Ribofunk

Big Eater

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

With a little help from Big Eater, of course.

That fateful morning started like any other.

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

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

The sweet dream had fled, so shaking my head, I climbed out of bed. It reverted to a couch almost before I could uncrouch.

"Okay, okay! Shut your trap, I'm done with my nap."

The wordbird closed its beak right in midsqueak.

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

As the tropes perfused, I asked for the news.

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

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

"A spokesdemon for the Transgenic Oversight Committee has issued a warning that the notorious rogue splice known as Krazy Kat is suspected to have infiltrated the GLB. All franches are asked to report any suspicious sightings to their commensal buzzworms or to patrolling TAC-TOCs.

''An Anti-Em demonstration in front of the Board of Trade erupted in violence late in the afternoon. The familiar chant of 'No mods, no mixes!' soon changed to shouts of 'Burn the miscegenators!' Authorities declared an emergency risk bubble of ninety naders intensity covering three square blocks for a duration of thirty minutes plus-minus and dispersed clouds of Riotnip and Incontibarf.

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

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

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

You see, I was one of the Hiphop Heads.

Not many people remembered the incident. I mean, so much happened nowadays, and things changed so fast. What with the Temp-Trop War and the Grey Goo Booboo intervening-Well, it's not surprising lots of lesser scandals and yocto-minute wonders were forgotten. After all, the whole affair happened over ten years ago. Though it did affect three million plus-minus people. But scattered across the whole North American Union, the victims were only about 4 percent of the population. Anyway, what happened was this.

Some three million percipients were tuned into Virtual Music Transmission's half-hour show known as "Rap Klassix" when VMT experienced an act of sabotage. (As I recall, the individual or group responsible was never positively identified; suspects ranged from the Sons of Dixie to the Limbo Cannons.) In an instant, before any of the perks knew what was happening or could disengage, VMT's baud rate was tripled, safety overrides were disabled, and new templates were laid over the standard transmission.

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

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

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

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

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

All us perks who got our brains skew-fried Would carry inside till the day we true-died A distributed web of spurting nerve gaps That made us want to rhyme out our urb raps.

The best that the big labs like Novo Nordisk and Cantab and NeosePharm could do was batch up a trope that alleviated the symptoms. A daily dose of poemasomes kept the Tourette-like syndrome mostly in check. Except during times of stress, or often just upon waking, or if I ingested any other really radical tropes, I was pretty much normal in my speech and thought patterns.

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

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

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

Who was going to be mighty pissed this morning if I was late again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The projex had been old when I was a tad; now they looked ancienter than Adam's NAD. Unsmart buildings lined dingy streets; hustling nonfranches littered the plazas of grocrete. Each had a scam or a story to tell; a tale of woe or something to sell. Mutawins and hojats were on stroll-patrol, encountering vexy derision from babydolls with sexy sincisions. The scene was total jhuggi jopri, and all my troubled past flooded back on me. But I held my head high and walked on by. In blue and gold, now adult-old, I strode

past the various hawkers proud and tall, showing them I didn't belong here at all.

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

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

One of these flee-gees had been my dad.

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

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

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

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

Which was why Mom was turning to me now, even though I no longer lived with her and Sis.

As I climbed the worn steps of familiar old Building Nine (referred to croak jokingly by its residents as the Golden Horn), the slow shadow of a laser entrained dirigible passed over me, and I sadly recalled Mom's long-unsatisfied moonbeam-dream of visiting the Grand Canyon in person. It seemed like everyday strife-life just had a way of mind-grinding a person right down. Look how much eft and trouble I had gone through just to land this cysting lite-servo job, and how events like today's kept conspiring to put me in danger of losing it.

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

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

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

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

Mom had her back to me, blocking sight of Charmaine. When Mom turned and stepped aside, I could see what had made her roughride and chide so snide.

Charmaine had added feelers to go along with her old familiar antennae. And a row of itchy, twitchy buglegs running down each side of her torso. Her clothing had been grommetted to accomodate the new members.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I realized that there was something different about Mom that hadn't registered in the confusion till now. She had

had her chocolate complexion spotted-dotted like one of the racing cats She loved. And translucent feline whiskers bristled around her kisser.

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

That was the match to Charmaine's fuse.

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

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

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

I sat down all dreary-weary in a chair, and my eyes fell on a fishbowl tabletopped near there. In it swam four flaking trilobites. The sight of the watery wigglers reminded me of my job, and I shot to my feet.

"Listen, you're not going to solve anything by yelling at each other. That's no way to act for a daughter and mother. Ma, you and Charmaine both need to get your fingers off the hot buttons. What's done is done and should be forgotten." I had a sudden inspiration. "I'm going to take Charmaine to work with me. We can talk about things and see what we see. I'll bring her back tonight, and we'll all have a meal together."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You've got to let up on Ma, Charm. You know she's not exactly the domestic type. And life's been hard for her since Dad died. You shouldn't block her receptors about her gambling, for instance. It's really the one pleasure she's got these days."

