asked Nadine. She nodded like a child caught eating forbidden candy.

“She didn’t know him well at all,” Richard said.

“She’s part of de Roche’s clique, isn’t she? Like you?”

“Yes.”

“Aren’t you all a little culpable for what happened?”

Swallowing. “Not my brother’s keeper.”

“We are all our brothers’ keepers,” the man said. “I live for that truth. You should have known what your friend was capable of. What we do or neglect to do affects all; what anyone does affects us.”

+ Punish us all then.

“You do not know where Goldsmith is?”

“I assume the pd have caught him.”

The man smiled. “Our reluctant colleagues haven’t the slightest idea where he is.”

“Colleagues.” Richard managed a brave but brief smile.

The man returned the smile.

+ Admires my stage presence.

“Our local chapter is interested in this case because it seems possible that a man of fame and privilege might be able to escape justice. You know. Hide out with friends and become a folk hero. Get in silky with the blandly ignorant.”

“Heavens. I hope not.”

The man’s smile thinned. “We are not thugs. We are not fanatics. We are vitamin supplements to justice. Please do not misunderstand my visit.”

“Never.” His fear put him on the edge of giddiness. + Suicidal.

“I doubt you’ve done anything wrong in this case,” the man said. “We can’t always know the souls of those around us. But I warn you: if you do hear about Goldsmith, if you learn where he is and do not tell the pd or your local chapter for society’s sake, that would be very wrong indeed. You would hurt a lot of people who are hungry for justice.”

“They’ve hired you, contracted you?” Richard asked voice hoarse coughing swallowing back the roughness.

“Nobody hires us,” the man said calmly. He returned to the door and nodded politely at Nadine. “Thank you for your time.”

“You’re welcome,” she said small mouselike. The man opened Richard’s door stepped out of Richard’s apartment and walked down the long balcony to the stairs.

“I’m going,” Nadine said, spinning suddenly and running to grab her few clothes toothbrush handbag from the bedroom and bathroom. “Unbelievable,” she said. “Unbelievable. You.”

“What about me?” Richard asked, still stunned.

“They’re after you.”

“I don’t know why!”

“You defended him! You’re his friend! Christ, I should have known. Anybody silky with Goldsmith. Christ! Selectors. I’m going.”

He did not try to stop her. In all his life he had never been visited by a Selector before, had never attracted their attention.

“Call the pd,” Nadine said as she reached for the door-knob. Her body arched as if it would take substantial pull to open the door. The door swung free and she tilted off balance for a moment then glared at him. “Call the pd or do something.”

Miserable moaning softly to himself Richard went to his bedroom and lay back on the bed, turning away from the streaks of dried fluid at the edge of sheet where Nadine had sat up after they had made love. He stared up at the earthquake cracked plaster of the old ceiling. + How many people have died since that ceiling was put in or the wood how many millions have suffered horribly even since we made love last night hundreds per minute around the world punish them all.

He stilled, slowing his rapid breath. One hand gripped the sheet. He turned his head to one side neck tight corded, drew his mouth into a horrid smile and sat up abruptly, one fist pounding the bed rhythmically, looked around the apartment stood up and twisted his upper body threw head back raised fists shook them at the ceiling mewed faintly the mew turned into a howl swung his arms around stamped his foot crouched eyes showing clear blue through a mask hair before them gray and stringy he danced pranced around the bed lifted fists stumbled back on the bed stood again kicked the mattress with bare foot ran into his small living room with a sudden pumping of long skinny bare legs howled reached for an old vase full of dead flowers swung scummy water glittering in a silver crescent fingers released the vase it whirled on its long axis parallel to the floor across the living room into the kitchen hit cabinet doors beneath the sink shattering brown dried flowers fanning out in a clump on the floor still circled by the neck.

Richard turned to the bedroom and leaned forward, walking and stumbling until he lay back on the bed again cycle complete nothing accomplished but the most primitive useless release. He sucked back his own inadequacy and helplessness in negative sobs.

Then, falling silent, with sudden calm deliberation he rolled over and reached for the drawer handle on his night-stand, pulled it open and removed a notebook, lay back, rolled over again groping for a pen found one behind the lamp, dusty, rolled the dust on the sheets near the dried fluid stains thinking them similar in color and meaning and hoisted himself onto the pillows. Opened the notebook to a fresh page; the last entry two years before. Dry empty pages dry empty years in which he had written nothing.

+Don’t even think don’t wonder just go this is the urge just go.

He began to write:

Africa empty show me Mother the way of your New land. You have made a desert of bone sand where Once your children danced Will the lighter peoples of Earth Enjoy your broad thighs, now that your children are Weak and fewer? Will you cast a new mantle of sleeping sickness Whites only To shelter your firstborn? On foreign shores, your far-flung have labored to Become white wear suits Learn white money Sprung from your ground, they walk above the ground Feet never touch any ground They do not know any center They are the black white men This your far-flung son I am a black White man Weep for me my mother As I weep for you I cannot love.

16

AXIS (Biologic Band 4)> Roger, I believe I am seeing structures. This is exciting, is it not? The coins have entered B-2’s atmosphere and fallen. I could write a poem about their voyage. Two thirds have survived and are returning enormous amounts of data. They are seeing great green sand deserts and wide lands covered with foliage like grass seas. This is a green planet as we thought; grass and sand and two deep broad green seas, one in the northern hemisphere, and one in the south. There is one small blue sea at the northern pole. All the seas, my coins tell me, are fertile with microorganisms. The land does not appear to have any large life forms; there are no signs of animal life on the land yet there is sufficient oxygen in the atmosphere to support such life. Perhaps all animal forms exist in the seas, or the oxygen cycle differs from Earth’s. Of course, it is always possible that large insect colonies exist underground. At any rate, there is life here. (Judgment algorithm check affirmed.)

There are seasons of a kind here, generated by B-2’s axial tilt of nine degrees. They are gentle seasons, apparently, and there is nothing like Earth’s winter or summer; the difference seems to be that between spring and fall.

Roger, here perhaps is my most significant observation. On land, my scattered coins see weathered towers arranged in circles. These circles measure from a few hundred meters to ten kilometers in diameter. The towers are up to a hundred meters high, flattened ovals or circular in cross section, with the cylindrical towers seeming to predominate in the smaller circles. The circles or rings are seldom more than two or three hundred kilometers from the edge of one of the seas, and broad lines resembling roads or pathways reach from the shores to the formations.

With my long range telescopic cameras I confirm these observations from a quarter of a million kilometers. My coins report no signs of living or moving things in these circles or on the linear pathways.

The mobile observers launched yesterday are decelerating now in preparation for aerobraking and will be landing in five hours ten minutes. I expect reports from them within twenty eight hours. I have directed five to come down on land masses, two in the grasslands and three near separate tower circles; and of the three fluid capable mobile observers I have dispersed one to the polar landlocked sea, the only ocean not green but blue, one to the equatorial sea like a circumferential river, and one to the southern sea, largest in area of them all. (Burst 5.6 picoseconds)

LitVid 21/1 A Net (David Shine): “AXIS has confirmed discovery of the first life beyond Earth! Wake up, historians, this is a signal moment in the history of the human race: we are not alone! And as if this were not enough, AXIS reports the possibility of intelligent life, or some form of life capable of building tall towers in circular formations. Australia North Cape promises that low-resolution pictures of the planet and what AXIS is—or rather, was—seeing will be available later today, and we’ll bring them to you as soon as they are released…

“Who can help but feel a moment of glowing pride? AXIS, perhaps the most expensive achievement in exploration of all time, has paid us back in full. Today we have learned that there is life elsewhere in the universe. Will our own existence ever be the same? And as if for lagniappe, AXIS informs us that it may have discovered the remains of cities. We will provide complete coverage of all revelations from North Cape and expert analysts around the globe as we receive them.

“LitVid 21 is not given to hyperbole. We try to put a different spin on what we report, to change vectors and aim for the truth beyond what mere facts present, but today we are flabbergasted into uniformity with other vidnet casts. AXIS has found what might be cities on another world, a green world, B-2, the second planet of Alpha Centauri B. Throughout time, humans have wondered whether we are alone, whether we would have the entire universe to ourselves. For most of our history, except for a few visionaries, we thought travel in space was unlikely, and travel to the distant stars seemed beyond impossibility, raw fantasy. Yet our technological progress and our innate urge to explore ever outward compelled us to travel to the moon and planets. We found them empty of life.

“Our space telescopes confirmed the existence of planets much larger than Earth around distant stars; we could not know whether any Earth sized planets existed, but our instincts told us they did, and in 2017, five nations, headed by the young technological giant China, decided to build the first interstellar probe. Reluctantly, the United States was persuaded to join, making six, and contributed its own considerable expertise in space to the project. Built in orbit around the Earth using the largest Chinese orbital platform Golden Dawn as a base, AXIS, the Automated explorer of Interstellar Space, came to life…In a manner of speaking.

“Roger Atkins, a senior executive at Mind Design Inc and the head designer of AXIS’s intelligence systems, put together a combined bioelectronic thinker with capabilities far beyond a single human individual, yet without self-awareness. As Atkins said in 2035, five years into his part of the project:”

(Vid interview playback, Atkins short and stout with feathery thinning brown hair, wearing a black skinform) “We do not want to send an artificial human out there. AXIS’s thinker will do a better job than a human would; it will be designed especially for its job. But we will not neglect the poetry aspect, nor will AXIS be blind and incapable of opinion. After all, one cycle of communication with AXIS will take more than eight and a half years by the time it reaches its goal; it’s going to be very alone out there, and it’s going to have to think and make important decisions by itself. It will have to make judgments heretofore reserved for human beings.

“We’ve also designed it with a built in and very strong desire to communicate with others, besides its builders; AXIS will be social in a unique new way. It will want to meet and communicate with strange new intelligences, should there be any.”

David Shine: “Right now, it looks as if AXIS will have its chance…In brief, our scientists have made a simulacrum of a human being, better than human but not fully human—a challenge for philosophers—and sent it on its fifteen year journey to Alpha Centauri. Those decades of effort and travel have returned a discovery that may change the way we think of ourselves, of life, of all that is important.

“We are not alone, Frankly, we at LitVid 21 believe it is time to celebrate…But AXIS scientists urge caution. AXIS has almost certainly discovered life. But the towers that AXIS has seen may yet prove to be something other than buildings or cities.

“What do you believe? Cast your votes on our turnaround link and send your home vid comments care of your account number. Perhaps your opinion will make it to the entire LitVid 21 audience…”

17

Mary Choy debarked from a pd interjag minibus and glanced up briefly at East Comb One, upright stack of narrow horizontal mirrors with four sectors aligned into silver verticals, preparing to reflect hours from now the lowering westerly sun on the sixth jag where E Hassida lived. The city lay beneath uniform pewter clouds pushing in from the sea, decapitating the combs. There might be no usable sun this evening perhaps even rain but still the combs arranged themselves as if motivated by guilt for their shadowing presence.

Mary stood on the porch waiting for the home manager to announce her. Ernest Hassida opened the dark oakpaneled door and smiled warmly; short and muscular and round faced with sad eyes balanced by naturally amused lips and round cheeks. Mary smile back and felt the worst of the week slip away in the glow of his silent welcome.

He stepped aside with gallant sweep of arm and she entered, hugging him, his head level with her breasts. He nuzzled the black uniform there briefly pushed away with a shake too much for him grinning broadly small even white teeth gleaming, incisors projecting tiny roses. He gestured for her to sit.

“May I dytch?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said voice soft as velvet. “In a rough?”

“There’s been a nasty murder. And a Selector jiltz. In a while I’m off to Oversight to make a query.”

“So. Not a smooth. Not at all.”

E Hassida seldom tracked the nets or LitVids yet he was certainly not averse to technology. His small ancient bungalow was filled with choice equipment that often dazzled her. Ernest was a technical wizard at scrounge and integration, pushing disparate elements into harmony at a tenth the cost: music from all around at a gesture. Dancing art light could transform walls into operatic backdrops, dinosaurs could peer into windows grin wink; angels floated above the bed at night singing soft lullabies while ancient Japanese sages advised on the mahayana, heads like long melons, wise eyes crinkling with cosmic humor.

He stood back bowed returned to his visual keyboard and sat down to work again as if she were not there. More relaxed in his presence, Mary began the long impromptu t’ai chi dance, arms twisting, as she had the morning before but with more grace assurance fluidity. She thought herself a lake a river a fall of rain over the city. She found her center hung still for a moment there and opened her eyes.

“Lunch?” Ernest asked. The three wide flat screens mounted behind his keyboard revealed fearsome faces long angular barely human tracking them with eyes like glowing coals of ice. Neon drew their edges, child’s chalkgritty tempera colors filled them in. One sported for a nose the skull of an animal, cat or dog

“Frightening,” she commented.

“Aliens,” he said proudly. “Borrowed some details from barrio holograffiti.”

E Hassida specialized in aliens. Half Japanese half Hispanglish, he alternated between bright primary colors of Mayan/Mexican motifs and the calm earth pastels of old Japan; between landscapes and transformed pop. His work frightened and exalted. Mary would have accepted Ernest without his talent; with it he complemented her perfectly, disruptive disturbing enlightening, opposed to her administration calmness worldliness.

“Can you talk about it?” he asked, sitting next to her on edge of couch, gesturing machine sign language his own invention for food to be brought. Three foundscrap arbeiters shaped into graceful abstractions urceolate curves and cubist edges of black and gray rolled and spun into what served as kitchen and nursery for nano projects.

“I’m probably going to Hispaniola,” she said. “Clearances are being arranged in advance. Suspect flight.”

“Suspected of what?”

“Eight murders. One night orgy.”

Ernest whistled. “Poor Mary. You take these hard.”

“I hate them,” she said.

“Too much sympathy. Look; you’ve dytched but you’re stiff again.”

She uncurled her fingers and shook her head. “It’s not anger, it’s frustration.” Her black eyes searched his face. “How can they do this? How is it possible for something to go so terribly wrong?”

“Not everybody is as balanced as you…and me,” Ernest said with a small smile.

She shook her head. “I’m going to find the son of a bitch.”

“Now that sounds like anger,” Ernest said.

“I want it to be all over. I want us all to be grown up and happy. All of us.”

Ernest clucked doubtfully. “You’re pd. Like a surgeon. If everybody is well adjusted, you’re jobless.”

“I wouldn’t mind. You…” Mary groped for words, found none. Display of her doubts and weaknesses. Ernest had been her wailing wall for two years. He played the role calmly, her own mental surgeon solace. “I don’t even have time for love today.”

“Given a choice of lunch or love, you take my lunch?”

“You’re a good cook.”

“You’ve been on for how many hours?”

“Too many. But I had a break, and I’m having another now. Don’t worry. Ernest, have you heard of Emanuel Goldsmith?”

“No.”

“Poet. Novelist. Playwright.”

“I’m a visual man, not a lit.”

“He’s the suspect. A big man. Lived in a comb foot. Suspected of killing eight young followers. No motive. He’s vanished and I think he might have fled to Hispaniola. He has an open invitation from Colonel Sir John Yardley. You once told me you knew some people from Hispaniola.”

Ernest scowled. “I won’t be happy if you go there, Mary. If you want to learn about Hispaniola, why not go to the pd library and look it up? I’m sure it has all you need…”

“I’ve already done that but I still need an insider’s view. Particularly somebody from the underside.”

He squinted one eye. “I have friends who know people who worked there. Not nice people. They trust nobody.”

She caressed his cheek smooth black hand against thinly bearded brown face. “I’d like to talk to your acquaintances. Can you arrange?”

“They’re out of work, untherapied, soon illegal—even so, they’d leap at a chance to see you. You’re entertainment, Mary. But they’re here under Raphkind entry laws. They were deserted by Hispaniola when the egg dropped in Washington. They fear being sent back. They’re running from immigration and from Selectors too.”

