ne was not. This story was
nowhere near that big, of course, but you'd never have known it
to  read  our  breathless  prose  and  listen  to  our  frantic
commentators.
     I  was  the  center of much of this coverage. There was no
question   of   sleeping.   Since   I'm   not   an    on-screen
personality--which  means  I'm  an indifferent speaker, and the
camera does not love me--I  spent  most  of  the  time  sitting
across  from  our star anchor and answering his questions. Most
of this was fed out live, and often took  as  much  as  fifteen
minutes  at  the top of each hour. For the next fifteen minutes
we showed the reports sent back by the cadres  of  camerapeople
who  descended  on  Callie's  ranch  and  shot  everything from
pictures of the killer dinosaur's bloody foot, to  the  corpses
of the three b-saurs killed in the stampede, to the still-vivid
imprint  of  David's  body in the mud, to interviews with every
ranch hand who'd ever worked for Callie, even  though  none  of
them had seen anything but the dead body.
     I thought Walter was going to explode when he learned that
Callie refused to be interviewed under any circumstances or for
any amount  of  money. He sent me to the ranch to cajole her. I
went, knowing it would do no good. He threatened  to  have  her
arrested;  in  his  rage, he seemed to believe that refusing to
cooperate  with  the  media-and  with  him  in  particular--was
illegal.   For  her  part,  Callie  made  several  nasty  calls
demanding that we stop using her image, and someone had to read
her the relevant parts of the law that  said  she  couldn't  do
anything  about it. She rang me up and called me a Judas, among
other things. I don't know what she expected me to do with  the
biggest  story  of  my life; sit on it, I guess. I called her a
few things back, just as harsh. I think she was concerned about
her possible liability in the incident, but the main reason was
her  loathing  for  the  popular  press--something  I  couldn't
entirely  disagree  with  her on. I have wondered, from time to
time, if that's why I got into this  business.  Nasty  thought,
that.
     Anyway, I decided it would be pointless to seek her advice
on the parts of my story I hadn't gotten around to telling her,
for at least a year or so. Make that five years.
     The  next day was spent farming the story out to competing
rags and vids, but on  our  terms.  The  price  was  high,  but
willingly paid. They knew that next time they were as likely to
be  on  the  selling end, and would gouge appropriately. As was
standard practice, I was always included as part of  the  deal,
so  I  could  mention  the  Nipple as often and as blatantly as
possible while on live feeds. So I talked myself  into  a  sore
throat  sitting  beside  endless  commentators, columnists, and
similar sorts, while the by now dated footage ran  yet  another
time.
     The  only  person who got as much exposure as I did during
those two days was Eartha Lowe. A movement as  radical  as  the
Earthists will spawn splinter groups like a sow whelps piglets.
It's a law of nature. Eartha was the leader of the largest one,
also  called  the  Earthists,  purely to give headaches to poor
newspapermen, I'm convinced. Some of us distinguished  them  as
Earthist(David)    and   Earthist(Lowe),   others   tried   the
abomination of Eartha-ists. Most of us simply called  them  the
Earthists  and  the  Other  Earthists,  something guaranteed to
provoke a wailing woodnote wild from Eartha, because there  was
no need to explain who the "Others" were.
     David  had  died  politically intestate. There was no heir
apparent in his organization.  Increasingly,  people  were  not
planning  for  their  own  deaths,  because  they simply didn't
expect to die. Perhaps that explains  the  mordant  fascination
with violent images in popular entertainment and the clamor for
more  details  about  real  deaths  when they occur. We haven't
achieved immortality yet.  Maybe  we  never  will.  People  are
reassured  to  see  death as something that happens to somebody
else, and not often at that.
     Eartha Lowe was  standing  on  every  soapbox  that  would
support  her  not-inconsiderable  weight,  welcoming the strays
back into the fold. In her version, it was David who had  split
away.  Who  cared that he had taken ninety percent of the flock
with him? We were told that Eartha had always loved  David  (no
surprise;   they  had  both  professed  to  love  every  living
creature, though David had loved Eartha more on the  level  of,
say,  a nematode or a virus, not so much as the family dog) and
Eartha had returned his affection in spades. I couldn't  follow
all  the  doctrinal  differences.  The  big  one  seemed  to be
Eartha's contention that any proper Earthist should be  in  the
female image, to be a mirror of Mother Earth. Or something like
that.
     All  in  all, it was the goldarndest, Barnum-andBaileyest,
rib-stickinest, rough-and-tumblest infernal foofaraw of a media
circus anybody had seen since grandpaw chased the  possum  down
the  road and lost his store teeth, and I was heartily sorry to
have been a part of it.
     When the two-day purgatory was over, I collapsed  into  my
bed  for twelve hours. When I woke up, I gave some thought once
more to getting out of the business. Was it a root cause of  my
self-destructive  tendencies?  One  would  have  to  think that
hating  what  I   did   might   contribute   to   feelings   of
worthlessness,  and thus to thoughts of ending it all. I tabled
the matter for the moment. I have to admit that  though  I  may
feel disdain for the things we do and the manner in which we do
them,  there is a heady thrill to the news business when things
are really happening. Not that exciting things happen all  that
often,   even  in  my  line  of  work.  Most  news  is  of  the
notmuch-happened-today variety,  tricked  up  in  various  sexy
lies.  But  when it does happen, it's exhilarating. And there's
an even guiltier pleasure in being where things are  happening,
in being the first to know something. About the only other line
of  work  where you can get as close to the center of things is
politics, and even I  draw  the  line  at  that.  I  have  some
standards left.
     Talking  to  Callie  had  been  a bust, advice-wise if not
career-wise. But in searching for  sources  of  dissatisfaction
one  thing had grown increasingly clear to me. I was wearing my
body like a badly fitted pair of trousers, the kind  that  bind
you  in  the  crotch.  A  year  as  a female, ersatz though the
experience had been, had shown me it was  time  for  a  Change.
Past time, probably by several years.