Charmaine stiffened, and her new abdominal additions began to wave like the legs of a stepped-on roach. It seemed she didn't quite have full control of them yet.

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

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

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

Charmaine stopped herself.

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

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

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

What a mayday payday this was turning out to be!

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

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

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

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

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

Sharpy's face was a mass of long drooping folds and corrugated wrinkles, like his doggie namesake. Even when happy, he looked doomy-gloomy. And as now, when actually preoccuplexed, he could make a technogoth resemble a gameshow vannawhite on Pollyannamide.

"The Khan has me scared. He's just not his old apoptositic self. He's given all of us the day off to attend an official blyfest over in the Loop. Some kind of sensitivity training in how to deal with Anti-Em demonstraters. Now I ask you, would the Khan we know and detest shed a yocto-tear about the feelings of some friggin' rifkins?"

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

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

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

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

"Right. Thanks for the warning, Sharp."

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

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

"Eat pyrethrum, chordate!"

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

"No mammal has to apologize for a Roach!"

"Put it in a vacuole, Charm. Listen, Sharpy-I'll see you later. I'd better go take my bitter meds from the head."

I hauled Charmaine along to the office of Cengiz Ozturk.

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

"What am I gonna do while I wait?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

There used to be a basal disease called xeroderma pigmentosum. Those who had it were so sensitive to sunlight

that an average day in the pre-ozone-hole sun would give them cancers and other cyto-malfunctions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now I was no danger. Had I been carrying a weapon, I couldn't have reached it beneath the wrap. Even if I had a

flashlight in hand, ready to fire, the film would have frustrated it by invading the mechanism or reflexively immobilizing my twitchy trigger finger. Sure, there were sophisto ways around the wrap, but who really wanted to smoke an old soldier like Ozturk anyhow? The extra security was just paranoi a a nd status-flash on his part.

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

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

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

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

"Yes, sir."

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

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

"Do you wish to dataglove the leash's new molecular structure?" Ozturk asked.

"I'm sorry, sir, I can't use datagloves. It's my disability-"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charmaine and I stood on the low grocrete jetty painted with the EC insigni a a nd reserved for official use-vehicle moorings and Eater feedings and such-and I pointed out the Eater habitat to her, some half-klick offshore.

Shading her eyes against the lake-sparkle, Charmaine said, "Wow, that's big! You know, I never bothered to come look at this before. Kinda like a New Yorker never visiting Television City. Is it made out of-rocks?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, a youngster like Sis, who hadn't even been born at the time of the disaster, might wonder just how much trouble

a little nontoxic flowering aquatic plant could cause. Based on the training materials I'd seen, and my own toddler-memory of being taken to look at the enormous floating mats of vegetation, I'd say the trouble was yotta-nasty.

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

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

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

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

Once the crisis was over the Eaters remained, first line in the GLB's defense against future intruders. They patrolled

and roamed in the waters they called home. Restrained by diet leashes, they always returned to their beaches. Where they were met by a Feeder such as yours truly, who pampered his charges with applause unduly.

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

"Like this."

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

Within minutes, the first Eater arrived.

Big Eater.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charmaine squatted down beside me. "Can-can I pet him too?"

"Sure. Big Guy, this is my sister, Charmaine."

"Char– maine, hel-lo."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Big Eater pondered. "I will get the o-thers."

He was gone with a splash, we hung in like a rash, soon they came en masse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What? What do you mean?"

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

Station Eight was one of the artificial islands erected in Lake Mitch to help prosecute the hykariba war. Abandoned for many years, it was nothing more than a graffiti-sprayed trysting spot, or a place for a picnic when the weather got hot.

"I don't know what to say. It wasn't supposed to work out this way-"

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

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

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

"Charm– "

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

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

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

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

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

Charmaine recognized them before I did.

"It's– they're Roaches!"

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

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

I ran the jetski aground and climbed down.

Charmaine rashly approached the hot-tempered Roach. "Weevil-?"

The Roach eyed us meanly with Orthoptera optics. Resplendent in his winged shell, he had us pinned like bugs with his gun barrel.

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

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

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

"What scheme?"

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

"But the poor Eaters… " said Charmaine.

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

"No!" I shouted.

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

"Too late. The plan won't tolerate changes. We have to detonate the explosives as soon as they're in place, or risk detection. And that just doesn't give the cows time to escape.

And who really cares? So long as we win. Both of you now-over there, behind that wall."

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

And then they came.

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

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

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

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

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

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

He knew I couldn't handle a glove, Thought I'd be sloppy when push came to shove. Didn't know I took pride in my work– Made that Kat look like a yotta jerk!

Not many humans can claim they've been in a room with the notorious Kat and walked away, and for a while I was the metamedium darling of the hour. It seemed only natural for the EC to reward me with the Khan's job.

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

And you know what kind of town Chicago is.