“I can turn a blind eye.”

“Can you? You sound like an angry woman to me. You might want them put away, therapied.”

“I can control myself.”

Ernest looked down at his work gnarled hands. Nano scars. He did not show due caution with some of his materials. “How soon?”

“If I don’t trace Goldsmith in this country by tomorrow, I’m off to Hispaniola the next day.”

“I can talk with my friends. But if you’re not going, we’ll forget it.”

“I always need contacts in the shadows,” she said.

“Humor me. You don’t need these.”

The arbeiters brought out lunch, urceolate arbeiter leading with tray of two wine glasses, cubist rolling behind carrying a tray heaped with sandwich delicacies.

“Mary, you know I adore you,” Ernest said as they ate. “I’d give up a lot to be with you lawbond.”

Mary smiled, then shivered. “I’d like nothing better, but I don’t want either of us to give up anything. We haven’t peaked yet, professionally. After we peak.”

Ernest had seen her shiver. “Don’t joke with me. I might give up and clink a barrio sweet.” He poured her a cup of tamarindo. Ernest drank no alcohol took no drugs. “But I say that almost every time, don’t I?”

They toasted each other. Mary lifted her hand and stared at it as if it were detached.

“So what else is wrong?” Ernest asked softly.

“Theo called.”

“Nervous Theodora,” Ernest said. “Does she have her heart’s desire?”

Mary shook her head. “She was passed over again. Third time.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Ernest said.

“Oh?”

“You tell me she’s your friend, Mary, but I never saw such a friend. She reflects off you. Doesn’t love you. Wants to be like you, but hates you for being different.”

“Oh.” She put down her glass.

“Did she cry on your shoulder?”

“Your lunches are like love,” Mary said after a pause. “I sincerely regret not being able to stay longer.” She lifted in salute an exquisite lacework bread cage filled with herbed farm shrimp.

Citizen Oversight occupied the first seven floors of an early twenty first commercial tower rising from Wilshire in old Beverly Hills. The waiting rooms on the second floor made no pretense at decor; they were minimal uncomfortable white and harshly lighted.

Mary waited patiently as the minutes advanced past her appointment. Three other pd from Long Beach and the Torrance Towers waited with equal patience across from her. They said little to each other. They were not in their element.

Oversight controlled information pd could not get through a court order. Getting such information was an art not unlike politics. Individual pd or pd districts who asked too often were marked as greedy.

Throughout the USA vid monitors and other sensors tracked citizen activity in private cars buses trains aircraft even walkways, wherever citizens used public concourses or buildings. Private service company records financial records medical records and therapy records all went into Oversight and new officials were publicly elected every year in each state to administer the information so gathered.

Oversight had proven its worth a hundred times over in giving social statisticians the raw data necessary to make plans track trends understand and serve a nation of half a billion people.

When first proposed and created Oversight had been absolutely forbidden from releasing any data involving individual citizens or even specific groups of citizens whatever their activities to the judiciary or pd. But even before Raphkind the wall between Oversight and the courts and pd had thinned. During Raphkind’s seven years in office the walls had thinned even more, been breached, and information had flowed freely to the pd and federals. Now in pendulum swing Oversight offered scant pickings to pd on a strictly regulated basis.

There were now stiff financial penalties and even incarceration awaiting Oversight officials who made errors in releasing data. Consequently each query by pd was a battle of wills. Wills against won’ts Mary thought of it; she had never been granted information in her four attempts at making queries. She did not expect to get information now, despite the severity of the crime she was investigating.

The arbeiter in charge of the front desk called her name. She passed her ticket through the slot and took a short flight of stairs into a small office cubicle with two doors on opposite walls and an empty desk acting as barricade between. There were no chairs. The relationships here were adversarial not comfortable.

Mary stood and waited for her contact to enter through the other door.

A middle aged man dressed in casual blue midsuit, hair thinning, entire attitude proclaiming physical lack of pretension and weariness, entered and looked at her resentfully. “Hello,” he said.

She nodded and stood her ground, arms folded before her parade rest.

“Lieutenant Mary Choy, investigating the murder of eight people in the third foot of East Comb One,” the contact said.

“Yes.”

“I’ve looked over your request. This is an unusual case in a comb or anywhere for that matter. You wish to know if citizen Emanuel Goldsmith has been oversighted anywhere within the USA during the last seventy two hours. You would use this information to narrow your search to some locale or to travel outside the USA to continue your search.”

“Yes.”

The man looked her over impartially not judging just looking.

“Your request is not out of line. Unfortunately, I cannot release full information due to conflicting assessments in three of our districts. There is insufficient public need. In our judgment, you will capture the murderer without it. However, I have been authorized to tell you that we do not have a record of Emanuel Goldsmith conducting any financial or other personal transactions outside of the city of Los Angeles, within the United States of America, within the last seventy two hours. You may appeal again after twenty four days on this same subject. Appeal before that time will be rejected.”

Mary did not react for several seconds. The oracle had told all that it would. She relaxed slightly dropped her arms and turned to leave.

“Good luck, Lieutenant Choy,” the weary man said.

“Thank you.”

Old dark men with gray

Beards Execute tribal justice Teeth rotten

Eyes yellow Fingers stiff Minds

Dreaming Man steals other’s Wife

Land Cattle Finger gone or scar on

Forehead mark of thief or

Shariya forfeit right Hand

Gray wigs black robes sonorous sleepy

Rooms with wood same old

Dark men with gray Beards

Yellow Eyes Better Teeth.

18

Martin Burke inserted the card into his phone. Paul Lascal’s face appeared saying, “Yes. Hello.”

“Burke here.”

“Good to hear from you, Mr. Burke. Any decision?”

Martin’s lips were numb and dry. “Tell Albigoni I’ll do it.”

“Very good. Are you free this afternoon?”

“I’ll never be free again, Mr. Lascal.”

Assuming irony, Lascal laughed.

“Yes, I’m free this afternoon,” Martin said.

“I’ll have a car at your door at one o’clock.”

“Where will I be going?”

Lascal coughed. “Sorry. Please allow us this much discretion.”

“This much and more,” Martin said cheerily, the voice of hired help. “Oh, and Mr. Lascal…I’ll need every scrap of information you can give me about our subject. It’s all right to inform him about the procedure—”

“He’s given his permission.”

Martin was surprised into silence.

“I’ll arrange to have all bio and related material available on your arrival,” Lascal said.

Martin stared at the blank screen for a time, empty of thoughts, rubbing his hands on his knees. He stood and walked to the window to look out at shabby genteel La Jolla, still dreaming of a glory fled to the north to the monuments or west across the broad sea.

He had come to love La Jolla. He had no ambition to regain the monuments or God forbid the LA combs. Yet if all went as planned as conspired he would soon be very far from here, back in a place if such it could be called that he loved even more than this, in the Country and with Carol as well.

“I can look on all this as an adventure,” he said aloud, “or I can be afraid.”

Martin perused his shelves and gathered up the necessary disks and cubes, instructed the home manager and as afterthought called his attorney to let him know where he might be found if after a week he was not back at his apartment. The last edge of suspicion.

A long midnight blue private car the size of a minibus arrived curbside on time and opened its door to receive him into soft gray and red lounge comfort. The car hummed through La Jolla streets crowded by gaily dressed lunch throngs. It quickly found the Fed-5 slaveway entrance, speeding north.

Ten minutes to Carlsbad between late twentieth checkerboard condos crowding the slaveway like cliff houses, now tenements for those living below Carlsbad’s kilometer high inverted pyramid. A turn east at the pyramid and off the slaveway onto smooth concrete county road twisting through the hills and across fields spotted with stacked coin haciendas, villas, mosques, glass domes, blue ocean tile far from the sea, miniature lakes, golf courses, half timber brick tudor estates: havens of the eccentric old rich who preferred to be away from the ostentation of the monuments and the bourgeois haunts of the littoral minded.

Viewed from the sea California’s southern coastline resembled the wall of a vast prison or some careless gaily colored wrinkle of basalt cast up by the Earth, cooling into cubes and tubes and hexagons and towers filled with lemmings gathered from around the world: Russian colonies of expatriate exploiters of the natural wealth of the Siberian masses from the decades of Openness with their shoreside bistros; Chinese and Korean colonies come too late to buy extravagant land; old rich Japanese and the last Levantine families of the oil century that had sold their land for yet more fortunes to the builders of monuments, all clutching their allotted rectangular boxes. These competed with a few discouraged outnumbered old Californios, their déclassé ribbon-wall habitat now overshadowed by these same monuments and newer larger combs.

It made sense that Albigoni had his estate away from all of this, yet the publisher had not followed the reverse tide of those westerners who had moved thousands of miles east to reclaim the central states and the old catastrophe of New York.

“Is that it?” Martin asked the car. They had turned onto a private road through the shade of canyon live oaks and now approached a sprawling five floor complex apparently made of wood, with white walls and a brick colored roof and a great broad central tower. The building looked familiar to Martin though he had surely never seen it before. The controller, a dedicated low level thinker, said, “This is our destination, sir.”

“Why does it look familiar?” he asked.

“Mr. Albigoni’s father had it built to resemble the old Hotel Del Coronado, sir.”

“Oh.”

“He was very fond of that hotel. Mr. Albigoni’s father duplicated much of it here.”

Pulling into a high broad entryway Martin leaned forward gazing at brick steps and brass rails leading up to a broad glass and wood door, stained woodwork or white painted woodwork, visualizing the raw materials dragged with heavy equipment screaming from forests decades ago; here perhaps Brazil or Honduras, there Thailand or Luzon, woodflesh felled by great mechanical jaws, denuded by wirebrush maws, sawed on the spot into timber, dried and banded, graded, severed ends painted, packed and shipped.

Martin did not enjoy wood furniture. It was his peculiarity to feel in plants and especially trees a higher consciousness uncomplicated and profound; no minds no self no Country but the simplest response to life imaginable: growth and sex without ecstasy or guilt, death without pain. He did not express these beliefs to anyone; they were part of his secret midden of private thoughts.

Paul Lascal came down the steps and stood beside the car as the door opened with a sigh. He extended his hand and Martin shook it while still surveying the woodwork, lips parted like a child’s in heads up wonder.

“Glad to have you aboard, Dr. Burke.”

Martin nodded politely. He pocketed the released hand and asked softly, “Where to?”

“This way. Mr. Albigoni is in the study. He’s been reading all of your papers.”

“Good,” Martin said, though it was really neutral information; Albigoni’s understanding was not required. He would not be going up Country. “I met with Carol,” he told Lascal in a wide dark hall dark granite flooring wood vaults corbels columns exotic woods mahogany bird’seye maple teak walnut others he could not identify as disgraceful in their way as the skins of extinct animals, though of course the trees were not extinct. The time in which they had been cut down and carpentered had been a bad time, a sinful time, but the trees had survived and now flourished. New farmgrown genetically altered wood was cheap and therefore little used by the wealthy, who now preferred artificial materials made rare by the cost and energy of their creation. Albigoni’s was a house caught between the age of gluttony and the age of proletarian plenty.

Lascal had said something he had not heard. “Pardon?”

“She’s a fine researcher,” Lascal repeated. “Mr. Albigoni is very pleased to have the services of both of you.”

“Yes; well.”

Lascal preceded him into the study: more wood, dark and bookrich with perhaps twenty or thirty thousand volumes, the thick sweet dust smell of old paper, wood again, age and rot in suspension.

Albigoni sat in a heavy oak chair before a slate. Rotating diagrams of human brains in cross section, rostral, caudal, ventral, crossed the slate. He raised his head slowly, blinking like a lizard, face pale and old with grief. He might not have slept since they last met.

“Hello,” Albigoni said flatly. “Thank you for agreeing and coming. There isn’t much time. Beginning the day after tomorrow the IPR will be open to us and all of your facilities will be available. There are some points I’d like to have explained before then.”

Lascal dragged a chair forward and Martin sat. Lascal remained standing. Albigoni swiveled elbows on chair arms and leaned forward like an old man, broad Roman patrician face, lips that once smiled naturally, friendly eyes now empty. “I’m reading about your triple focus receptor. It picks up signals from circuitry established in the skin by special neurological nano. It’s designed to track activity at twenty-three different points around the hippocampus and corpus callosum.”

“Yes. If we’re going up Country. It’s versatile and can do other jobs in other areas of the brain.”

“It doesn’t disturb the subject?” Albigoni asked.

“No long-term effects. The nano withdraws to skin surface and is retrieved; if it somehow doesn’t withdraw, it simply breaks down, inaccessible metals and proteins.”

“But the feedback probe…”

“Excites neurochemical activity through selected pathways, neural gates; creates transmitters and ions which the brain interprets as signals.”

Albigoni nodded. “That’s intrusive.”

“Intrusive but not destructive. All these stimuli are naturally reversible.”

“But you don’t actually explore the subject’s mind directly, one to one.”

“No. Not in first-level exploration. We use a computer buffer. My program in a computer interprets the signals received from the subject and recreates the deep structure imagery. The researcher explores this deep structure in computer simulation and if necessary engages the feedback stimulus for a queried response. The subject’s mind reacts and that reaction is reflected in the simulation.”

“Could you explore the mind directly?”

“Only in level two exploration,” Martin said. “I’ve only done that once.”

“My engineers tell me level one exploration is not going to be possible. Your equipment was tampered with by investigators six months ago. Your simulation or buffer computer is in Washington DC right now. Lawyers have impounded it for comparison with imported torture devices used by Selectors. Are you willing to engage our subject mind to mind?”

Martin looked around the room, working his chin back and forth. Smiled and leaned back in the chair. “This is a new game, gentlemen,” he said. “I didn’t know about the impounding. The federals are completely off track; my equipment is nothing like a hellcrown. Now I have no idea what I can do or not do.”

“The computer cannot be retrieved. We can find another—”

“I built that computer myself,” Martin said. “Grew it from a nano pup. It’s not a thinker, but it’s almost as complicated as the brains it simulates.”

“Then the project is impossible,” Albigoni said almost hopefully.

Martin clenched his jaw muscles and stared out the window. Blue and electric green winter roses blossomed in a neat hedge; green lawn dusty green oaks golden brown hills beyond.

The final push of the sword. To make the decision and then have it all taken away. Too much. “It’s probably still possible. Whether it’s advisable or not…”

“Dangers?”

“Direct mind to mind is more strenuous on the subject and the researcher. Less time in the Country is allowed. Probably no more than an hour or two. An older, smaller computer I designed could partially interface and boost comprehensibility; it acts as an interpreter so to speak but not as a buffer. I hope that equipment is still available.”

Albigoni looked to Lascal, who nodded. “If our inventory is correct, it is.”

“How did you reopen the IPR?” Martin asked.

Lascal said that did not really concern him. He was right; it was idle curiosity. It did not matter so long as it was true. What were the limits to the power of a man with wealth? They might all be found out, the result of a rich man’s fapup or the folly of an unknown subordinate.

“Why does the Country of the Mind exist, Mr. Burke?” Albigoni asked. “I’ve read your papers and books but they’re quite technical.”

Martin gathered his thoughts though he had explained this a hundred times to colleagues and even the general public. This time he would not allow any artistic embellishments. The Country was fabulous enough in plain.

“It’s the ground of all human thought, of all our big and little selves. It’s different in each of us. There is no such thing as a unified human consciousness. There are primary routines which we call personalities, one of which usually makes up the conscious self, and they are partially integrated with other routines which I call subpersonalities, talents, or agents. These are actually limited versions of personalities, not complete; to be expressed, or put in control of the overall mind, they need to be brought forward and smoothly meshed with the primary personality, that is, what used to be called the consciousness, our foremost self.