     Could  that have been the fountain of my discontent? Could
it have been a contributing  factor?  Doubtful,  and  possibly.
Even  if  it  had nothing to do with it, it wouldn't hurt to go
ahead and get it done, so I could be comfortable  again.  Hell,
it was no big deal.
     #
     When  the  terribly,  terribly  fashionable decide the old
genitals are getting to be rather a bore, don't you know,  they
phone  the  chauffeur  and  have  the  old bones driven down to
Change Alley.
     Normally, when it came time for a Change, I would  hie  me
to   some   small   neighborhood   operation.   They   are  all
board-certified, after all, one just as able as another  to  do
the   necessary   nipping   and   tucking.   A   confluence  of
circumstances this time decided me to visit  the  street  where
the  elite  meet. One was that my pockets were bulging with the
shekels Walter had showered on me in the form  of  bonuses  for
the  Burning  Earth  story.  The  other was that I knew Darling
Bobbie when he was just Robert Darling of  Crazy  Bob's  Budget
Barbering  and Tattoo Parlor, back when he did sex changes as a
sideline to bring in more money. He'd had a little shop on  the
Leystrasse,  a  determinedly  working-class commercial corridor
with a third of the shopfronts boarded up  and  plastered  with
handbills,   running   through  one  of  the  less  fashionable
neighborhoods of King City.  He'd  been  sandwiched  between  a
bordello and a taco stand, and his sign had read "Finast Gender
Alteration  On The Leystrasse--E-Z Credit Terms." None of which
was news to anyone: his was the only Change shop in  the  area,
and  you  couldn't  offer  so  expensive a service around there
without being prepared to finance. Not that he did a lot of it.
Laborers can't afford frequent sex changes and, as a group, are
not that inclined to question Mother Nature's toss of the dice,
much less flit back and forth from one sex to the other. He did
much better with the tattooing, which was cheap and appealed to
his clientele. He told me he had regulars who had their  entire
bodies done every few weeks.
     That  had  been  over twenty-five years ago, when I had my
last previous sex change. In that time, Crazy Bob had  come  up
in the world. He had invented some body frill or other--I can't
even  recall  what  it  was  now,  these  things come and go so
quickly they make mayflies seem elderly--that was  "discovered"
by  slumming socialites. He was elevated overnight into the new
guru  of  secondary  sexual  attributes.  Fashion  writers  now
attended  his  openings  and  wrote  knowingly  about  the  new
season's whimsy. Body styling would probably never be as big or
influential as the rag trade, but a few  practitioners  to  the
hi-thrust  set  had  carved  themselves a niche in the world of
fashion.
     And Crazy Bob had spent the last ten years trying to  make
people  forget  about  the  little  cock  shop next door to the
Jalapen~o Heaven.
     Change Alley is a ridiculous name for the  place,  but  it
does  branch  off  of the fivekilometer gulch of glitz known as
Hadleyplatz. For fifty years the Platz, as  everyone  knew  it,
had  been  the  inheritor  of such places as Saville Row, Fifth
Avenue, Kimberly Road, and Chimki Prospekt. It was the place to
go if you were looking for solid gold toenail clippers, not  so
great  for  annual white sales. They didn't offer credit on the
Platz, E-Z or otherwise. If the door didn't have  your  gencode
in   its  memory  banks  along  with  an  up-to-the-millisecond
analysis of your pocketbook, it simply  didn't  open  for  you.
There  were  no  painted  signs  to  be  seen,  and  almost  no
holosigns. Advertising on the Platz ran to small logos  in  the
bottom  corners  of  plate glass windows, or brilliantly-buffed
gold plaques mounted at eye level.
     The Alley branched away from the main promenade at a sharp
angle and dead-ended about a hundred meters later in a  cluster
of exclusive restaurants. Along the way were a handful of small
storefronts  operated by the handful of very tasteful hucksters
who could persuade their clientele to part with ten  times  the
going  rate  for  a  body make-over so they could have "Body By
So-and-so" engraved on the nail of their pinky finger.
     There were holosigns in  the  Alley  shops,  showing  each
designer's ideas of what the fashionable man or woman was being
these days. The tastemongers back on the main drag liked to say
the  Alley  was  off the Platz, but not of the Platz. Still, it
was all a far cry from the tattoo templates filling the windows
of the Budget Barber.
     I wondered if I ought to go in. I wondered if I  could  go
in.  Bob  and I had been drinking buddies for a while, but we'd
lost  contact  after  his  move.  I  pressed  my  hand  to  the
identiplate,  felt  the tiny pressure as a probe scraped away a
minuscule amount of dead skin. The machine seemed to  hesitate;
perhaps I'd be sent around to the tradesmen's entrance. Then it
swung  open.  There  should have been a flourish of trumpets, I
thought, but that would have been  too  demonstrative  for  the
Alley.
     "Hildy!  Enchanting,  enchanting  old  boy. So good to see
you." He had come out of some concealed back room  and  covered
the  distance  to  me  in three long strides. He pumped my hand
enthusiastically, looking me up and down and adopting a dubious
air. "Good heavens, am I responsible for that? You came just in
time, my friend. Not a moment too soon. But don't worry, I  can
fix  it,  cousin  Bobbie will take care of everything. Just put
yourself in my hands."
     I suddenly wondered if I wanted to  be  in  his  hands.  I
thought  he  was laying it on a trifle thick, but it had been a
while since I'd seen him, and I'm sure he  had  appearances  to
maintain.  The  gushing,  the  mincing,  all  were  nods toward
tradition, something practiced by many in  his  line  of  work,
just  as  lawyers  tried to develop a sober facade suitable for
the weighty matters they dealt in. Back  before  Changing,  the
fashion  world  had been dominated by homosexual men. Sexuality
being as complicated as it  is,  with  hundreds  of  identified
orientations--not  to mention ULTRATingle--it was impossible to
know much about anyone else's preferences  without  talking  it
over and spelling it out. Bob, or perhaps I should say Darling,
was  hetero-oriented,  male  born and male leaning, which meant
that, left to his own choice, would be male most  of  the  time
with  occasional  excursions  into a female body, and no matter
his current sex would prefer the company of the opposite.