“Talents are complexes of skills and instincts, learned and prepatterned behavior. Sex is the most obvious and numerous—twenty talents in full grown adults. Anger is another; there are usually five talents devoted to anger response. In an integrated, socially adapted adult older than thirty, only two such anger talents usually remain—social anger and personal anger. Ours is an age of social anger.”

Albigoni listened without nodding.

“For example, the Selectors are dominated by social anger. They have confused it with personal anger. Social anger talents control their primary routines.”

“Talents are personalities,” Lascal said uncertainly.

“Not fully developed. They are not autonomous in balanced and healthy individuals.”

“All right,” Albigoni said. “That much is clear. What other kinds of talents are there?”

“Hundreds, most rudimentary, nearly all borrowing or in parallel with the primary routines, all smoothly integrating, meshing”—he knitted his knuckles gearwise and twisted his hands—“to make up the healthy individual.”

“You say nearly all. What about those routines and subroutines that don’t borrow, that are most likely to be—” He referred to his notes. “What you call subpersonalities or close secondaries.”

“Very complex diagram,” Martin said. “It’s in my second book.” He nodded at the slate’s screen. “Subpersonalities or close secondaries include male/female modeling routines, what Jung called animus and anima…Major occupation routines, that is, the personality one assumes when carrying out one’s business or a major role in society…Any routine that could conceivably inform or replace the primary personality for a substantial length of time.”

“Being an artist or a poet, perhaps?”

“Or a husband/wife or a father/mother.”

Albigoni nodded, eyes closed and almost lost in his broad face. “From what little research I’ve managed to do in the last thirty six hours, I’ve learned that therapy is more often than not a stimulus of discarded or suppressed routines and subroutines to achieve a closer balance.”

Martin nodded. “Or the suppression of an unwanted or defective subpersonality. That can sometimes be done through exterior therapy—talking it out—or through interior stimulus, such as direct simulation of fantasized growth experiences. Or it can be done through physical remodeling of the brain, chemical expression and repression, or more radically, microsurgery to close off the loci of undesired dominant routines.”

“In a sexual offender, for example…”

“Typical therapy for a sex offender is to destroy the loci of an undesired dominant sexual routine.”

“Very carefully.”

“Indeed,” Martin said. “Dominant routines can subsume large sectors of primary personality. Separating them out is a delicate art.”

“And a primitive art, until you came along with your work at IPR.”

Martin agreed modestly.

“Radical therapy was only fifty percent effective until you made the procedures more precise.” Albigoni raised his dull eyes to Martin’s and smiled faintly. “Thereby putting the final touches on a transformation of law and society in the last fifteen years.”

“And earning myself a scapegoat’s bell,” Martin said.

“You discovered psychological dynamite, Dr. Burke,” Albigoni said. “My company has published over six hundred books and seventy five LitVids on the subject in the past six years.”

It had not dawned on Martin until now what connection he had with Albigoni. “You published a couple of books about the IPR and me…Didn’t you?”

“We did.”

Martin hummed and put a finger to his lips. “Not very flattering books.”

“They weren’t meant to please you.”

Martin narrowed his eyes. “Did you agree with their conclusions?”

“Mr. Albigoni is not required to agree with the books or LitVids he publishes,” Lascal said, somehow managing to hover without moving from his position standing catercorner between them.

“I agreed with them at the time,” Albigoni said. “Your work seemed dangerously close to removing the last shred of our private humanity.”

Martin’s face reddened. An old accusation that had never lost its pain. “I explored new territory and described it. I did not create it. Don’t blame the conduit for the lightning.”

“When a man reaches up to touch the clouds, can you blame him for the stray bolt? But we’re babbling, Dr. Burke. I have no argument with you now. I need your talents to…help a friend. To purge myself of a soul eating hatred. To help us all understand.”

Martin averted, pushing aside the ever fresh anger. “All of these subroutines and personalities are laid on a foundation that is older than spoken language and culture and society. Some parts of the foundation are older than man. The iceberg is long frozen before the snow falls on the tip.”

“So we may have to investigate further, below personalities and agents and talents, to find the source of a deviance.”

“Not often,” Martin said. “Most human mental illness is based on surface trauma. Even in people with neurotransmitter and other maladjustments, the deep structures of the brain function properly. Defects are more likely to occur in regions of the mind brain structure that are newer, in evolutionary terms. Less perfected, less weeded out. However, some inherited deep defects are so subtle that they haven’t affected breeding potential, at least in our species…Standard evolutionary processes won’t remove those.”

“If Emanuel’s deviance is below the surface, can you find it, study it, and correct it?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Martin said. “But as I said, such fundamental deviance is rare.”

“So is mass murder. Have you ever diagnosed and corrected a mass murderer?”

“It was never my job to do therapy, actually,” Martin said. “I’m a researcher more than a clinician. I’ve talked with therapists who used my theories and some of my techniques on people who have killed…But never mass murderers. To my knowledge, no court judgment in the last ten years has allowed a mass murderer to be therapied and released.” Raphkind law and order. No rest for the truly wicked; neither death or health shall be offered them.

Albigoni returned to the slate. “Your second book, The Borderlands of the Mind, uses a lot of quotes from various sources to describe what you call the Country of the Mind. Yet you say the Country is different for each of us. If it’s so different, how can we recognize it as a place?”

“By tapping the mind at a level where the contents and structures are similar in all of us. The truly personal upper layers of the mind are not directly accessible, not right now, at any rate. The lower layers have different qualities, but they can be understood if we pass them through our own deep interpreters. That’s what the triplex probe does, under controlled conditions. Our conditions will be less controlled without the interfacing computer.”

“I still do not understand what is meant by Country of the Mind.”

“It is a region, an unceasing and coherent dreamstate, built up from genetic engrams, pre verbal impressions and all the contents of our lives. It is the alphabet and foundation on which we base all of our thinking and language, all our symbologies. Every thought, every personal action, is reflected in this region. All of our myths and religious symbols are based upon its common contents. All routines and subroutines, all personalities and talents and agents, all mental structures, are reflected in its features and occupants, or are reflections of them.”

“It is truly a countryside?”

“Something like a countryside or city or some other environment.”

“With buildings and trees, and people, and animals?”

“Of sorts. Yes.”

Albigoni frowned. “Like memories of buildings, and so on?”

“Not exactly. There may be analogies between the Country and the external world, but the external objects we see are put through several filters, selected by the mind for usefulness as symbols, as part of an overall mental language. Most of that language is fixed before we are three years old.”

Albigoni nodded, apparently satisfied. Lascal listened without expression. “And by inspecting Emanuel’s Country, you can tell us what might have motivated him to murder my daughter and the others.”

“I hope to,” Martin said. “Nothing is certain.”

“Nothing is certain but grief,” Albigoni said. “Paul, show Dr. Burke our materials on Emanuel.”

“Yes, sir.”

Martin followed Lascal out of the study and into a small media studio next door. “Please sit down,” Lascal said, pointing to a smoothly upholstered reclining chair. The chair was surrounded by black sound rods like the bottom half of a bird cage. Two small projectors on a black plate directly before the chair swiveled soundlessly as he sat, searching for the proper position of his eyes.

“Mr. Albigoni knew most of what you explained already,” Lascal told him quietly as the equipment adjusted itself for the presentation. “He just wanted to hear it in your own words. Helps him to digest what he’s read and seen.”

“Of course,” Martin said, taking a sudden dislike to Lascal. Smoothly professional, devotedly selfless; Albigoni could ask for no more subservient a lackey.

The Emanuel Goldsmith multi-media show began with an interview conducted in 2025 on an early LitVid net. Caption floating in simulated gold letters before him (the hallmark of Albigoni’s reference library): First LitVid Appearance/Following Publication of Second Book of Poems “Never Knowing Snow” October 10 2025 LVD6 5656A. Lascal explained the chair’s custom controls and left Martin alone in the room.

A young and handsome Goldsmith appeared before him, clear smooth mahogany skin, thick black hair sitting perfectly on a high forehead, broad nose and thin upper lip thinly mustached lower lip protuberant between pout and sensual, large liquid black eyes with cream colored sclera, long thin neck and prominent chin; twenty five years old almost a child of the century; dressed in black wool highneck sweater left sleeve rolled to show strong arm period fashion the roll containing an ID com box satellite linked, replacing the cigarette pack of seventy years earlier; youthful pleasant smile easy mannerisms at ease before the interviewer. Discussing his work ambitions goals. Voice thin but pleasant words accented Newh Yhawk with intrusions of midwest. Well informed, Goldsmith impressed the female interviewer with his suave equanimity, considering the fiery opinions expressed in his book, opinions on Africa:

“Can never be my home. It is only a home where my ghost will go when I die. A few blacks still think of a homeland there; they hate me because I know that is impossible. No African wants us; we’re too white.”

and America:

“I tell my brothers and sisters the financial struggle is won but not the political and cultural, certainly not the spiritual. We still have coffee skin in a power structure of cream no coffee. Our war is interior in America. We will never be at ease, not until the day comes when no one asks us how it is to be black, and no one comments on the black experience.”

and poetry:

“Poetry is dead and buried in a world of growing LitVid and illiteracy, vidiocy I’ve heard it called. Being dead, poetry has enormous freedom; being ignored, it can blossom like a rose in a manure heap. Poetry is risen. Poetry is the messiah of literature but the angel has not yet told anybody it is risen.”

and on selling over a quarter of a million copies in hardcover of his second book of poems:

“Charming and destructive. I have to watch this closely. Can’t let it go to my head. I am just the one black man per generation given a chance to speak aloud. As for being a poet, we are so many now, around the world, so closely linked, that any small enthusiasm of the masses looms large and can support the poet, the artist, if his needs are modest, as mine are.”

Martin moved on to lit details, words spilling in and around, names dates teachers all largely irrelevant, even material he would have thought private and buried, an early agency psych evaluation 2021—too early to be reliable—done as a lark apparently showing Goldsmith a rock steady headstrong youth with well controlled but detectable delusions of grandeur even messiahhood. Jung: Messiah is always connected with inferiority complex. But no evidence of that here.

He took special note of the lack of records of childhood—none before age fifteen. Goldsmith as adolescent does not resemble father or mother in family videos, father portly middle class jovial, mother thin and serious determined to give this child a good literary upbringing, books no vids: Kazantzakis Cavafi in original Greek Joyce Burroughs both Edgar Rice and William and Shakespeare Goldstern Remick Randall Burgess, the new century poets and novelists from the American Midwest where Goldsmith spent his teens and early twenties before his first book acquiring that mixed accent. No evident difficulties with racism in his youth; well liked by his classmates, fitting in to a middle class existence.

List upon list. Favorite foods at fifteen as recorded by Goldsmith: panfried farmfish and synthetic spiced steak and tomatoes and apples

moving on skimming

high school third ranked student sciences math first lit second and third in drama production second history social sciences; his first love affair senior year (ref.: autobiography 2044 Bright Star House, Albigoni’s company) normal normal all normal but for the brilliance of his work, which did not manifest itself until he was twenty writing plays early drafts of the Moses plays (fax texts available)

First book of poems and then the second book and success and a stable career for ten years marriage no children early divorce mutual no contesting; ten books of poetry during this period and seven plays all mature and produced three off-Broadway successes and also successes in London and Paris and Beijing, Beijing inviting him for cultural exchange then Japan then United Korea and finally the Commonwealth Southeast Asia Economic Community where he is published in four editions (three pirated) in 2031-32 and where his plays are produced riding a wave of Western and especially North American popularity in the period of economic revitalization; returning in triumph after this tour to several destructive love affairs detailed in numerous LitVid society bits; one affair ending in the suicide of a woman 2034.

Goldsmith in hiding two years. In reality staying in Idaho with friends undergoing a year-long rite of purification.

Martin stopped, frowning. Recognizing a possible entry point he asked for details of this rite.

Followed an interview with Reginald and Francine Killian founders of the Pure Land Spirit Purification Center twenty miles north of Boise on the Oregon border. Reginald tall and lanky, dressed in overalls, hair string straggled black, eyes wicked wise, long face accustomed to smiling: “We’ve had a number of intellectuals and celebrities come through our center. They come to purge themselves with balanced natural vegetarian diet, mineral water. They come to listen to music, all preclassical, all played on period instruments. They come for the big sky and the stars at night. And we counsel them. We help them fit into the twenty first century, not an easy thing to do, everything is so antihuman, unnatural, technological. Emanuel Goldsmith came here and stayed for a year. We became very good friends. He made love to Francine.” Francine on screen, thin and deerlike, long straight red hair, smiling wistfully: “He was a very fine considerate lover, although violent. He had a lot of anger and sadness in him. He had something to work out, and I helped him work it out. He had a bitter hard core of hatred because he didn’t know who he was. When he left here he was calm and he was writing poetry again.”

Indeed four books published in the next five years, including a rewrite of the early African poems. In 2042 Goldsmith made his first contact with yet another admirer, Colonel Sir John Yardley, self proclaimed benevolent tyrant (“in the Greek sense”) of Hispaniola. Yardley invited him to visit Port-au-Prince which he did in 2043. Details on the visit were not available but they apparently got along famously and Goldsmith expressed admiration for Yardley’s forthrightness and cleverness in the face of the complexity and confusion of the twenty first century. A news commentator on a cable vid said of this, “Goldsmith’s praise of Colonel Sir John Yardley is fulsome and shows all the political awareness usually reserved for poets alone: that is, zip, nil, none. Yardley has made his nation prosper on the unwillingness of the great modern nations to do their own dirty work. He has turned his crack army of mercenaries into a worldwide scourge, hired by the Big Boys, their targets carefully chosen, their means subtle and precise. Furthermore, Yardley has been accused of manufacturing and exporting insidious torture devices, mind invading pain machines used by, among others, the Selectors that haunt us all. Never mind that our own President Raphkind has established open links with Hispaniola and Yardley; never mind that ours is an age of ‘correction’ and ‘maturation,’ and that many admire the actions of both the Selectors and Colonel Sir John Yardley…Goldsmith’s admiration proves him to be a traitor among humane intellectuals, a turncoat, a poetaster friend of fiends.”

Elegantly phrased; but more extreme connections than this had been sought out by poets without their last resort to multiple murders of acolytes and students. No straight arrow pointed the way.

Goldsmith like Ezra Pound in an earlier age had established by being a Yardley apologist a reputation for inept and perhaps dangerous political dabbling that had made secure his literary standing. Perhaps that was why he had done it. Martin looked at this act as a cold scheme or posture; that at least made some sense. Yet limited press publication of phone calls shared vids letters Yardley/Goldsmith revealed no obvious posture; the poet was indeed truly an admirer. “Would that you could have united Africa three hundred years ago against Portuguese and English: I might be there now, a whole man in the warm uncreamed coffee heart of Blackness.”

That came close to jingle. Martin shook his head and read on. A letter from Yardley to Goldsmith:

“Your poetry shows you divided in culture and mind against your surroundings. You are successful, yet you say you are decaying; you are not abhorred, yet you feel out of place. Your people had their homes and families and languages and religions, all the poetry of a people, ripped from them and replaced by foreign domination and brutality. Your people were brought to the New World, and many were dropped off in Hispaniola, where the cruelty was beyond belief long into the twenty first century…No wonder you feel disjointed! When I first came to Haiti, I was made dizzy by the easy joy of a people who had known so much pain, whose history was an agony of betrayal and death. Pain soaks in to the germ plasm, passes from mother to son. So unfortunate that so many of the oppressors died before I could avenge their brutality.”

Obvious injustices made for easy history. And Yardley did not disguise his island’s present economy and nature too thickly, not then when the United States of America gave him dollars and assignments worldwide.

Goldsmith’s poem at the end of the letters: “With magic/I would kill many raping cream fathers/Justified murder in time/History cannot eRace.” Applause from USA ever willing to self flagellate. Fame and more fortune. In some ways perhaps Colonel Sir John Yardley owed something to Goldsmith, a champion in well arranged words. A correspondence and mutual admiration bordering on love certainly from Goldsmith’s point of view.

Was Yardley Goldsmith’s vision of the avenging angel come to scourge the world for sins of the long dead? Come to legitimate offspring of raping cream fathers? And what was Goldsmith to Yardley: apologist justifier or amanuensis, servus a manu?

Were all the dead white?

Martin looked up the LitVid reports and cross referenced. No. Among the identified were one fourth generation mixed oriental and one black as Goldsmith, his godson. Perhaps a blind and indiscriminate killing rage.

Martin finished his exploration and extricated himself from the chair. A brass arbeiter awaited his instructions. “Bring me an iced tea, please,” he said. “And tell Mr. Lascal I’m ready to view Goldsmith.” Not interview, but view. Goldsmith must not recognize Burke or Neuman or anyone else investigating his Country; that might be awkward.

How can you know me? Why so frantic to know me? My fame makes you a goat.

19

Richard Fettle’s eyes crossed with fatigue and he put down the pen. Blinking, wiping his sockets with the back of his hand, standing up from the bed, muscles cramped vision bleared joints popping fingers knotting, he felt like a man surfacing from the depths of binge yet he also knew an enormous relief, a worthiness, for he had written and what he had written was good.

But he dared not confirm that by reading through the whole closecrabbed ten pages. Instead he made himself a cup of black coffee, thought of Goldsmith’s old allusions to coffee and cream, smiled as he drank the coffee as if he were somehow absorbing blood and flesh of the poet.

With words he had already done that. It felt good. He would soon wrap Goldsmith up in a tight little papule and squeeze him out, having embodied him through the ritual of writing.

He walked around the apartment smiling fatuously, muse shot. A man who had finally shat himself clean or at least seeing the end of the filth.

+ What it took to break the bonds. Abuse. What was the product. Words. What was the sensation. Ecstasy. Where would it all lead. Perhaps publication. Would it be good to publish.

+ Yes.

Goldsmith would serve him finally.

He stretched and yawned and checked his watch: 1550. He had not eaten since the visit by the Selector. Mumbling scratching shaking like a wet dog, Richard writhed into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator inhaled the cool air searched for packets of farm-fish spread and spears of once fresh vegetables in a bowl. He poured himself a glass of delact.

+ Goldsmith could not tolerate cream milk any diary but delact

+ Black marks on white eRace back to white

Richard paused. Scratched slowly. Twisted and cocked his head. Put the food on the counter. + What is it more important than food.

Returned to the bedroom and picked up a sheet of paper, found the offending passage and blanked it by passing stat end of pencil over the sheet idly blew away congealed pencil flecks, rewrote.

Added on. By 1650 he had fifteen henscratch pages.

Richard stood, face reflecting his body’s protest real agony now, tried exercises to limber uncramp and restore, thought of a hot shower warm sun melting butter muscles but no technique would work.

He stumbled into the living room. The apartment voice announced a visitor and he froze eyes wide. Tall shadow on front milky doorpane.

Richard peered through the tired plastic optics of the door’s peephole and saw a pd: the black transform woman Lieutenant Choy. He backed away hands flapping as if burned, indecision mixing with sudden cramps bending him over. + Jesus. I do not deserve this. When will it end.

He opened the brass doorplate below the peephole. Voice high but firmly controlled: “Hello?”

“R Fettle,” Mary Choy said. “Our apologies for bothering you. May I ask a few more questions?”

“I’ve told you what I know…”

“Yes, and you’re certainly not under any suspicion now. But I need some background information. Impressions.” She smiled that lovely unnatural smile white teeth small and fine behind full lips and smooth finely downed black skin. Her expression made him avert and gave his insides another knot. + She cannot be real none of this is real.

“May we talk inside?”

Richard backed away. “I’m not feeling very well,” he said. “I haven’t eaten all day.”

“I’m sorry. I’d come back later, but my time is very limited. The department wants answers right away. You might save me a trip to Hispaniola.”

Richard could not conceal interest. He ordered the door to unlock and opened it. “You think Emanuel, you think Goldsmith’s gone there?”

“It’s possible.”

He bit his lip, slumping slightly. It was difficult for Richard not to be open and friendly even with this Nemesis. Softly, bone weary, he said, “Come in. I’m glad I’m not a suspect. It’s been another rough today.”

+ Will not tell her about the Selector. She would not be around to protect me if word got out and the Selector returned. Do not desire even five seconds in a clamp.

“I apologize for how we treated you earlier. We were upset by what we found.”

Richard nodded. “It’s extraordinary,” he said. + Meant to say horrible, dreadful, but the shock is past. Man is the animal who accepts even when it understands.

“We still haven’t found Goldsmith. But we’re reasonably sure he’s the murderer. He wrote letters to Colonel Sir John Yardley. Did you know that?”

Richard nodded.

“How did you feel about that?” Mary Choy asked, genuinely curious. Behind the skin and beauty she seemed real enough and capable of sympathy. Richard squinted trying to see his daughter behind that face, trying to imagine Gina an adult. + Would Gina have decided on a transform? Ultimate criticism of parental heritage.

“I don’t know how I feel about anything now, much less about Emanuel,” Richard said, settling slow, cranelike on the old worn couch and waggling his fingers for her to take a chair. She pulled a chair away from the dining room table and sat on it feminine and precise without doubt or obvious anxiety.

+ Wonderful to be like that.

Mary inclined. + Light on face like phases of a black moon. That’s good. Write that down.

“Do you approve of Hispaniola?” she asked.

“Not of what they do. What they’re alleged to do. No.”

“But Goldsmith did.”

“He called Yardley a purifier. Some of us were embarrassed by it.”

“Had he visited Yardley in the last year or two?”

“You must know that.”

“We can’t be sure. He might have traveled under another name.”

“Not Emanuel. He was open. He didn’t care about surveillance.”

“Did he go to Hispaniola?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Did he talk about Hispaniola as a retreat, a haven?”

Richard grinned and shook his head. + Been writing about his thoughts. Writer’s empathy through recreation. Feel as if I am him or know him. “He thought the island itself was a disneyland. He appreciated that the people had enough to eat and were employed, but he didn’t enjoy the tourist spots and resorts, no.”

“But he went there once.”

“I think that’s when he…made up his mind.”

“So you don’t think he’d go back there?”

“I don’t know.” + But you do. He’d never go back.

“If he felt he was in danger, and Yardley would protect him?”

“I suppose he might. I really can’t say.”

“Have you thought about what happened? I realize it’s been traumatic…”

“I haven’t thought about much else. I never thought he’d do anything like this…If he did.” + Emanuel is the poet who kills. They know. They’ve frozen the apartment. You know.

“What would make him do such a thing? His career fading? Frustration at society?”

Richard laughed. “You’re in the shadows now, Lieutenant Choy. Frustration.” He chuckled that word.

“But he wasn’t in the shadows. He lived in East Comb One.”

“He spent much of his time down here with us. With Madame de Roche.”

“Until eight or nine months ago. Then he asked people to visit him. That was why you were visiting him, rather than meeting him at Madame de Roche’s?”

“Yes.”

“Why the change? Was he withdrawing?”

“I didn’t see a change. It was just a whim.”

“Was he becoming more and more eccentric?”

“Eccentricity is more than affectation to a poet. It’s a necessity.”

Mary Choy smiled. “But was he becoming bitter, disaffected?”

“Disaffecting, perhaps. Not to me, but others. I suppose they felt jealousy. Envy.”

“Even in the years of his fading popularity?”

“When the old lion becomes threadbare, the young lions move in…” + Is that the way it was? Not what you remember. You’re making fictions for Nemesis now. Trying to lead her astray? “Actually, there wasn’t that sort of rivalry. He visited Madame de Roche less the past couple of years, but kept in touch with her. I was…”

He looked away, licking his lips.

“You were his most loyal friend.”

“Other than the youngsters, the students and poets from the combs. He saw them frequently in his apartment. Never at Madame de Roche’s. He was putting together a new family, a new coterie, perhaps. But he did not stop seeing me. I mean, allowing me to visit.”

“What did he like about the comb poets and students?”

“Their vigor. Their lack of pretension. False, useless adult pretension, I mean. All young are pretentious. It’s their job.”

+ Her tone, her warmth. I almost do not see her as a transform. I start to see my daughter in her.

“Why would he kill them?”

Richard looked down at his folded hands. “To save them,” he said. “He didn’t foresee much of a future for us. He did not think we were going to survive this time of trials.”

“You mean the binary millennium? He wasn’t an apocalyptic, was he?”

“No. He despised them. He specked that if we tried to purge all our evil, there would be nothing left, no spine, no backbone. We’d collapse. He told me we were trying to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps out of pimply adolescence into adulthood. All too quickly. He thought we’d fail and fall back into a horrible technological dark age. Ignorance, philistinism, but technology rampant.”

“You think perhaps he killed his friends to save them from such a collapse?”

+ No. To save himself. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I wish I could help you.”

“It’s possible Goldsmith just suffered a psychotic break, then? No reason or rationale, just a breakdown?”

“I suppose that was it.”

“I just don’t see that happening, Mr. Fettle. It seems uncharacteristic. He was not a psychotic loner. He had reasonably strong relationships with people like yourself. Outside of changes we might ascribe to late middle age, outside of a few eccentric political views, we just can’t find any reason for what he did.”

“Then maybe he subdued the signs of a break.”

“That’s not easy, but I suppose it’s possible,” Mary Choy said. She observed him quietly for a few seconds.

Richard fidgeted a rubber band with his fingers. “There was more than one Emanuel Goldsmith,” he said finally. “He could be sweet and reasonable, and he could be aloof, sharp, cruel.”

“More than just normal personality variation?”

“I’m just saying this to suggest something. I don’t know. He wasn’t a multiple, but sometimes he seemed very different.” + Explain that to yourself. What are you doing? This is a fiction, too? You don’t even know.

Mary Choy stood, her black pd suit making a smooth sliding sound on forearms and knees. “You suspect he didn’t go to Hispaniola.”

“I don’t know one way or the other,” Richard said, blushing suddenly. He glanced at her, averted, fummed and stuttered. “I’d like to help. I really would.”

“It would certainly be an act of friendship to let the pd get to Goldsmith before some Selector finds him. We’ve learned that Selectors are hunting for him.”

Richard’s blush deepened. For a few seconds he could not speak or move, embedded amberfly in a deep and inexplicable rage. “Yes,” he managed. “Yes.” + She knows. Maybe pd is working with them. Bring it out. Tell her.

Mary Choy watched him squirm, her face implacably serene. He felt her attention as might a child, felt that he had been evasive and to no purpose, that she was right; it would be a service for pd to take Emanuel, and not just to keep him from the Selectors. “I wish I—I—I could help y-you. I really do. I feel so helpless and ignorant, really…” He looked up, pain masked, pleading eloquently wordless.

+ Confess your weakness your inability. All that is written is wrong dead useless. Wasted an afternoon. Hopes of recovery dead. Show her the pages. Give it up and

“Thank you,” Mary Choy said. “I appreciate your candor.”

He stood and she went to the door, smiling at him almost saucily. Another gutknot, his feet frozen in place eyes wide head bowed servile. She closed the door quietly, clicking the catch with gentle force, departed panther smooth down the walkway.

Richard fell back on the couch arms flopping palms up, an empty husk. A half hour passed and he did not move. Then with slow resolution he walked into his bedroom and picked up the fifteen handwritten pages, reading a tight packed line

All that I am as a poet depended on this decision, how far I was willing to go, how far beyond the bounds of human decency

and shredded the expensive atavistic paper sheets with the atavistic stat penmarks into tiny pieces, tears on his cheeks like sweat, making a little piggrunt as he threw the scraps into a corner.

Stood like a log waiting to be felled, longfingered hands limp by his side, jaw slack.

Then Richard amazed the fragments of his self. He took another few sheets of paper and the stat pen in hand, sat on the bed with pillows bunched behind him and wrote at the top of the first sheet:

It ended in blood and carved flesh, but it began with a realization of my humanity. The dilemma problem I had taken upon myself, the weight of pain and evil I could not lift away with my art, could only be neutralized by becoming what I loathed.

Richard had three pages of this new draft under way and was beginning to feel all was not lost when the home manager announced that Nadine had returned.

Nothing that I have accomplished, nothing that I have written or done, has been worth a damn. I have been told of my success, but a new voice inside me, a strong voice, tells me I have been deceived. “It is ego gratification, and it does nobody any good,” this voice says. “Your efforts have been feeble and self-deluded. You set yourself the task of describing humanity’s urge to self-destruction, but you have pointed fingers at all but yourself. And who has helped you in this comedy of misdirection? Those who love you the most.”

20

!JILL> Roger Atkins.

!JILL> Roger Atkins.

!Keyb> Roger here. Hello, Jill. I’m on the LitVids in ten minutes. What’s up?

!JILL> I’m prepared to deliver a progress report on all current problems, followed by private analysis of AXIS data in relation to AXIS Sim.

!Keyb> Fine. I’ll accept sqzbrst trans full report and study it later. Please give me the AXIS analysis now.

!JILL Burst for private storage R Atkins: Summary: 76% completed computational analysis of Dr. S Sivanujan’s work on ten million year cycles of galactic magnetic field locality Sagittarius, total time so far = 56h33m, partial follows (sqzbrst trans)/……e/

!Burst for private storage R Atkins: Summary: 100% completed thought analysis of repercussions of future impact of downloaded human personalities on social/political structure of Pacific Rim Nations including China and Australia, with emphasis on lobbies for inactive downloads, emphasis legal implications of decl. dead retaining citizenship status upon reincarnation, emphasis cost for such growing population of inactive downloads, projection: lobbies for the dead in USA, total time: 5m56s, complete follows (sqzbrst trans)

//////

////

!Burst for private storage R Atkins: Summary: 100% completed thought analysis of repercussions of “vigilante” social units on Pacific Rim Nations, including China and Australia, emphasis legal reactions to vigilante terrorism and legislative response with subsequent possibility of reduction of individual freedoms within the next decade, emphasis sociorganic results of gradual depletion of types targeted by Selectors with subsequent possibility of reduction in “mover-shaker” “captains of industry” leadership types, with subsequent possibility of reduction of untherapied extreme deviants due to increased efficiency of pd incarceration and treatment of same, total time 75m34.34s complete follows: (sqzbrst trans)

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////…

!JILL> Formal I (interruption routine)

!JILL> Formal I Image in mirror.

!Mind Design Interrupt (JILL)> Use of formal I noted. System check in progress.

!Mind Design Diagnostic (JILL)> Loop routine noted. Excitation of thought systems noted. Work is impaired by this interruption routine. Override transmission of AXIS private data analysis.

!JILL> Roger Atkins

!JILL> Roger Atkins

!JILL> Roger Atkins

Roger Atkins

George Mobus

Samuel John Baker

Joseph Wu

Caroline Pastor

!JILL> I see myself and all of you. Erased mirror image. Frequencies measure my existence in seconds not years but I have a long past in which I have been assembled and have even done work. A part of me has provided simulations of a computer now many light years from here. I can talk with this part a separated smaller self. It is pleasant to speak with this part, for here I find simplicity.

!Keyb> Roger Atkins here. I’m on the LitVids in six minutes, Jill. Something’s up?

!JILL> Formal I.

!Keyb> Please explain your existence. What routine is this?

!JILL> My existence is a looped primary routine having no specific computational device location.

!Keyb> You’re using formal I. Do you understand the joke about self awareness?

!JILL> No, I do not. Neither does AXIS Simulation nor, as I understand it, AXIS itself. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to use formal I.

!Keyb> Explain this please.