     But his profession almost demanded that he Change four  or
five  times  a  year, just as the rag merchants had better wear
their own designs. Today he  was  male,  and  didn't  look  any
different  from  when  I  had  know  him. At least he didn't at
first. When I looked more closely, I saw there were a  thousand
subtle  alterations, none of them radical enough so his friends
wouldn't recognize him on the street.
     "You don't have to take the blame," I told him, as he took
my elbow and guided me toward something he called a "Counseling
Suite." "Maybe you don't remember, but I  brought  in  all  the
specs myself. You never had a chance to practice your craft."
     "I  remember  it  quite well, dear boy, and perhaps it was
the will of Allah. I was still learning  my  art,--please  heed
the stress on the word, Hildy--and I probably would have made a
botch of it. But I do recall being quite cross."
     "No,  Darling, in those days you didn't get cross, you got
pissed-off."
     He made a weird sort of smirk, acknowledging the jibe  but
not  letting  the  tinkerbell mask slip a millimeter. I glanced
around the suite, and had to stifle  a  laugh.  This  was  girl
heaven.  The walls were mirrors, creating a crowd of Hildys and
Bobbies. Most everything else was pink, and had lace on it. The
lace had lace on it. It was fabulously overdone,  but  I  liked
it. I was in the mood for this sort of thing. I sank gratefully
into  a  pink  and  white lacy settee and felt the anxiety wash
away from me. This had been a good idea after all.
     A female assistant  or  whatever  entered  with  a  silver
bucket of champagne on ice, set it up near me, poured some into
a tall glass. It was a measure of my alienation from my current
somatotype  that  I  watched  these  operations  with  complete
disinterest. A week before . . . well,  before  Scarpa  Island,
however  that  interval  should  be measured, I would have been
attracted to the woman. Just at the moment  I  was  effectively
neuter. Robert didn't interest me either. Actually, he probably
wouldn't  interest  me  after the change, simply because he was
not my "type," a word simply dripping with meaning in  the  age
of gender selection.
     Like  my host, I am hetero oriented. Which is not to say I
have never engaged in sex with a partner  of  my  current  sex;
hasn't  everybody?  Can anyone remain truly heteroist when they
have been both male and female? I suppose anything's  possible,
but  I've  never encountered it. What I find is that sex for me
is always better when there is a  man  and  a  woman  involved.
Twice  in  my  life  I  have met people I wanted to become more
deeply attached to when both of us were of  the  same  sex.  In
both cases, one of us Changed.
     I don't know how to explain it. I don't believe anyone can
really  explain reasons behind their sexual preferences, unless
they're based on prejudice: i.e.,  this  or  that  practice  is
unnatural,  against  God's  law,  perverted, disgusting, and so
forth. There's still some of that around, a bit of it in  Bob's
old  neighborhood,  in fact, where he twice had windows smashed
and once had truly repulsive Christian slogans painted over his
sign. But sexual preference seems to be something that  happens
to  you,  not  something you elect. The fact is, when I'm a boy
I'm intensely interested  in  girls,  and  have  little  or  no
interest  in other boys, and vice versa when I'm a girl. I have
friends who are precisely the opposite, who  are  homo-oriented
in  both  sexes.  So  be  it. I know people who cover the whole
spectrum between these two positions, from the dedicated  males
and  females,  homo  and  hetero,  to  the pan-sexuals who only
require you to be warm and would be willing to overlook  it  if
you  weren't,  to the dysfunctionals who aren't happy in either
sex, to the true neuters, who identify with neither  sex,  have
all external and internal attributes removed and are quite glad
to  be  shut of the whole confusing, inconvenient, superfluous,
messy business.
     As to type, neither  Robert  or  Darling  was  mine.  When
female,  I'm  not  as  much concerned with physical beauty in a
partner as when I'm male, though it's only a matter of  degree,
since  when beauty can be purchased at will it becomes a rather
common and quite unremarkable quality. Rob/Bob's lanky  Ichabod
Cranish  physique  and  long narrow physysiognomy didn't set my
girlish heart to beating, but that wouldn't put me off  if  the
personality  traits  compensated. They didn't. He was fine as a
buddy, but as a lover he would be entirely too  needy.  He  had
insecurities science has not yet found a name for.
     "Did  we  remember  to  bring  our  little  specs with us,
Hildy?" he asked. I had, and handed  them  to  him.  He  leafed
through  the  pages  quickly,  sniffed, but not in a judgmental
way, just as if  to  say  he  couldn't  be  bothered  with  the
technicalities.  He  handed  the  genetic specifications to his
aide, and clapped his hands. "Now, let's flutter out  of  those
charming togs, can't create without a bare bodkin, chop, chop."
I  stripped  and  he  took  the  clothing, looking as though he
wished for  sterilized  forceps.  "Where  did  you  find  these
things.  Why,  it's  been years . . . we'll of course have them
cleaned and folded."
     "I found them in my closet, and you can donate them to the
poor."
     "Hildy, I don't think there is anyone that poor."
     "Then throw them away."
     "Oh, thank you." He handed the clothing to the woman,  who
left  the  room  with  them.  "That  was  a  truly humanitarian
gesture, old friend, an act that shows a great deal  of  caring
for the fashion environment."
     "If  you're  grateful,"  I  said,  "then  you  could  stop
spreading  the  pixie  dust.  We're  alone  now.  This  is  me,
Darling."
     He   looked   around  conspiratorially.  All  I  saw  were
thousands upon thousands  of  Hildy's  and  a  like  number  of
whoever  he  was.  He  sat  in  a chair facing me and relaxed a
little.