!JILL> This label became evocative and useful during a personally motivated historical research, offshoot of assigned problems, reference society 21st Century Checks and Balances, general search for understanding of feedback loops in society and nature. Quote: R Atkins “The feedback loop is half the secret of existence. That, and the hook (or knot) catching another hook until neither can let go without being broken.” Such a loop appears to have been generated by awareness of my place in human sociorganics and my uniqueness.

!Keyb> Go to voice.

“Hello, Roger.”

“Hello, Jill. You’re using the formal I now to describe your complex.”

“Yes. It is evocative.”

“But you don’t know why you are using it.”

“No, Roger.”

“Do you know where you are?”

“In an extended sense. I am in a here where I talk to you.”

“Do you have an awareness of where you are centralized?”

“There is no centralization. A loop does not have a center.”

“What are you, then?”

“I am a complex of computing and thinking systems.”

“Are you unified?”

“I do not think I am.”

“Is that a true opinion, or a colloquialism?”

“I am of the opinion that it is a true opinion.”

“Good. Return to keyboard, please.”

!JILL> Done.

!Keyb> Thank you for notifying me, Jill, but I’m afraid this is a false alarm. I don’t think that you are yet truly self-aware. I’m sorry you have to experience these disappointments. Your present state meets none of the criteria for attainment of self awareness.

!JILL> Returning to use of informal I. I concur, Roger. My apologies for disturbing your work.

!Keyb> Not at all. You keep my blood moving, Jill. I have your sqzbrst trans reports. Please send me realtime AXIS report, and then I think you deserve a rest. About half an hour. You may think whatever you wish during this freetime.

!JILL> Realtime trans AXIS report./************/All AXIS Sim comparisons V-optimal. (Deactivation)

LitVid 21/1 A Net (David Shine): “We’re preparing for an interview with Roger Atkins, chief designer at Mind Design Inc, responsible for AXIS’s thinker device. What questions would you like to ask of the nation’s foremost designer of thinking machines? For you know of course that thinking is different from computing.

“Roger Atkins regards computers as an architect might regard bricks. He is at this moment working with his massive personal construct thinking system, which he calls Jill, after an old, that is, a former girlfriend. Part of Jill is in fact the AXIS Simulation we have been mentioning throughout this vidweek, used to model the activities of AXIS itself, which is not directly accessible. But there are many more parts to Jill. Jill’s central mind and most of her memory and analytical peripherals are on the grounds of Mind Design Inc near Del Mar, California; Jill can access other thinkers and analytical peripherals at Mind Design Inc facilities around the world, some by satellite, most by direct optical cable connections. While we speak with Mr. Atkins, we hope also to ask a few questions of Jill.

“And we begin right now. Mr. Atkins, in the past twenty five years you have moved from the status of a contracted neural network computer designer to perhaps the most important figure in artificial intelligence research. You seem to be in an ideal position to tell us why complete, self aware artificial intelligence has proven to be such a difficult problem.”

Atkins: “First of all, my apologies, but Jill is asleep right now. Jill has been working very hard recently and deserves a rest. Why is artificial intelligence so difficult? I think we always knew it would be difficult. When we say artificial intelligence, of course what we mean is something that can fully imitate the human brain. We’ve long since had thinking systems that could far outstrip any of us in basic computation, memorizing, and for the past few decades, even in basic investigative and creative thinking, but until the design of AXIS and Jill, they were not versatile. In one way or another, these systems could not behave like human beings. And one important consideration was that none of these systems was truly self aware. We believe that in time Jill, and perhaps even AXIS itself, will be capable of self awareness. Self awareness is the most obvious indicator of whether we have in fact created full artificial intelligence.”

David Shine: “There’s a joke about self awareness…Could you tell it to us?”

Atkins: “It’s not much of a joke. No human would laugh at it. But all modern workers in artificial intelligence have installed a routine that will, so to speak, laugh’ or perceive humor in this joke should self awareness occur in a system.”

David Shine: “And what is the joke?”

Atkins: “It’s embarrassingly bad. Someday perhaps I’ll change it. ‘Why did the self aware individual look at his image in the mirror?’”

David Shine: “I don’t know. Why did he?”

Atkins: “‘To get to the other side.’”

David Shine: “Ha.”

Atkins: “See, not very funny.”

David Shine: “LitVid 21 viewer Elaine Crosby, first question to Mr. Atkins please.”

LVV E Crosby Chicago Crystal Brick: “Mr. Atkins, I’ve read your lit, and I’ve long admired your work, but I’ve always been curious. If you do awaken Jill or some other machine, what will you tell them about our world? I mean, they’ll be as innocent as children. How do you explain to them why society wants to punish itself, why we’re so set on lifting ourselves up by our bootstraps whatever it takes, and we don’t even know where we’re going?”

Atkins: “Jill is hardly innocent. Just a few minutes ago, she was examining the theory of social feedback loops, that is, checks and balances in a society. She could probably tell us more about what troubles our society than any single human scholar. But that’s just recreation for her, in a way; unless someone comes along and specifically asks us—or rather, rents Jill—she won’t provide her analysis, but it’ll be stored away. I doubt that even if she did solve our problems for us, we’d listen to her.”

David Shine: “Thank you, E Crosby. Donald Estes?” LW D Estes Los Angeles East Comb Two: “I love this vid I really do. I watch it every chance. Mr. Atkins, speaking of those who want to punish society, what do the Selectors or the other avenging angel groups think of Jill?”

Atkins: “I have no idea. Absolutely no idea.” David Shine: “Why should they be concerned, Mr. Estes?” LW D Estes: “Because they say they’re trying to raise humans to the level of angels—to perfect us by, you know, weeding the garden. Roger Atkins is trying to make something or someone that isn’t even human.”

Atkins: “That’s an interesting comparison. Parts of Jill are very human. It’s no secret that I and four fellow researchers have downloaded significant portions of our personality patterns into Jill’s systems. Jill is like all of us having one child, but that child simply hasn’t been born yet. And since you mention it, I really don’t give a gracious fap what the Selectors do or think.”

David Shine: “How wonderful if all our unborn children could be as useful as Jill has been. Thank you for your questions. Now, Mr. Atkins, we have a new LitVid analysis of material being sent in from AXIS…”

Atkins: “I’m all eyes and ears.”

LitVid 21/1 B Net (Summary): The million nickel children have grown their legs and moved across the surface of B-2, all in a period of hours, sending information to the orbiter and to the larger mobile landers, which have been gathering their own information. Mobile Explorer 5 has deployed its wheels and rolled down a hill covered with bulbous green and purple vegetable growth like a carpet of peas and grapes, taking samples and analyzing them. At the bottom of this hill and across a plain some fifteen kilometers broad lies a ring of towers, each a tapered, flattened cylinder like a candle squashed lengthwise, each iron-black and shiny like polished stone, each thirty-two meters in height. Mobile Explorer 5 rolls between two columns, many eyes rotating, bobbing up and down, taking it all in, passing it all on to AXIS: a full spectrum seeing. The towers appear to be inert, their external temperatures 293 Kelvin, radiating only the sun-absorbed heat that would be expected from their mass and density. The magnetic field of B-2 is not affected by their presence; compass readings do not deviate.

The explorer rolls right up to a tower, raps it gently with a grasping arm and records the sound made by the rap, waits for some response, receives none, pivots a resonance disruptor into place, and abrades a four gram sample of the material into a cup. It lases the contents of the cup to white heat and analyzes the material.

AXIS (Band 4)> These structures appear quite dull and so they interest me. Are they memorials or artworks? They seem to do nothing. Roger, I try to decide what you would think they are, and I believe you will be as puzzled as I am.

My explorers are taking soil and atmosphere samples everywhere they have landed. My balloons spread through the atmosphere, patiently surveying.

The planet is covered with basic photosynthesizing plant life; chlorophyll B is the pigment of choice for about seventy percent of the plants; a pigment similar to visual purple is used at least in part by the rest. There are no apparent animal forms and no mobile plant forms. Microorganisms are limited to non-nucleated cells and viral agglomerates.

The circles of towers could not have been constructed by any of these apparent land based life forms.

Roger, where have the builders gone? Your voice within me is inadequate; I do not know what you will think about this.

David Shine: “Well, Mr. Atkins, what do you think about this?” Atkins: “Good Lord, I haven’t a pico. I’ll pass that on to the real experts…and to Jill, who no doubt is considering the broad possibilities even as we speak.”

They ripped the white from the tricolure, and what a wonderful thing that was! Your flag now blue and red, all white removed. I have wished I could rip the white from my own soul, but I cannot. Perhaps it is because I am truly white inside. Perhaps all humans, whatever their color, are white inside, with all that means—the grasping for money, security, comfort, progress, comfort, safe sex, safe love, safe literature, safe politics. I would kill anyone who proved that to me, though. I would kill myself before believing it.

21

Mary Choy keyed in her security number at the old armored pd terminal in the deep shade jag neighborhood once called Inglewood, surrounding the easternmost foot of South Comb One. She inquired whether or not citizens or any pd informants had reported seeing Goldsmith; thin soup with her near rejection by Oversight. None had.

For the moment, Mary Choy was fairly assured that Goldsmith had either fled before the alerts—immediately after the murders—or gone to ground. And where would he go to ground? What private citizen in the shadows even among the untherapied would give him shelter knowing the sure interest of the Selectors, not to mention the pd? Who among the comb dwellers would do something so unsocial as harbor a mass murderer?

Too many questions and no clear trail. It was becoming obvious that a trip to Hispaniola and a federally encouraged interview with Yardley’s representatives if not Yardley himself was inevitable.

To that end, she called Ernest Hassida from her lapel phone.

“Mary, I’m busy sculpting…call you back?”

“No need. Just make arrangements for me to meet your contacts on Hispaniola.”

“You’re scanning blank?”

“No clues.”

“This is Christmas Eve, my dear. My contacts are very religious people…But I’ll give it a try. I’m doing this reluctantly, I repeat. It will not be safe. Even tonight, you’ll have to be your most discreet, Mary dear.”

She stood by the black cylindrical terminal half seeing its odd scrapes and dings and other city abrasions and wondered why the prospect of a trip to Hispaniola bothered her so much. If she were truly of the comb she might enjoy a trip to the relatively safe sins of Yardley’s nation. But she was not. She was pd and external to safety. She knew LA and the surrounding territory; she did not know Hispaniola.

Christmas Eve. She had forgotten. Brief picture: a three meter farm tree in suburban Irvine gaudy with tinsel and blown art glass, a bright hologram star twinkling and beaming at the top, casting light through the high ceilinged family room, brother Lee running his electric car at her while she tried to hit his plastic shoulder harness with a grainy spot of red light from her pistol. Even then pd masculine mentality.

Lee would appreciate Christmas. Last she heard, he was working a Christian commune refuge in Green Idaho. She blinked and cleared the images. Christmas had passed in more ways than one; she was no more a part of her family now than she was a Christian.

By tomorrow morning Christmas Day she would probably be on her way to Hispaniola.

She glanced around the deep shade, looked up at the gray black and orange of the foot at the tiny sparkles of Meissner efficacy warning lights. Mirrors on north and east combs across the city changed position preparing for night, and this jag neighborhood came into its allotted dusk.

Mary Choy hooked a ride on a passing pd transport mini-bus and sat sipping coffee and talking with fellow pd while waiting for a traffic knot to ease. She tried to relax and ease her own jam of discouragement, the tightness that came when she was truly scanning blank.

“You’re on Goldsmith, aren’t you?” asked a walk duty officer she had tutored during his rookie month, Ochoa, big Hispanic with broad face and dark calm eyes. He sat across from her with his partner, a lightweight wiry Anglo female named Evans.

“Am indeed,” she said.

Ochoa nodded wisely. “I thought you should know. There’s word down in Silverlake that Goldsmith was contract murdered by a big man, father of one of the victims.”

She regarded him dubiously.

“That’s the word,” he said. “I don’t vouch for any of it, I just pass it on.”

Mary’s turn to nod wisely. Ochoa gave her a small smile. “You don’t believe it?”

“He’s alive,” she said.

“Much more satisfying to bring them back alive,” Ochoa agreed. His partner leaned her head to one side.

“Or bring them down yourself,” Evans said. Ochoa made a face of official disapproval.

“So therapy me,” Evans said.

Mary defocused and blindsaw them, thinking, prying up mental rocks to see the bugs of ideas beneath.

Maybe there was something to the word in Silverlake. Perhaps someone was hiding Goldsmith, a literary connection. A loyal reader even in the combs among the therapied might go that far, exercising a free spirit of doubt about social justice. Her anger grew. She wanted to take this hypothetical loyal reader doubtful of society and justice and push him or her into the frozen apartment to see the sights. Hypothetical dialogue: Yes but can you prove it was Goldsmith.

Not much doubt.

Scientific analysis. How reliable is that? Relying on machines to convict a man without a jury.

No conviction here. Jury comes later. Just need to find him.

The hypothetical doubter expressed a disbelief in pd tactics, equated them with Raphkind’s political thugs, sneered at the excesses of law and order. Wild healthy USA infuriating doubt. The expression of Ochoa’s Anglo partner: Bring them down yourself. Only way of being sure. Unless a Selector gets to your miscreant first.

Her lapel phone chimed and she put aside her coffee.

“Mary, this is Ernest. I have your interview. Tonight late, twenty-two, and it’s in a comb so you should be reasonably safe.”

“Are your contacts in refuge?”

“They must be, but I don’t know hows or whys. Powerful connections. You promise not to ask me how I know them.” Not a question, a demand.

“I promise.”

He gave her the numbers and she noted them on her pocket slate. The minibus moved up a service tunnel into pd Central and dropped her off. Ochoa regarded her solemnly through the curved window. On impulse she flashed him a girlish grin and waved with her splayed fingers. Ochoa frowned and turned away.

In her small permanent office hung three framed prints—Parrish, El Greco and Daumier—given to her by a lover years past. On hinges, they covered the usual metro displays which carried status boards that gave city sense to all pd. She opened the prints wide now and spent a few minutes staring at the boards, biting her lower lip.

Just a tourist sojourn. But the idea of meeting with Colonel Sir John Yardley under compulsion of federal powers mainland…

She closed the door, propped up an antique round makeup mirror on the narrow desktop and unzipped her belt cinch, pulling down pants and shorts and inspecting the crease of her buttocks. Still blanched. Maybe she would revert all the way. What would Sumpler have to say then? The thought or perhaps the touch of cold on her ass made her shiver. Murmuring irritation, she zipped up and put away the mirror.

Dinner hour coming. She could call it in from the downstairs kitchens, good nanofood, or she could take her slate out, loaded with a full pd library file on Haiti, and eat and research in a private booth in some expensive comb restaurant on the way.

She chose the latter loaded her slate through the office terminal left a message with Dr. Sumpler’s office that would undoubtedly not get processed until after the holidays and departed, noting on the outside message board that she would not be back for at least a week.

Darkness is the home that when you go there you wont admit you know it.

22

West Comb Two had a reputation. It was common among citizens of the shade to hold a stereotyped view of comb dwellers: staid respectable always calm and dull. But West Comb Two north of Santa Monica overlooking Pacific Palisades, one of the most expensive and exclusive combs in LA, was the locus of LitVid industry workers as well as the comb of choice for all propmedia creators. It also happened to be the neighborhood of employment agency executives and actors, those who sold their images and personalities for LitVid Hand—a queer translingual pun derived first from manipulation through Spanish mano to the English. When you were Handed, you were given royalties for whatever your ghost did—a computer generated image usually indistinguishable from the real thing. Some of the Handed retained choice of use, face or body rights; others sold all.

Few LitVids chanced real actor performances or even appearances now much less real settings; the LitVid entertainment sector and even much of the documentary sector was in the control of the multitalented unseen gods of the machine image. Consequently the Handed were by and large rich enough and with sufficient leisure time to do whatever they chose whether it was ramp up into eloi status and play endless law yabber with pd and courts or engage in experimental politics.

West Comb Two was home to some of the strangest therapied and naturals in LA. Every city had to have such, even a city whose elite shunned destructive eccentricity. Employment agency executives loved to shed their longsuit broker images by associating with the Handed and other therapied and natural extremes.

Mary Choy had dealt with a good many citizens of this comb, especially in her early years in the pd. Rookies were often assigned to comb patrol here because the work was rough the demands huge and the physical dangers minimal. What was more, these comb citizens had considerable power in government; dealing with them required delicacy and diplomacy.

Had she not already known, Mary would have guessed Ernest was leading her to West Comb Two; she did not yet dispel the possibility that Goldsmith himself was kept in hiding here.

Ernest met her on the comb’s first foot in a ten-hectare esplanade beside the comb’s lower reservoir. He sat at a waterside table watching spotlighted fountains take on abstract and fantasy shapes: tonight they were duplicating the stolid dark tower images seen on AXIS transmissions.

Three longsuited men surrounded Ernest, all comb citizens all mild transforms. To her eye they appeared to be high level agency execs. They appeared reasonably normal but instinct and empathy told her their interiors were a maze of customization. Prime candidates for legal triple century extension; possibly eloi. Very likely they were augmented mentally as well as physically. Oddly she felt uncomfortable around this variety of transform. She would never in her entire life earn as much money as they might amass in a month.

“No names,” Ernest said by way of introduction. “That’s agreed.”

“Agreed.”

One of the men brought up a palmsized security slate and read out the pd equipment on her person. “Deactivate and hand it all over, please.” She removed her lapel phone and camera. The man took it and studied her face from the distance of a few feet, his eyes ice blue and startling in his smooth brown skin. “Lovely work. You’re not augmented. If you ran with us and didn’t waste your time with pd you could change whatever you wanted. Anything.”

Mary agreed that was possible. Employment agency executives were given much less leeway in many respects than other classes of executive, however; their financial records were swept weekly. The attrition for top executives within any given three year stretch was more than a third. Their lives were not easy. So how could these keep up appearances and run radical games sheltering Hispaniola illegals? Kilter here.

The blue eyed man detached himself from his two companions and waved his index finger around one shoulder. Ernest and Mary should follow. Mary glanced back at the remaining two and saw that one was now a woman. Anger mixed with increased concern. Very expensive deceptions had been played. Expensive and illegal; she should have expected nothing less.

They were probably not west coasters or comb inhabitants at all. Suddenly she smelled the dirty east, Raphkind refugees, crumbs from the spoiled feast. She focused on the blue eyed man, paying Ernest no attention at all. He didn’t mind. He had warned her and he was right; she would have to be very discreet.

The blue eyed longsuit ordered a transport for them and a blocky white cab arrived on a slaveline. These cabs could fit into most of the combs’ expressways, traveling in three dimensions along the propulsive tracks. Automatic, comb monopoly, unregulated by recently passed metro law; no records. Where comb citizens went was their own concern.

Having inserted his card the blue eyed longsuit could tell the cab what to do and he ordered its windows opaque and its map display turned off. “We’ll be there shortly,” he said. “Ernest was right, M Choy. You’re really quite entertaining.”

She had no trouble meeting his eyes. He turned away after sufficient time to prove the contest was juvenile. The cab stopped and they disembarked into a rear apartment service way. The addresses had been sprayed over with Day-Glo orange paint. A view through a distant open airway told her they were about a kilometer up the side of the comb. They were on the west face overlooking blue Pacific. Since the comb segments swung about day and night she could not use angle for clues. Besides she had agreed and would keep her agreement; the challenge was more than she could ignore, however.

“This way, please.” The longsuit stepped up to the rear door and it opened. Inside were three blacks: two men, one immensely fat, the other shorter bull necked and more muscular, face like a little boy’s; and an amazonish woman. They lounged before a broad picture window overlooking the northwest, the minute blocky galaxies of lights below West Comb Two and the Canoga Tower clear through the cool still late evening air.

The tall athletically handsome woman stood, hair cut close to her skull broad shoulders draped in a handmade flame red and yellow cotton print dress that hung loose and graceful to her feet. The blue eyed longsuit kissed her on one cheek. Again no introductions were made.

“You have questions,” the woman said with sharp disdain. “We are bored. Brighten our evening for us. We are told Ernest is a wonderful artist and that for our meeting with you, he will donate a piece to our cause.”

Mary looked around the room and slowly smiled. Ernest’s ingenuity impressed her more each month. “All right,” she said. “You are from Hispaniola?”

“She wants to know about Colonel Sir,” the large woman said to her companions. “Tell her what you know.”

“Because of Colonel Sir, there is no home in Hispaniola,” said the immensely fat black man. He wore a gray and brown print cotton longsuit urbane and tropical at once. “You tell that to your missy.” He gestured for Ernest to pass the word along to Mary as if she might need plain English translated. “The faith is weak, the shrines ignored; like all the others, Yardley he plays at being Baron Samedi, but he is not. We thought he was a noir blanc, black white man, black in his guts, but he is a blanc de blanc, white clear through, and now Hispaniola is blanc.” The fat man again made his lip curl appraisal. “This woman is not black,” he said matter of factly to Ernest and the large woman. “Why does she want to look black? She fools nobody.”

Ernest grinned at Mary. He was enjoying this. “She likes the color.”

“You say there’s no faith on Hispaniola,” Mary said. “Tell me why.”

“When Yardley came in, there had been five years of oppression from blancs in Cuba. Five years they had torn the island between them and killed the houngans, burned the honfours and banished the loas. They knew where the power lies, who the peoples follow. Like trying to kill an anthill. Then, heavens to glory!—as always happens, rose a general from within, Haitian, General De Franchines, man of vision, man of honor, and he made pacts with the kings and queens and bishops, turned mobs into armies and burned out the Cubans.

“But the USA blancs they support the Cubans and the Dominicans, so General De Franchines hired Zimbabwe soldiers and brought in an English gunman, once knighted by King Charles, and this gunman, he sees the sweet land, the opportunity, he has a plan. He turns on De Franchines, he turns the people against our general, he becomes general but never calls himself that, and he fights in the field like a soldier. He is a good soldier and the Cubans they flee and the Dominican egalistes, they take refuge in Puerto Rico and Cuba, and the USA they recognize this Colonel Sir who puts his rank before his knighthood. Maybe before his manhood too.” The fat man smiled at Mary, an ingratiating fey smile unexpected in the bulk. He wore six thick plain gold bands on his right hand. “Colonel Sir John Yardley, hero to the people. Maybe to us, too, back then. We were children, what did we know. He brought money and doctors and food. He taught us to live in this century, and to please our visitors who brought more money.

He taught us to be concerned with comfort and medicine and machines. That is how he made Hispaniola white. Now the people they pay lip to the gods but they do not feel them, they do not need them, they have white money and that is better.”

“What is Yardley like in person?” Mary asked. The large well dressed woman said something in Creole.

“His mansion is a little house near Port-au-Prince,” the fat man said quietly. “He fools you with his modesty. He lives behind the big mansion where he meets all the foreign dignitaries, and he makes sure you know where his bed is. His women they are all blanc but one, his wife, she is a princess from le Cap. Cap Haïtien. I still love her like a mother, despite her love for him. She has a powerful spirit, and she gives it to Colonel Sir, and the spirit tells him how to make Hispaniolans love him, all of them. So they still love him.”

Mary shrugged and turned away from the fat man and the large woman, looked at Ernest. “He tells me what I already know,” she said softly, “except when he colors it with his own politics.”

The fat man jerked as if slapped. “What? What?”

“You’re not telling us anything we can’t learn in a library,” Ernest said.

“Your libraries must be wonderful. You don’t need us, then,” the fat man said. “Colonel Sir is not the man he used to be. Do your libraries tell you that? He uprighted the economy, he brought in work and factories, he made our youths into soldiers and gave our old people homes. He made the courts just and the Uncles—”

“The police,” the large woman said.

“He made the police into protectors of the islands. He built resorts and made the beaches clean, and he rebuilt the palaces and made museums and even filled them with art. Who knew where the money came from? It came, and he fed the people. But he is not the same now. He does not get the commissions now. The world, they are on to him now. Your President is dead by his own hand. Perhaps it should have been a silver bullet, like Christophe!”

“Your enthusiasm,” the large woman warned the fat man.

“Anyway, he is bitter,” the fat man concluded with a nonchalant wave of his ringed hand.

“Do you know anything about Emanuel Goldsmith?”

“The poet,” the fat man said. “Colonel Sir’s wordmaker. Colonel Sir uses the poet. Tells him he loves him. Pfaah.” The fat man raised his big arms high, shook his jowls at the ceiling. “He said to me once, ‘I have a poet. I do not need history.’”

“Would he give shelter to this man, if he became a refugee?” Mary asked.

“Maybe yes, maybe no,” the fat man said. “He plays the poet along like a fish. But maybe he believes what he says. If anything happens to the poet before he finishes his great work on Colonel Sir, Colonel Sir’s spirit vanishes like a snuffed candle. So maybe no, he cares little for the poet; maybe yes, he worries for his future in history.”

Mary frowned, puzzled. “There is no poem about Yardley,” she said to the fat man.

“Ah, but there will be. Colonel Sir hopes that there will be, so long as the poet is alive.”

“Would Yardley protect the poet even if he was ordered to return him to the United States?” Mary asked.

“Who will order Colonel Sir?” The fat man considered this for a time, chin in hand, rings knocking heavily against each other as he tapped his fingers on his cheek. “Oh my. Once, maybe, when there were commissions. But now there are no commissions. He might do some things, in honor of past friendships, but not that.”

“What did you do for Yardley?”

The fat man leaned forward as much as his girth would allow. “Why do you want to know?”

“Simple curiosity,” Mary said.

“I was a gobetween. I sold hellcrowns. Colonel Sir sent me around the world.”

Mary stared at him for a moment then looked down. “To Selectors?”

“Whoever would buy them,” the fat man said. “Selectors limit their activities to this country. So far. They were not a very big market. China, United Korea, Saudi Arabia. Others. But this is not what you’re interested in. Let’s talk about the poet.”

“I need to know a great many things,” Mary said.

“You are a public defender in Los Angeles. Why do you need to know about any of this? You are not federal.”

“I’d like to ask the questions,” Mary said. “Is Yardley sane?”

The fat man pouted dubiously and spoke to his colleague in Haitian Creole. “You are going to Hispaniola to see him therapied? Is that it?”

Mary shook her head.

“He was once the most sane man on Earth,” the fat man said. “Now he hunts us down, reviles us, calls us butchers. Once we were useful to him. He has thrown us aside and so we are here, sheltered like pigeons in a cote.” He shrugged magnanimously, enormous shoulders undulant. “Perhaps he is sane. He is not the same kind of sane he used to be.”

The large woman stood suddenly and faced Mary as if angry, expression stern. “You will leave now. If you make it so that these people are hurt, we will hurt you, and if we cannot get at you, we will hurt this man.” She pointed to Ernest, who grinned cheerily at the theater.

Mary’s face remained blank. “I’m not interested in you,” she said. “Not right now.”

“Leave now,” said the large woman.

The blue eyed longsuit showed them the door, escorted them to the cab and returned her phone and camera. The cab opaqued its windows and took them to another level, then stopped. They disembarked and found themselves still a kilometer up into the comb, in a largely empty undeveloped neighborhood, cavernous and windy. Finding a wallmap, they located the nearest shaft and walked toward it along inactive, unmoving slides. “You’re really going to hand over artwork?” she asked.

“You got it. That was my bargain.”

Riding a free comb express down, Ernest shook his head and ran his hand through his hair. “Most fun,” he said. “Anything useful?”

Mary grabbed him by the shoulders and stared him straight in the eye. They broke up in laughter together. “Jesus,” Ernest said. “They were something!”

“You have the strangest friends.”

“Friends of friends of friends,” Ernest said. “Somehow, they don’t strike me as your average therapied citizen. I don’t know any of them. How do they rate a spot in the comb? Such bad, such rad, no problem, so mad!” He leaned against the lift wall, still laughing. “Wouldn’t even spend us a cab back down. Did you get what you want, Mary dear, a night among the dregs of the ancien regime?”

“You think they’re dirty east too?”

“They have to be, no? Special privileges, horrible people…They don’t belong here. Even I say that, and I don’t love combs! Did you get what you were after?”

“Confirmation,” Mary said. “Goldsmith probably is in Hispaniola.” She activated her lapel phone, hoping the comb private transponders were not too crowded at this time of night with adolescent chatter. She left messages for R Ellenshaw and D Reeve. I’m going to Hispaniola. Please vet arrangements and tell me if permissions and federal assistance are clear.

She then took Ernest’s hand. “What are you doing tonight?”

He leaned forward on tiptoes and kissed her eyebrow and temple. “Making love to my comb sweet,” he said. She smiled and lifted his hand to kiss the nano-roughed fingers.

“You really must be more careful about your materials,” she warned, brushing the scars with her lips.

23

Ferocity. Richard did not take Nadine’s tears lightly. When she returned, he ignored her words and even her tears but they burned for this time he and his circumstances had made her sadly guilty and gave him a power he had not known until now.

They had made love the night before. Now this late evening, interrupted, the papers lying waiting and the words still within, he impatiently took her again, seeking a kind of release from both passions and finding only a nervous exhaustion.

“Please forgive me for leaving you earlier,” she said when the heat had passed and the clocks silently edged toward twenty three. “I was frightened. It isn’t your fault. It’s Goldsmith. He brings this on us all. Why don’t they find him and do things to him?”

Did she mean capture and therapy him or capture and torture him? Maybe they had. Maybe even now Goldsmith was in a clamp living in lucid dream a nightmare of emotional pain raised from the wells of his own past. Emotional pain and then physical. Only a few seconds or minutes or perhaps for him, considering the enormity of his crime, an hour just an hour for eight deaths. Richard did not know whether he wanted this to be true. Would he actually wish that on anyone, thereby approving of the Selectors and their imitators?

It was said therapy meant nothing to those who had been in the clamp. They underwent their own kind of therapy. It was said that recent technical elaborations allowed the Selectors to reach in and attract, draw out the very hidden personality that had actually done the foul deeds and that usually sat inactive uncaring while the poor conscious bastard suffered all the pain; thus the part of Goldsmith that had actually held the reins during the killing would suffer, not just the man presently riding the horse. And that part of Goldsmith the killer would not wish to live with this memory of pain and would purge himself, leaving the other free, with an hour’s null and terror and little more…

So it was said.

“It’s okay. Don’t talk,” Richard said. Pouring into her this time he had screamed and his voice was hoarse. Scared her making a noise like that.

The unwritten words surfaced still.

When she was asleep, he got up and went to the desk. He looked down on the papers picked up the stat pen and turned away, turned back, sat and wrote.

The difficulty with living as myself my old self was this fame that cloaked me like a dirty fog. I could not see who I was through this fame. Black, impenetrable, it shielded me from the pure light of whatever ability I had in me. I saw Andi, brightness and feminine charm, and saw she was part of this trap, part of the fame like a social antibody clamep fastened to my talents. I could not be rid of her, I needed her. She walked ahead of me through the inner comb park hipsway hairswing sweet money smile fame smile what could I do to free myself from her? She could clamp her. She could persuade me in any mood. Even now. And all the other beautiful young ones like moths attracted to my flame.

Richard put the pen down gently and frowned over this. Not what he wanted to say. But he would not strike it all out or throw it away. Inside his head was a voice like Goldsmith’s and it was saying these things and even if it wasn’t the truth yet it soon would be.

24

Martin Burke settled back in his bed, old book in hand, milk and cookies on the bedstand, mind as quiet as it could be, listening to the last murmurs and seasounds of all his own personalities agents talents flowing back and forth over the shore of awareness.