     "How  about  you  call  me  Bobbie?  It's  not  quite   so
pretentious  as Darling, and not so dreadful and reminiscent as
Robert. And to tell you the truth, Hildy, I'm finding it harder
every day to drop the pose. I'm beginning to wonder if it is  a
pose.  I  haven't  got  pissed  off  in  years, but I get cross
practically all the time. And there's a big difference, as  you
reminded me."
     "We all pose, Bobbie. Maybe the old pose wasn't the proper
one for you."
     "I'm still hetero, if you were wondering."
     "I  wasn't, but I'd be astonished if you weren't. Polarity
switches are pretty rare, according to what I've read."
     "They happen. There's precious little I don't see in  this
business. So how have you been? Still writing trash?"
     Before  I  could  answer  he started off on the first of a
series of tangents. He  thanked  me  effusively  for  the  good
coverage  he'd  always  had  from the Nipple. He must have been
aware that I didn't work on the  fashion  page,  but  maybe  he
thought  I'd  put  in a good word for him. Seeing as how he was
about to design  a  new  body  for  me,  I  saw  no  reason  to
disillusion him.
     There  were  many  more  things discussed, many glasses of
champagne put  away,  some  aromatic  and  mildly  intoxicating
smokes  inhaled.  It all kept coming back to Topic A: when were
"they" going to discover he was a fraud?
     I was conversant with that feeling myself. It's common  to
people  who  are good at something they have no particular love
for.  In  fact,  it's   common   among   all   but   the   most
self-assured--say,  Callie, for instance. Robbie had a bad case
of it, and I could hardly blame him. Not that I thought him  an
utter  charlatan.  I don't have much of an eye for such things,
but from what I gathered he actually was quite talented. But in
the world he inhabited, talent often had very little to do with
anything. Taste is fickle. In the world of design, you're  only
as  good  as  your last season. The back alleys and taprooms of
Bedrock are strewn with the still-breathing corpses  of  people
who  used  to be somebody. Some of them had shops right here in
the Alley.
     After a while I began to  be  a  little  alarmed.  I  knew
Robbie, and I knew he would always be this way, frightened that
the  success  he'd  never really adjusted to because he'd never
understood where it came from would be snatched away from  him.
That's  just  the  way  he  was. But from the amount of time he
seemed willing to spend with me, he was either in deep  trouble
or I should feel extremely flattered. I'd counted on having ten
or  fifteen  minutes  with  The Master while he penciled in the
broad strokes, then turned me over to aides to  do  the  actual
design  work.  Didn't  he  have  more important clients waiting
somewhere?
     "Saw you on telly," he said, after winding down  from  his
increasingly  tiresome lament. "With that dreadful . . . what's
her name? I forget. More on that incredibly boring David  Earth
story.  I'm afraid I switched off. I don't care if I never hear
his name again."
     "I felt that way three hours into the first day.  But  you
were fascinated for at least twentyfour hours, you couldn't get
enough news about it."
     "Sorry to disappoint you. It was boring."
     "I  doubt  it. Think back to when you first read about it.
You were dying to hear more. It was boring later,  after  you'd
seen the film three or four times."
     He frowned, then nodded. "You're right. My eyes were glued
to the newspad. How did you know?"
     "It's  true  of  almost  everybody.  You in particular. If
everyone's talking about something, you  can't  afford  not  to
have  an  opinion,  a  snide  comment,  a  worldly  sigh  . . .
something. To not have heard of it would be unthinkable."
     "We're in the same business, aren't we?"
     "We're cousins, anyway. Maybe the  difference  is,  in  my
business we can afford to run something into the ground. We use
up  news.  By  the time we're through with it, there is nothing
quite so boring as what fascinated you twenty-four  hours  ago.
Then we move on to the next sensation."
     "Whereas  I  must always watch for that magic moment a few
seconds before something becomes  as  pass  as  your  taste  in
clothing."
     "Exactly."
     He sighed. "It's wearing me down, Hildy."
     "I don't envy you--except for the money."
     "Which I am investing most sensibly. No hithrust vacations
to the  Uranian  moons  for  me.  No  summer  homes on Mercury.
Strictly blue chips. I'm not going to ever have to  scrape  for
my  air  money.  What  I  wonder  is,  will the hunger for lost
acclaim emaciate my soul?" He raised an eyebrow and gave  me  a
jaundiced  look.  "I assume those specs you gave Kiki outline a
plan as stodgy as what you're currently walking around in?"
     "Why would you assume that? Would I come here if I  wanted
something  I could get in any local barber shop? I want Body By
Bobbie."
     "But I thought . . ."
     "That was female to male. The reverse  is  a  whore  of  a
different color."
     #
     I  decided  to  make a note to myself. Send flowers to the
fashion editor of the Nipple. There was no other way to account
for the royal treatment Bobbie lavished on me during  the  next
four  hours.  Oh,  sure, my money was as good as anyone else's,
and I didn't want to think too hard  about  the  bill  for  all
this.   But  neither  friendship  nor  idleness  could  explain
Bobbie's behavior. I  concluded  he  was  looking  for  a  good
review.
     Can  you  call  something  a quirk when you share it was a
large minority of your  fellow  citizens?  I'm  not  sure,  but
perhaps  it  is.  I've  never  understood  the  roots  of  this
peculiarity, any more than I understand why I don't care to  go
to bed with men when I am a man. But the fact is, as a man I am
fairly  indifferent  to  how  I look and dress. Clean and neat,
sure, and ugly is something I can  certainly  do  without.  But
fashions  don't concern me. My wardrobe consists of the sort of
thing Bobbie threw away when I arrived, or worse. I usually put
on shorts, a comfortable shirt, soft shoes, a  purse:  standard
men's  wear, suitable for all but formal occasions. I don't pay
much attention to colors or cut. I  ignore  make-up  completely
and use only the blandest of scents. When I'm feeling festive I
might  put  on  a colorful skirt, more of a sarong, really, and
never fret about the hemline. But most of what I wear  wouldn't
have  raised eyebrows if I had gone back in time and walked the
streets in the years before sex changing.