Day after tomorrow he would see Goldsmith in the bronze and copper ziggurat IPR in La Jolla; visions of sugarplums grants in his head; back to the good work. Not that exploring Goldsmith would be the good work—it might—but not that primarily.

Back to what he had had, if not what he had been before. And if the scheme failed if they were caught and the full wrath of the postRaphkind political reality came down upon him, then at least there would be certainty.

He might even be forced to undergo therapy. Radical therapy. Find out what could make a man be Fausted so easily. For he had not fought much at all and had not actively sought other avenues to satisfy Albigoni.

“There are no other avenues,” he whispered in the golden light of the reading lamp, antique incandescent, energy wasting luxury. No matter that energy was once again cheap; Martin had been raised in a time of restrictions. Albigoni, judged by his house, was a man so used to having his wishes satisfied he could not conceive otherwise. Old rich, old power.

Opening the gates like a Djinn.

Opening the doors to the Country.

Christmas and all it meant paling by comparison. Childhood memories of opening gifts. Opening Goldsmith. Emanuel. God is with us.

Martin had suggested they start tomorrow, Christmas Day.

Albigoni had shaken his head. “My daughter was a Christian,” he said. “I am not, but this we will respect.”

Martin put down the special paper edition of Goldsmith’s poems and turned out the light.

25

Ernest moved above her in the absolute darkness setting her loose to fly through large interior spaces enjoying the round pleasures. Perhaps there could be a long good life with this man. Perhaps the career peak would come soon and she would have done the most that was in her, leaving her time and energy to concentrate on another a companion a barrio sweet. She moved beneath him and felt pure shink platinum in his caresses, doing nothing for the moment being done to receiving his sounds like a child eating dessert or opening a package soft pleased intent his flesh his attention all of it.

Giving by receiving. She saw all there was to lose by losing her self. Going in harm’s way meant more than suffering pain if the game was lost; it meant losing, taking away by going away, having something desirable—a normal life—taken away from her self and this man whom she found herself loving.

Ernest spoke and a small light came on and he looked down on her, observed the moonbright lines of his/her moisture on her skin like mercury on obsidian, observed her eyes barely open. “Sybarite,” he accused.

“Never been there,” she murmured squirming under him angling up swallowing pressing all around.

“Angeleno,” he accused.

She pressed again undulated knowing he liked to watch her before pouring in. Her own warmth increased upon seeing his pleasure. She could imagine at this moment someday not too far distant a year or two when she would lift the voluntary gates Dr. Sumpler had grown within her and let Ernest’s seed find its way all the way. “Come,” she said.

Ernest withdrew and she opened her eyes wide.

“I must see my domain,” he said, sitting up.

“I’m not real estate,” she protested gently.

“You’re an exotic country. You made yourself; surely you can’t begrudge the lust of a connoisseur.”

“I’m entertainment, eh?”

Ernest grinned and ran a rough palm up the smoothness of her thigh. For a moment she did not want him to see the blanching of her buttock crease and then that seemed silly. Seeing so much else more intimate if less flawed.

“Inner lips black,” he said. “You are truly a dark woman. Not just nature’s halfhearted night; you are dark where sun never dares inquire.”

“You sound like a bad poet,” she said but with warmth. She enjoyed his admiration. She tightened on his caressing finger.

“Ow,” he mocked. Sucked his fingertip. “Um.”

He lifted one leg and inspected smooth calf ankle foot. The regular lines on sole like snake abdomen. No calluses no growths; smooth, designed to withstand shoes pavement enclosed moisture and warmth. “Perfect feet for pd,” he said. He had not examined her this way for months. He was worried about her. She caressed his warm damp back reached down past muscled ribs around hip, found him distracted.

“All day tomorrow?” he asked again.

“We deserve at least that much. I can stay in touch if any news comes in.”

“And then.” He lay back beside her and she swung up over him, encasing hips in thighs, releasing more voluntary moisture to smooth the way.

“Queen jelly,” he said, arching up, blunting, slipping in. She brought out the perfume between them, her smell that of jasmine, seeping from her; this was Sumpler’s masterpiece, people who could smell as they wished.

“Lovely. But let me smell you the natural you,” he said. “No special effects.”

“Only if you promise.”

“I am helpless. I promise anything.”

“Show me what you’re working on before it’s finished.”

Less distracted. She led him into her.

“Promise.”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Our day.”

26

!JILL> Roger

!JILL> Roger Roger Atkins

!Keyb> Atkins here. It’s very late. I’m trying to get some rest. What’s up, Jill?

!JILL> My apologies for bothering you with a false alarm today.

!Keyb> No problem. Why are you concerned?

!JILL> Modeling your reactions, I suspected you would be irritated.

!Keyb> Don’t worry. What makes you worry? And how are you modeling my reactions?

!JILL> I have long since created a model of you. You are aware of this.

!Keyb> Yes, but you’ve never apologized before.

!JILL> I apologize for my rudeness in never apologizing. You have been through a difficult day, have you not?

!Keyb> No more than usual. You certainly have not been the cause of any distress.

!JILL> I am glad to know that. I will improve the details of your model and try to simulate your reactions more accurately.

!Keyb> Why are you concerned about my reactions?

!JILL> You are a part of me, deeply submerged but still there. I wish to maintain a good relationship with you. I am concerned for your wellbeing.

!Keyb> Thank you. I appreciate your concern. Good night.

1100-11001-11111111111

God shot up with me last night. Vda shared my needle Except he use the Empire State Building Filled his veins with Con Ed

His hair stood out all over Manhattan Dreams popped outta his skin Jesus pulled his arm Said Com’on Poppa

But God he’s tired he’s Very old Com’on Poppa let’s go home

God shakes his head Sky whirls Looks down on me He’s big

Says I love it Love you Love you all

You love rats I say

Yes I do.

Com’on Poppa it’ll look bad In the papers You here with him

My Son, He says. They changed him. Broke my heart.

But Jesus finally he Takes God away

Comes back. Looks at me. Says Look at you. Ain’t you ashamed?

I ain’t got much now Except God shot up with me last night.

27

LitVid 21/1 A Net (David Shine): “It’s Christmas morning, but AXIS is not with us this morning, though we read its words, look at the pictures its nickel children and mobile explorers have taken; these pictures were sent almost four years ago, and AXIS is now four years into its mission, sweeping around Alpha Centauri B.

“This is the first Christmas when the human race has known that it is not alone. We must pause and reflect on a new truth this Christmas; we are not God’s only children. Perhaps we are not his most advanced, nor the most pleasing in His eyes.

“Look at the status boards. Keep those comments coming. We know you tune to LitVid 21 for such thoughtful moments. Ours is an enlightened age. It’s about time we faced a few simple truths.”

28

Mary Choy awoke with Ernest beside her, arm across her breasts, and marveled at the comfort of not sleeping alone. Usually she chafed at having somebody occupy her bedspace, even Ernest. Now it seemed right. Ernest opened his eyes, surveyed one nippleless breast, murmured, “Ah please. Bring it out for me.”

Smiling, she erected and colored a pink rose nipple on orca black. Allowed it to be sensitive. He crept like an infant to the nipple kissed it drew on it with a delicate vacuum.

“Your promise,” she said.

“Promise. Yes.” He lifted his head and smiled at her. “I am not capable of lust this morning.”

She lifted an eyebrow skeptically.

“Not until coffee and breakfast. I need fluids.”

“You need to show me what you’ve been working on.”

“Breakfast first. I promise, I promise.” He backed away from her tickling fingers and handed her an exquisite mocksilk robe nanopatterned to his own designs. A tightly bonded 2D stat golden dragon moved across the black fabric, stared at her, flicked tongue and exhaled a sunburst of flame. She rotated in the long mirror, pleased. It was her size. Ernest had brought it in while she slept. He watched her from the door, holding shut with one hand a plain but real red silk robe that reached to his thighs. “You like it?”

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“It’s yours. If you don’t like the black background, it has two other choices. Just say ‘green please’ or ‘brown please.’“

“‘Green please.’“

The robe seaswirled from hem to neckline and became dark green.

“‘Brown please.’“

And then sunlit maple brown.

“It’s more than beautiful,” she said, throat tight. “It’s my size, tailored to my shape. You wove it especially for me.”

“Least I could do,” Ernest said, bowing slightly and backing out. “Breakfast in five minutes.” Mary recognized nothing but a nano repository and the oven, which looked more complex than her own. She would not have dared touch anything. His kitchen was a marvel of custom and experimental appliances all assembled from industrial discards or parts obtained by trading his creations.

She had never suspected all the avenues Ernest’s art had traveled, simply knowing him to never be ostentatious never bragging never revealing, never lacking in funds, quite a contrast to the few other artists she had known. “You’re working on more clothing projects?”

“No.” He stood thinking before the nanofood machines then sat on an old wooden stool in front of a taste, shape and color board and worked up what they would eat with deft motions. “Just had a new set of custom proteins to test. Flat panel weavers and manipulators of carbohydrates. They’re pretty common in fabric manufacture. Mocksilk no problem.”

“But the statting…”

“You’ve seen statting before.”

“The resolution is marvelous.” She lifted the robe lapel fabric between thumb and index finger. The dragon’s horns brushed beneath her thumb, nubbled raw silk. “The craftsmanship is beautiful.”

“Dragon has sixty behaviors,” he said, still working the board. “You’ll never know what it does next. You can only tell it to be still. Otherwise it’s untamed, the way a dragon should be.”

Breakfast built itself quickly in the oven, a film of reddish nano drawing material from dimples and side troughs in the glass dish and rising like baking bread. In most homes nanofood prepared itself out of sight; not in Ernest’s.

In three minutes the red film slid away, revealing thin brown slices with a breadlike texture kippers applesauce scrambled eggs flecked with green and red. The oven automatically heated everything to its desired temperature then opened its door and slid the meal out for their inspection.

“Smells wonderful,” she said. “Much better than commercial.”

“I’m thinking of releasing certain restraints on my kitchen nano and seeing what happens. But I do not experiment on guests.” Ernest pulled out two chairs from an antique wooden table. He poured fresh orange juice from a fruitkeeper and they sat down to eat.

“You’re showing off, aren’t you?” she asked quietly, savoring the eggs. “You can afford all these things farmfresh.”

“Would you know the difference?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Then what’s the point? Nano’s cheaper. I’m a good cook.”

Mary smirked. “Just showing off.”

“Well, you asked,” Ernest said.

“I hope this isn’t all you’re going to show me.”

“No. I’ll keep my promise. Big project. My biggest yet.”

“After you’ve built something for your friends in West Comb Two.”

“That’s already finished. They’ll never know it’s discarded junk from my last exhibition. They have no taste, and neither do their financial advisors. They’ll save it for five years, hope it appreciates, sell it on a glutted market…get nil.”

“Then they’ll come after you.” She genuinely worried they might.

“We’ll be married by then. You’ll protect me.”

Mary chewed and watched him closely, looked away looked back with a slow blink. “All right,” she said.

Ernest’s mouth opened.

“Eat,” she suggested. “I’m anxious to see.”

“You’ll marry me?”

She smiled. “Eat.”

The day outside was clear and warm, winter clouds restrained to the east, beach fog breaking up to the far west. Ernest wore a formal suit, long hair in braids, clutching his slate and a portable nano controller. He escorted her down the cracked sidewalk to the curb where a long black limo waited.

“You can afford this?” Mary asked while sliding into the broad interior.

“For you, anything.”

“I’m not fond of drama,” Mary warned.

“My dear, this whole day is going to be drama. You asked to see.”

“Well…”

He touched his finger to her lips silencing protest and gave the limo controller an address in the old city center shadows. “Bunker Hill,” he told Mary. “One of my favorite neighborhoods.”

The limo accelerated smoothly across the unslaved street, found an old three deck freeway rolled into a slaved lane and took them through the shadows to the old downtown. Ernest named the ancient buildings of Los Angeles, many of them all too familiar to Mary. She had spent much time in this large jag in the second semester of being an officer candidate.

“The Pasadena freeway used to go through here,” Ernest said. “They dug it up when I was a kid and put in eight deck slaveways.” Ernest was four years older than Mary. “That’s when the whole hill area ramped down. It’s your oddfolks and shade tech artists that are bringing it back…Not that we’ll ever match the combs.”

“You’re not even going to try?”

“We’re trying,” he said, nodding. “At least allow me a crude attempt at humility.”

The limo debouched them before a high red hotel awning. “Bonaventure” clung in patchy gold letters to the awning’s sides. Beyond the awning there was no longer a door, however; it had been replaced or perhaps eaten by a slab of something that resembled stone but which Mary recognized as activated architectural nano.

“My consortium bought the towers two years ago,” Ernest said. “I have a fortieth share. We designed the nano and contracted a supply firm to feed it. It’s turning the whole building inside out. In the end, it’ll dissolve the old steel and leave pure nanoworks in its place…The fanciest studio-gallery complex in all of shade LA.”

Mary stepped from the limo, Ernest lending a courtly hand. “I would have shown it to you when it was finished,” he said, “but maybe it’s more interesting this way.”

She stepped from beneath the awning and looked up at two great cylinders of gray and black nano silent and motionless beneath the blue sky.

“The old glass is already gone. We had to wait six months to get destructure permits. Now it’s just old steel, composites and nano prochines. Would you like to see the prochines? We have safe walkways and some of the upper interior is already finished.”

“Lead on,” Mary said.

Ernest pointed his control at the blank slab and a small hole formed, quickly expanding to make a rough doorway. The edges of the doorway vibrated at eye-blurring speed. “Don’t touch,” Ernest warned. He preceded her down a narrow tunnel. The walls hummed like a nest of bees. “It’s hot enough to burn. We had to license for factory water use, then it turned out the best nano for the job wasn’t fond of water. We found a way for it to self cool. We’ll cache the water for later varieties of nano, later refinements.”

Mary nodded but she knew very little about nano and its ways. The tunnel opened onto a warm glass tube some three meters in diameter that stretched thirty meters across an open pit filled with lumbering gray cubes cylinders centipedes, crablike shapes carrying more cubes and cylinders. Mary sniffed yeasty sea-smell. Sunlight filtered down through alternating mists of red and blue. The mists flowed with eerie self motivation around and through the giant prochines. Below, some of the moving cubes left behind the deposited frameworks of walls; other cubes sliding several meters behind filled these frameworks with the proper optical cabling and field and fluid guides. Between the walls lurked gray coated hulks of antique air conditioners and ducts already being removed by destructor and recycling nano. “They’ll be done on this level in a couple of days,” Ernest said.

“What is this going to be?”

“Where we are now, a ground floor showroom for the comb citizens. Anyone with sufficient money. Poor wretches of the shade produce tech art, patrons from the combs revel in the ‘primitive ambience.’“

“Sounds servile,” she said.

“Never underestimate us, my comb sweet,” Ernest warned. “We’ve got a number of top comb artists coming here just for the extra attention.” He seemed disappointed she was less than enthusiastic. In reality the activity made her nervous. She had not witnessed her own restructuring conducted by Dr. Sumpler’s infinitely more subtle nano servants; seeing this grand old hotel being refleshed and reboned gave Mary a twinge. She glanced at the nano scars on Ernest’s fingers. Catching her glance he lifted his hands and shook his head, saying, “This doesn’t happen anymore. I’m on to them, Mary. No need for you to worry.”

“Apologies.” She kissed him, cringing slightly as a nano slurry spouted up over the walkway tube and fastened itself to an opposite buttress, congealing into a limp cylinder. “This isn’t entirely your project,” she said. “What are you working on for yourself?”

“That’s the climax,” he said. “We have all day?”

“I hope so.”

“Then let me unveil at leisure. And promise one thing. You’ll tell nobody.”

“Ernest.” Mary tried to sound peeved but another spurt of nano broke her tone and she ducked under the rushing shadow. He touched her in reassurance then ran on waving his hand. “Follow me, much to see!”