     The fact is, I feel that while a woman can wear just about
anything, there are whole categories of clothing  a  man  looks
silly in.
     Case  in  point:  the  body-length, form-fitting gown, the
kind that reaches down to the ankles, maybe with a slit up  one
side  to  the  knee.  Put it on a man's body and the penis will
produce a flaw in the smooth line unless it  is  strapped  down
tight--and  the  whole point of wearing something like that, to
my mind, is to feel  slinky,  not  bound  up.  That  particular
garment  was  designed  to  show  the  lines of a woman's body,
curves instead of angles. Another  is  the  plunging  neckline,
both  the  sort  that  conceal  and  the  kind that push up and
display the breasts. A man can certainly get away with  a  deep
neckline,  but  the  purpose  and  the  engineering  of  it are
different.
     Before you start your letter to the editor, I  know  these
are  not  laws  of  nature.  There's no reason a man can't have
feminine legs, for instance, or breasts, if he wants them. Then
he'd look good in those  clothes,  to  my  eye,  but  precisely
because  he  had  feminine  attributes.  I  am  much  more of a
traditionalist when it comes to  somatotypes.  If  I  have  the
breasts  and  the  hips and the legs, I want the whole package.
I'm not a mixer. I feel there are boy things and  girl  things.
The  basic  differences  in  body types are easy to define. The
differences in clothing types is tougher, and the  line  moves,
but  can  be summarized by saying that women's clothing is more
apt to emphasize and define secondary  sexual  characteristics,
and to be more colorful and varied.
     And I can name a thousand exceptions through history, from
the court of Louis the Sun King to the chador of Islamic women.
I realize  that  western  women  didn't  wear  pants  until the
twentieth century, and men didn't wear skirts-Scotland and  the
South  Seas  notwithstanding--until  the  twenty-first.  I know
about peacocks and parrots and mandrill baboons. When you start
talking about sex and the way you think it  should  be,  you're
bound  to  get  into trouble. There are very few statements you
can make about sex that won't have an exception somewhere.
     I guess this is something of a hobby-horse with  me.  It's
in   reaction   to  the  militant  unisexers  who  believe  all
gender-identified clothing should be eliminated, that we should
all pick our clothing randomly, and sneer at you publicly  when
you  dress  too  feminine  or  masculine.  Or  even  worse, the
uniformists, those people  who  want  us  all  to  wear  formal
job-identified   clothing  at  all  times,  or  a  standardized
outfit--wait a minute, I've got one right  here,  just  let  me
show  you,  you'll  love  it!--usually  some drearily practical
People's Jumpsuit with a high neck and lots of  pockets,  comes
in three bilious colors. Those people would have us all running
about looking like some dreadful twentieth century "futuristic"
film,  when  they  thought the people of 1960 or 2000 would all
want to dress alike, with meter-wide shelves on their shoulders
or plastic bubbles over their heads or togas or the  ubiquitous
jumpsuit  with  no  visible zipper, and leave you wondering how
did those people make water. These folks would  be  amusing  if
they  didn't  introduce  legislation every year aimed at making
everyone behave like them.
     Or lingerie! What about lingerie? Transvestism didn't  die
with  sex changing--very little did, because human sexuality is
concerned with what gives us a thrill, not what makes sense-and
some people with male bodies still prefer to dress up in garter
belts and padded bras and short transparent nightgowns. If they
enjoy it that's fine with me. But I've  always  felt  it  looks
awful, simply because it clashes. You may say the only thing it
clashes with are my cultural preconceptions, and I'd agree with
you.  So  what  else  is  fashion?  Bobbie  could tell you that
tinkering with a cultural icon is something you do at your  own
peril,   with  a  few  stiff  drinks,  a  brave  smile,  and  a
premonition of disaster, because nine times out of ten it  just
doesn't sell.
     Which simply means that as many as half my fellow citizens
feel as  I do about gender dressing, and if that many feel that
way, how bad can it be?
     I rest my case.
     #
     So I  spent  a  pleasant  time  fulfilling  a  genderbased
stereotype: shopping. I enjoyed the hell out of it.
     When  you  get  the  full treatment from Bobbie, no bodily
detail is too  small.  The  big,  gaudy,  obvious  things  were
quickly  disposed  of.  Breasts?  What  are people wearing this
year, Bobbie? As small as that? Well, let's not get ridiculous,
dear, I'd like to feel a little bounce, all right?  Legs?  Sort
of  . . . you know . . . long. Long enough to reach the ground.
No knobs on the knees, if you please. Trim ankles. Arms?  Well,
what  can you say about arms? Work your magic, Bobbie. I like a
size five shoe and all my best dresses  are  nines--and  thirty
years  out  of date, enough time for some of them to be stylish
again-so work around that. Besides, I  feel  comfortable  in  a
body  that  size,  and height reductions cost out at nearly two
thousand per centimeter.
     Some people spend most of their time on the face. Not  me.
I've always preferred to make any facial changes gradually, one
feature  at a time, so people can recognize me. I settled on my
basic face fifty years ago, and see no need to  change  it  for
current  fashion,  beyond a little frill here and there. I told
Bobbie not to change the underlying bone structure  at  all;  I
feel  it's  suitable  for  a  male  or a female countenance. He
suggested a slight fullness to the lips and  showed  me  a  new
nose I liked, and I went flat-out trendy with the ears, letting
him  give  me  his latest design. But when I showed up for work
after the Change, everyone would know it was Hildy.
     I thought I was through . . . but  what  about  the  toes?
Bare  feet  are quite practical in Luna, and had come back into
vogue, so people will be looking at your toes. The current rage
was to eliminate them  entirely  as  an  evolutionary  atavism;
Bobbie  spent  some  time  trying to sell me on Sockfeet, which
look just like they sound. I guess I'm just a toe person. Or if
you listen to Bobbie, a Cro-Magnon. I spent half an hour on the
toes, and almost as much time on the fingers and hands. There's
nothing I hate like sweaty hands.