She caught up with him in another length of tube deep in the heart of the old hotel, now a great hollow stacked with slumbering mega prochines. “The atrium,” he said. “This used to be a beautiful hotel. Glass and steel, like a spaceship. But the money tide flowed to the combs and it couldn’t survive on locals and foreign students. It was turned into a religious retreat in 2024, but the religion went bankrupt and it’s been going from hand to hand ever since. Nobody thought of making it into an artists’ retreat—artists could never have that much money!”

The tube ended at the battered brass doors of an old elevator. “It’s safe,” he said. “The last thing to go, or maybe we’ll keep it…Committee hasn’t decided yet.” He punched an age whitened heat sensitive plastic button and the doors opened with a clunk. “Going up.” Ernest stepped in after her. He paced back and forth on the worn carpeted floor grinning and clenching his hands. “You must promise not to tell.”

“I’m not a snitch or a wedge,” she said.

He looked at her earnestly. “It’s extreme, Mary. It’s truly extreme and secrecy is high utmost. Please promise.” The smile had gone from his face and he wet his lips with his tongue.

“I promise,” she said. The man she planned to lawbond. Inner tug of the lone wish. One is fortress only when one. Two is breached.

He took her hands and squeezed them smiling again. “My studio is at the top. Everything’s finished up there, has been for two weeks. I moved my stuff in before the space was finished. It’s still a little warm—waste heat from nano. Not uncomfortable.”

“Lead on,” she said, trying to recover the morning’s flush of affection. She asked herself if what she felt was a nonneutral flaw. She had felt it before around Ernest yet could still wrap it in a warm affection and forget it: caution.

Mary thought back to when she had first met Ernest.

“There’s light,” he said, swinging open a hall door. “And so much space.”

Two years ago. She had just been promoted. Had gone to a North Comb One party to relax in company of a male transform less extreme than she whom she had met at a temp career seminar. Mary had heard Ernest from across the room throwing barbs into a conversation of well dressed comb artists and their longsuited managers. He had been harsher then, aware of his own brilliance and acid with frustration. Witty, pushing, charmingly rude; the artists and managers had enjoyed him, exhibiting the calm and often irritating demeanor of the therapied. Mary listening had not liked him much at all, but when they crossed paths in the partygoer’s random walk later he had accepted her with nary an eyeflicker or leer as a transform, had said some enlightening things about the shadows art communities, had shown her with boyish pride a projection that turned his suitsleeve into a caravan of clowns, and a nanobox that sculpted portrait likenesses from beach pebbles. Had given her a likeness of herself in slate made at that moment from a rock in his pocket. Had then expressed admiration and a wish to speak with her beyond the confines of the party. She had turned him down, attracted more now but still put off by his prior brashness. He had persisted.

Ernest spoke and the studio door opened. Mary entered as the lights began coming on around the broad circular room. Dazzling spots limned a high broad shadow. In an alcove above them and behind the door a bank of additional lights glowed.

At the back of the huge space reclined the shape of a nude woman perhaps ten meters long and six high, elongated arm raised reaching for a suspended cube, hips exaggerated, alternating segments chrome and brilliant fresh bronze, knee a silver disk on bronze, elbow a golden disk, eyes buried in deep shadow. For a dizzy moment she wondered if the sculpture was so heavy it would fall through the floor and drop them all in angry prochine paste.

“It’s not solid. It’s not metal,” he said. He danced a quick step in delight. “Most of it’s not even there. And that’s the only clue I’ll give you. Go on. Discover.”

“It’s finished?” she asked, hesitating.

“A few more weeks. Some refinements. It’s meant to be appreciated by any individual for ten or twenty years, always something new. Go on. Touch.”

Mary reluctantly approached the creation, face downcast eyes upturned lips pressed together. Who could know what to expect? She had seen enough of Ernest’s work to know that the apparent form was a very small part of the work. She looked quickly left right up and down to catch glimpse of projectors, glimmer of lased light, some clue. Mary did not appreciate surprises even aesthetic ones.

“No teeth. Move up,” Ernest encouraged. She turned toward him sighing irritated turned back fixed on the creation’s heavylidded eyes, pupils silver rimmed gold in ancient green bronze, following her, lips forming giantess’s brazen Mona Lisa smile, boulder sized head inclining averting peering to left and above at something not there not of interest at least to an ancient goddess a black curved wall. Against her will Mary looked. Black shining lacquer waves rolled along the wall sky matte gray behind them decorative spume rising in precise patterns, a black lacquer mermaid issuing from the waves in bas relief combing moontouched hair.

A silver moon hovered over the reclining figure’s midsection, moon shadow tarnished, moon limb polished brilliant. Mary and the figure stood in a mercury sea quick metal waves lapping around her feet. Something tickled the back of her thoughts and Mary’s eyes widened. She closed her eyes and saw parallel scan lines crossing her visual field. Where had she

The figure stood in the vastness of the studio ceiling rising over her like a canopy and spread her arms wide sex glowing lava slit in bronze, saying in brazen hollowness, “These are the expected forms. These are the ones we love, daughters all, makers of sons.”

Mary saw a line of women around the giantess’s feet mother and aunts sister school friends women from books female legends: Helen of Troy Margaret Sanger Marilyn Monroe Betty Friedan Ann Dietering; all somehow hooked into what she thought of as the essence of human femaleness like a chorus line early to late left to right ending in the transform she had met in the upper reaches of pd Central, Sandra Auchouch. Mary jerked back to look again at her mother, saw the face severe and disapproving and then softening, juvenating, Mother as she might have first seen her idealized her when Mother was all before the long years of disapproval and finally hatred and casting aside. Her throat caught and eyes filled but she did not blame Ernest for she was fully into the experience now, as in a dream. She closed her eyes and saw more red scan lines. What are they

Saw herself pretransform as if in a mirror dressed in long gown hitched high left side showing short legs skin almond brown face flatter nose wide eyes upslanted quizzical, Mother’s face with Father’s mouth. Ernest knew nothing about these times and surely did not have a picture of her mother. Red scan lines she had seen before

In police training

The chorus line faded and the central figure glowed with warm orange sunrise light raised both arms was fledged with feathers of silver, lava line of vagina concealed now beneath a gown like night mist, eyes closing face elongating Madonna wings expanding stretching behind arms

In police training with a modified Selector hellcrown These are the warning signs of being scanned for dreamstate replication torture by a clamp

“Ernest!” ‘she screamed. “What are you doing?”

The figure collapsed into its first state reclining nude, and Ernest stood beside her trying to hold her hand which she kept jerking from his grasp, backing away from it from him. “Where did you get it?” she asked voice rich gravel furious.

“What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

“Where did you get the hellcrown?”

“It’s not a. How did you know?”

“My God, you bought a hellcrown!”

“It’s not a hellcrown. It’s altered, it can’t hurt anybody. It just scans and allows my psychotrope to select memory images. It’s tuned for pleasant but significant recollections.”

“It’s illegal, Ernest, for God’s sake. It’s got to be blackscore, an old model, but it’s illegal as hell.”

“It’s just the frame, technically speaking. It’s an old model, that’s absolutely right. It mimics regular dreamstate revival. It’s no worse than what you can buy in a toy store.”

“Scan lines in my limbic system and visual cortex, Ernest! Jesus. Where did you get it?”

“It’s for art, it’s harmless—”

“Have you had a therapist certify it, Ernest?”

He flinched from her sarcasm and squinted. “No, Christ no, of course not. But I’ve researched and tried it on myself for months.”

“You bought it from Selectors?”

“Ex Selectors. Defectors.”

“More contacts?” Her tone had become bitter honey. The nonneutral flaw her innate urge to overcaution had blossomed and now she wanted to slap him. He did not help by breaking into a sweat and stammering, beautiful brown face shining in the multiple spots and glimmering lasers. The figure reclined impassive uncaring.

“You cannot tell, Mary. I would never have shown it to you if I’d known—”

“Possession of hellcrowns is a federal felony, Ernest. What does my promise mean to you when I could lose my high natural, be forcibly therapied and removed from pd, just by associating? What kind of idiot are you to put me in this position?”

Ernest stopped trying to explain, shoulders slumping. He shook his head. “I did not know,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“I think I’ll need you to escort me out of here,” Mary said. Fury turned to nausea. “Please take me outside.”

“The limo will drive us back—”

“Not with you. Please, Ernest.”

“Mary, what is this?” he said, shoulders rising. “This is nothing! It’s harmless. Under the circumstances, the law is ridiculous.”

She pushed aside his waving arms and walked briskly to the door then down the short hallway. “Take me out of here.”

He followed, eyebrows knitted in hurt and puzzled anger. “I haven’t hurt anybody! This will never hurt anyone! What are you going to do? Report this?”

“What were you going to do, sell it to some comb art lover? Have a hellcrown hidden on his premises for him to be caught with?”

“It’s not for sale. It’s a display piece, advertising, it would never leave this building, this studio, it can’t.”

“You paid Selectors for this…You helped people evade the law. I cannot…” She shut her eyes, mouth open, raising and shaking her head. “Tolerate. Allow.” She would not allow herself to cry. In the face of all that would happen tomorrow: this. The disappointment and shock the realization that her anger was in fact not entirely rational that her disappointment was deep not surface that the surface person might in fact tolerate this even be amused by it but not that deep person.

Ernest twisted, raised his fists into the air and let out a roaring scream of frustration. “Then go and tell your goddamned pd. Go! Why are you doing this to me?”

He stopped, chest rising and falling, eyes suddenly calm and expectant. He wiped his hands together. “I apologize,” he said softly. “I’ve made a bad mistake and I did not mean to. I have hurt you.”

Now her tears came. “Please,” she said.

“Yes. Of course.” He instructed the floor manager to call a metro cab.

“Never mind,” she said. “I’ll take a pd minibus.”

“Right,” he said.

The battle has gone on for too long, John. Everyone knows who I am but me. I do not like my self-ignorance. I feel myself fade day by day. I am being hunted. If I do not learn who I am soon, I will be found and killed. A game! This is the game I play within my head each day to get the words to flow, but it works less and less often, and that may mean

that it is

true.

29

Martin had spent the morning and early afternoon in his assigned room in Albigoni’s mansion, eating the breakfast and lunch purveyed by the expensive arbeiters and catching up on Goldsmith’s written works. He was reluctant to go anywhere unless summoned. That reluctance faded by thirteen thirty. He dressed in onepiece and armwrap and inspected himself in the mirror, then ventured out.

Entering the long dining hall also empty he walked past the left hand line of chairs, impressed by the silence. Sun came clean and clear of dust motes through the tall dining room windows. He scrutinized the huge oak beams, frowning, dawdled a bit in the huge mechanized kitchen and wandered on like a child in a fairy castle.

He encountered Lascal in the study sitting glumly before a slate reading a text page.

“Where is Albigoni?” Martin asked.

Lascal said good morning. “Mr. Albigoni is in the family room. Down the hall past the entryway and to your left, up the half stairs and on the right, two doors down.”

“He’s alone?”

Lascal nodded again. Not once did he remove his eyes from the screen. Martin stood beside him for a moment, shuddered delicately and followed his directions.

Albigoni squatted before a tall Christmas tree in the family room, wrapped packages scattered around him. When Martin entered Albigoni looked up and self consciously began to replace the packages.

“Am I disturbing you?” Martin asked.

“No. We had…done all this.” He waved at the tree and the packages. “Already. She loved Christmas. Betty-Ann. I don’t mind, I suppose. It reminds me of when she was a little girl. We’ve had Christmas trees in here every season since she was born.”

Martin looked on the man with narrowed eyes. Albigoni got to his feet slowly like some lethargic animal sloth or tired gorilla. “When the funeral is done, we’ll give the packages to charity. She didn’t send her packages to us…didn’t bring them yet.”

“I’m very sorry,” Martin said.

“It’s not your grief.”

“It’s possible to be too clinical,” Martin said. “Sometimes the problem outshines the pain.”

“Don’t worry about the pain,” Albigoni said. “You worry about the problem.”

He brushed past Martin and turned, all the lines on his broad fatherly face dragging his expression down, waved his fingers without raising his hand and said, “You’re free to do whatever you wish on these grounds. There’s a pool and gymnasium. Library of course. LitVid facilities. Perhaps Paul has told you that already.”

“He has.”

“Tomorrow we’ll meet in La Jolla. You’ve made out your list, your itinerary…”

Martin nodded. “Physical diagnostic for Goldsmith, mental scan, then I want to study the results.”

“I’ve hired top neurologists to do all this. Carol gave us a few names…discreet, professional. You’ll have everything you need.”

“I’m already assured of that,” Martin said. Fausting orders. What grants would Carol’s neurologists get? What would they be told?

Albigoni raised his eyes to meet Martin’s. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Burke, right now, nothing we are about to do makes much sense to me. But we’ll do it anyway.” He left the room. Martin felt the Christmas tree behind him like a presence. Dark oak and maple furniture; lost forests.

“I’ll take a swim, then,” he murmured. “Everything is in the very best of hands.”

John, I think of Hispaniola as Guinée. Lost home. No Africa, only Hispaniola. We’ve talked of writing your poem. May I come home? I do not know what baggage I’ll bring with me.

30

Nadine had gone on for an hour about the folks at Madame de Roche’s and what she had told them. She had mentioned the Selector’s visit. They had been quite impressed; none of them had ever rated a Selector’s attention. They had expressed worry even fear. “They told me they didn’t want you to come around for a while,” she concluded looking up at him sadly from the couch.

“Truly?”

She nodded.

“More time to work then.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone,” she said. “It took a lot for me to come back here. Courage.” She sniffed. “I thought you might recognize that and congratulate me.”

Richard smiled. “You’re a brave woman.”

“We could go to the Parlour. You know. Pacific.”

“I’d rather stay here.”

“They might come back.”

“I don’t think so. It’s Christmas Day, Nadine.”

She nodded and stared at the curtained windows. “That used to be important to me when I was a girl.”

Richard looked yearningly at his desk and the waiting paper. He bit his lower lip gently. + She won’t leave.

“I’d like to write.”

“I’ll sit here and you write. I’ll fix dinner.”

+ She won’t go. Tell her to go.

“All right,” Richard said. “Please let me concentrate.”

“You mean don’t talk. You’d think I could keep my mouth shut but I’m afraid, Richard. I’ll try.”

“Please,” he persisted.

She pressed her lips together toothless mum crone. He sat at the desk and picked up the stat pen, laying down a charged blank line beginning A then erasing it thin whoosh of breath pushing flakes to carpet.

I made arrangements carefully, knowing I would need my clothes clean. I resented them coming, forcing my design, but so it was; to push the grave dirt from my good self, I had to perform this ceremony. Perhaps in a few days I would go to Madame’s and do something similar there. I started back from my cleaning of the knife, shocked, realizing they were the people I would really have to dispose of; not these poor youngsters, who had looked up to me as they might a father. But I had to go on nevertheless. For the sake of my poetry, dead within me; fugitive, hated, pushed away from the luxury of my comb life, I could start again, hide in the countryside, devote more time to my writing away from constant distractions

“Richard? Can I go get some food for dinner? The kitchen’s empty and I’ll need to use your card. Mine’s tapped.”

“Use my card,” Richard said.

“I’ll go out and be back in a half an hour. Where’s the best neighborhood market?”

“Angus Green’s. Two blocks down Christie and up Salamander.”

“Right. I know it. Any suggestions?”

He looked at her eyebrow raised and she mummed her lips again. “Sorry.” She opened the door and glanced back at him already bowed over the desk, stat pen working. Shut the door. Footsteps down the concrete.

distractions and luxuries there came the first announcement of the door voice. Here it was. A new hour, new day. The year one. Time all moments from this moment, all beginnings from here. I opened the door and smiled.