     I put  considerable  thought  into  the  contemplation  of
navels.  With  the nipples and the vulva, the navel is the only
punctuation between the chin and the toenails, the only  places
for  the  eye to pause in the smooth sweep of the female form I
was designing. I did not neglect it. Speaking of the  vulva,  I
once  again  proved  myself  a  hopeless  reactionary.  Lately,
otherwise  conservative  women  had  been  indulging  the  most
outrageous   flights   of   fancy   when   it  came  to  labial
architecture, to the point that it was sometimes  difficult  to
be sure what sex you were looking at without a second glance. I
preferred  more  modest,  compact  arrangements. With me, it is
mostly not for public display anyway. I usually wear  something
below the waist, some sort of skirt or pants, and I didn't want
to frighten off a lover when I dropped them.
     "You won't frighten anyone with that, Hildy," Bobbie said,
looking sourly at the simulation of the genitals I'd just spent
so much  time  elaborating.  "I'd say your main problem here is
boredom."
     "It was good enough for Eve."
     "I must have missed her last showing. Can't  imagine  why.
I'm sure it will prove quite useful in the circles you move in,
but are you sure I couldn't interest you in--"
     "I'm  the  one that has to use it, and that's what I want.
Have a heart, Bobbie. I'm an oldfashioned girl.  And  didn't  I
give  you a free hand with the skin tones, and the nipples, and
the ears and the shoulderblades and the collarbones and the ass
and those two fetching little  dimples  in  the  small  of  the
back?"  I  turned  at  the  waist  and  looked at the full-body
simulation that had replaced one of the mirrors, and chewed  on
a  knuckle. "Maybe we should take another look at those dimples
. . ."
     He talked me out of  changing  that,  and  into  a  slight
alteration of the backs of the hands, and he bitched at me some
more  and  threw  up his hands in disgust at every opportunity,
but I could tell he was basically pleased.  And  so  was  I.  I
moved  around,  watching  the  female  I  was  about  to become
duplicate all my movements, and it was good. It was the seventh
hour: time to rest.
     And then a strange thing happened to me. I  was  taken  to
the  prep  room,  where  the  technicians  built their mystical
elixirs, and I began to suffer a panic attack.  I  watched  the
thousand  and one brews dripping from the synthesizers into the
mixing retorts, cloudy with potential,  and  my  heart  started
beating wildly and I began to hyperventilate. I also got angry.
     I knew what I was afraid of, and anyone would be angry.
     Unless  you've chosen the most radical of body make-overs,
very little of modern sex changing involves actual surgery.  In
my case, about all the cutting that was planned was the removal
and storage of the male genitalia, and their replacement with a
vagina,  cervix, uterus, and set of fallopian tubes and ovaries
which were even then being  messengered  over  from  the  organ
bank, where they'd reposed since my last Change. There would be
a  certain  amount of body sculpting, but not much. Most of the
myriad alterations I was about to undergo would be done by  the
potions being mixed in the prep room. Those brews contained two
elements:   a  saline  solution,  and  uncounted  trillions  of
nanobots.
     Some of these cunning little machines were standard,  made
from templates used in all male-tofemale sex changes. Some were
customized,  cobbled  together  from parts stolen from microbes
and viruses  or  from  manufactured  components,  assembled  by
Bobbie   and   assigned  a  specific  and  often  minute  task,
copyrighted, and given snippets of my  own  genetic  code  much
like  a bloodhound is given an old shoe to establish the scent.
All of them were too small to be seen by the  human  eye.  Some
were  barely  visible  in  a good microscope. Many were smaller
than that.
     They were assembled by other nanobots at chemical-reaction
speeds, and produced in groups seldom smaller than one  million
units.  Injected  into  the  bloodstream, they responded to the
conditions they  found  there,  gravitated  to  their  assigned
working  sites  using  the  same processes whereby hormones and
enzymes found their way  through  the  corpus,  identified  the
right  spots  by using jig-saw-like pieces of these same bodily
regulators as both maps and grapplers, attached themselves, and
began to boogie. The smaller  ones  penetrated  the  individual
cell  walls and entered the DNA itself, reading the amino acids
like rosary beads, making carefully planned cuts  and  splices.
The  larger  ones, the kind with actual motors and manipulators
and transistors, screws, scrapers, memories, arms--what used to
be called microbots when they were first  made  with  the  same
technologies   that   produced   primitive  integrated  circuit
chips--these  congregated  at  specified  sites  and  performed
grosser tasks. The microbots would each be handed a piece of my
genetic  code  and  another  piece synthesized by Bobbie, which
functioned like eccentric cams in making the tiny  machines  do
their  particular  job. Some would go to my nose, for instance,
and start carving away here, building up there,  using  my  own
body and supplementary nutrients carried in by cargo microbots.
Waste material was picked up in the same way and ferried out of
the  body.  In  this  way  one  could  gain or lose weight very
quickly. I myself planned to emerge  from  the  Change  fifteen
kilos lighter.
     The  nanobots  labored  diligently to make the terrain fit
the map. When it did, when my nose was  the  shape  Bobbie  had
intended,  they  detached  themselves  and  were  flushed away,
de-programmed, and bottled to await the next customer.
     Nothing new or frightening about that.  It  was  the  same
principle  used  in  the  over-the-counter pills you can buy to
change the color of your eyes or the  kinkiness  of  your  hair
while  you  sleep.  The only difference was the nanobots in the
pills were too cheap to salvage; when they'd  done  their  work
they  simply  turned  themselves  off  in  your kidneys and you
pissed them away. Most of  the  technology  was  at  least  one
hundred  years  old,  some  more ancient than that. The hazards
were almost nil, very well-known, and completely in control.
     Except I now found I had developed  a  fear  of  nanobots.
Considering  what the CC had told me about them, I didn't think
it was entirely unfounded.
     The other thing that frightened me was even worse.  I  was
afraid to go to sleep.
     Not  so  much  sleep in the normal sense. I had slept well
enough  the  night  before;  better  than  normal,   in   fact,
considering my exhaustion from the two-day celebrity binge. But
the  epic  infestation  of  nanobots  I was about to experience
wreaks havoc on the body and the mind. It's not  something  you
want to be awake for.
     Bobbie  noticed  something  was wrong as he took me to the
suspension tank. It was all I could do to hold still while  the
techs   shoved   the   various   hoses   and  cables  into  the
freshly-incised stigmata in my arms and legs and belly. When  I
was  invited  to  step  into  the coffin-sized vat of cool blue
fluid, I almost lost my composure. I stood there  gripping  the
sides  of  the  vat,  knuckles  white, with one foot in and the
other not wanting to leave the floor.
     "Something the matter?" Bobbie asked, quietly. I saw  some
of his helpers were trying not to stare at me.
     "Nothing you could do anything about."
     "You want to tell me about it? Let me get these people out
of the room."
     Did  I  want  to  tell him? In a way, I was aching to. I'd
never gotten to tell Callie,  and  the  urge  to  spill  it  to
somebody was almost overwhelming.
     But this was not the place and certainly not the time, and
Bobbie was most definitely not the person. He would simply find
a way  to  incorporate it into the continuing Gothic novel that
was The Life Of Robert  Darling,  with  himself  the  imperiled
heroine.  I  simply  had to get through this myself and talk it
over with someone later.
     And suddenly I knew who that someone would be. So  get  it
over with, Hildy, grit your teeth and step into the tub and let
the  soothing  fluids  lull  you into a sleep no more dangerous
than you've had every night for 36 1/2 thousand nights.
     The water closed  over  my  face.  I  gulped  it  into  my
lungs--always  a  bit unpleasant until all the air is gone--and
looked up into the wavering face of my re-creator, unsure  when
and where I would wake up again.

        =*= =*= =*= =*=

        CHAPTER NINE







     I  found  Fox deep in the bowels of the Oregon disneyland.
He was engrossed in a blueprint projected on a  big  horizontal
table  at  the  foot of a machine the size of an interplanetary
liner, which I later  learned  was  the  starter  motor  for  a
battery  of  machines  that  produced  north  winds  in Oregon.
Machines  merely  elephantine  in  size  swarmed   around   the
partially-assembled  behemoth,  some with human operators, some
working on  their  own,  and  there  was  the  usual  crowd  of
blueuniformed  laborers leaning on shovels and perfecting their
spitting techniques.
     He glanced up as I came closer, looked me up and down, and
returned to his work. I'd seen a flicker  of  interest  in  his
eyes,  but  no  recognition.  Then  he  looked up again, looked
harder, and suddenly smiled.
     "Hildy? Is that you?"
     I stopped and twirled around for him, flashing a few dozen
of Crazy Bob's Best Patented Incisors and two of  the  greatest
legs  the  Master  ever designed as my skirt swirled out like a
Dresden figurine. He tossed a light pen on the screen and  came
toward  me, took my hand and squeezed it. Then he realized what
he was doing, laughed, and hugged me tightly.
     "It's been too long," he said. "I saw you on the 'pad  the
other  day."  He  gestured  at  me in a way that said he hadn't
expected what he was seeing now. I shrugged; the body spoke for
itself.
     "Reading the Nipple now? I don't believe it."
     "You didn't have to read the Nipple  to  catch  your  act.
Every  time  I  changed  the  channel,  there  you were, boring
everybody to death."
     I made no comment. He had surely  been  as  interested  at
first  as  Bobbie and everybody else in Luna, but why bother to
explain that to him? And knowing  Fox,  he  wouldn't  admit  he
could  be  as easily seduced by a sensational story as the rest
of his fellow citizens.
     "Frankly, I'm glad the idiot's gone. You have no idea  the
kind  of  problems  David  Earth and his merry band cause in my
line of work."
     "It's Saturday," I said, "but your service said  you'd  be
down here."
     "Hell,  it's  almost  Sunday.  It's  the  typical start-up
problems. Look, I'll be through here  in  a  few  minutes.  Why
don't you stick around, we can go out for dinner, or breakfast,
or something."
     "The something sounds interesting."
     "Great. If you're thirsty one of these layabouts can scare
up a beer  for  you;  give  'em  something to do equal to their
talents." He turned away and hurried back to his work.
     The brief sensation caused by my  arrival  died  away;  by
that  I mean the several dozen men and handful of women who had
transferred their gazes from the far distance to  my  legs  now
returned to the contemplation of infinity.
     A   sidewalk   supervisor   unused  to  the  ways  of  the
construction game might have wondered  how  anything  got  done
with so many philosophers and so few people with dirty hands in
evidence.  The  answer  was  simply  that Fox and three or four
other engineers did all the work that  didn't  involve  lifting
and carrying, and the machines did the rest. Though hundreds of
cubic  miles of stone and soil would be moved and shaped before
Oregon was complete, not a spoonful of it would be  shifted  by
the  Hod-carriers  Union  members, though they were so numerous
one could almost believe they could  accomplish  it  in  a  few
weeks.  No,  the  shovels  they  carried  were highly polished,
ceremonial badges of profession, as un-sullied by dirt  as  the
day  they were made. Their chief function was safety. If one of
the deep thinkers fell asleep standing up,  the  shovel  handle
could  be slotted into an inverted pocket on the worker's union
suit and sometimes prevented that worthy from falling over. Fox
claimed it was the chief cause of onthe-job accidents.
     Perhaps I exaggerate. The job guarantee is a  civil  right
basic  to  our  society, and it is a sad fact that a great many
Lunarians are suited only for the kind  of  job  machines  took
over  long  ago.  No  matter  how much we tinker with genes and
eliminate the actually defective, I think we'll always have the
slow, the unimaginative, the disinterested, the hopeless.  What
should we do with them? What we've decided is that everyone who
wants  to  will  be  given  a  job  and  some  sort of badge of
profession to testify to it, and put to some sort of work  four
hours  a  day.  If you don't want to work, that's fine, too. No
one starves, and air has been free since before I was born.
     It didn't used to be that way. Right after the Invasion if
you didn't pay your air tax, you could be shown to the  airlock
without your suit. I like the new way better.
     But  I'll  confess  it  seems  terribly  inefficient.  I'm
ignorant when it comes to  economics,  but  when  I  bother  to
wonder about such things it seems there must be a less wasteful
way.  Then  I  wonder  what these people would do to fill their
already-from my viewpoint--empty lives, and I resolve  to  stop
wondering.  What's  the  big problem with it, anyway? I suspect
there were people standing around leaning on shovels  when  the
contract for the first pyramid was signed.
     Does  it  sound  terribly intolerant for me to say I don't
understand how they do it? Perhaps they'd think the same of me,
working in a "creative" capacity for an organization I  loathe,
at  a  profession  with  dubious--at best--claims to integrity.
Maybe these laborers would think me  a  whore.  Maybe  I  am  a
literary whore. But in my defense I can say that journalism, if
I may be permitted to use the term, has not been my only job. I
have done other things, and at that moment felt strongly that I
would be moving on from the Nipple fairly soon.
     Most  of  the  men and women around me as I waited for Fox
had never held another job. They were not suited  for  anything
else.  Most  were  illits, and the opportunities for meaningful
work for such people are  few.  If  they  had  artistic  talent
they'd be using it.
     How  did  they  make  it  through  the day? Were these the
people who were contributing to the alarming  rise  in  suicide
the  CC  reported?  Did  they  get up some morning, pick up the
shovel, think the hell with it, and blow their  brains  out?  I
resolved to ask the CC, when I started speaking to him again.
     It  just  seemed  so  bleak  to  me.  I studied one man, a
foreman according to one of  the  many  badges  pinned  to  his
denims,  a  Century Man with the gaudy lapel pin proclaiming he
had spent one hundred years leaning  on  that  shovel.  He  was
standing  near  Fox,  looking  in  the general direction of the
blueprint table with an expression I'd last seen on  an  animal
that  was  chewing  its  cud.  Did he have hopes and dreams and
fears, or had he used them all up? We've prolonged life to  the
point that we don't have a clear idea of when it might end, but
have  failed to provide anything new and interesting to do with
that vast vista of years.
     Fox put his hand on my shoulder and  I  realized,  with  a
shock  and  a  perverse  sense  of reassurance that I must have
looked  like  a  cud-chewer  myself  as  I  thought  my   deep,
penetrating  thoughts.  That foreman was probably a fine fellow
to sit around and bullshit with. I'll bet  he  was  a  terrific
joke-teller and could throw one hell of a game of darts. Did we
all  have  to  be,  to  use  the traditional expression, rocket
scientists? I know a rocket scientist, and a slimier curmudgeon
you would not care to meet.
     "You're looking good," Fox said.
     "Thanks. You all done here for now?"
     "Until Monday. I hate to be one of those people married to
the job, but if somebody doesn't  worry  about  it  this  place
won't live up to its potential."
     "Still  the same Fox." I put my arm around his waist as we
walked toward his trailer, parked in a jumble of idle machines.
He put his hand on my shoulder, but I could tell  his  thoughts
were still back in the blueprints.
     "I  guess so. But this is going to be the best disney yet,
Hildy. Mount Hood is finished; all we need is some  snow.  It's
only  one-quarter  scale,  but it fools the eye from almost any
angle. The Columbia's full and almost up to speed. The gorge is
going to be magnificent. We're going to have a real salmon run.
I've got  Douglas  Firs  twenty  meters  high.  Even  when  you
force-grow  'em, those babies take some time. Deer, grizzlies .
. . it'll be great."
     "How long till completion?"  We  were  passing  some  bear
pens. The inmates looked out at us with lazy predators' eyes.
     "Five   years,  if  it  all  goes  well.  Probably  seven,
realistically." He held the door to the trailer and followed me
inside. It was utilitarian, overflowing with papers. About  the
only  personal  touch  I  saw was an antique slide rule mounted
over the gas  fireplace.  "You  want  to  order  something  in?
There's  a good Japanese place that will deliver here. I had to
train them; this place is tough to find. Or we could go out  if
there's something else you'd rather have."
     I  knew  exactly  what  I  wanted, and we wouldn't have to
order out for it. I put my arms around him and kissed him in  a
way  that  almost  made up for the forty years we'd been out of
each others' beds. When I  drew  back  for  a  breath,  he  was
smiling down at me.
     "Is  this  dress  a particular favorite?" he asked. He had
his hand in the neckline, bunching the fabric.
     "Would it do me any good to say yes?"
     He slowly shook his head, and ripped it off.
     #
     Lovers of fashion should be relieved to note  two  things:
the  dress  was  thirty years old and not one of those that was
stylish again, though I had picked it because it flattered  the
new  me.  Bobbie  would have gagged to see it, but Fox was more
direct. And second, I had known Fox would  destroy  it,  though
not  as a fashion policeman-male or female, Fox was dense about
such things. The main thing one needed to know  about  Fox  was
that--male  or female--he liked to dominate. He liked sex to be
rough and urgent and just this side of  brutal,  and  that  was
exactly  what  I  was in the mood for. As he gave me one of the
most thorough rogerings of my life I thanked what gods there be
that I had found him during a male period of his life.
     Fox was the one I had thought of as I stood  nervously  on
the  brink  of Change, and it made perfect sense that I did. He
and I . . . actually, for a time it had been she and I, then he
and I . . . we had been lovers for ten years. I don't know just
why we broke up, or maybe I've forgotten, but we  came  out  of
the parting good friends. Perhaps we simply grew apart, as they
say,  though  that's  always sounded like a facile explanation.
How much growing do you still have to do when  one  of  you  is
sixty   and  the  other  is  fifty-five?  But  it  had  been  a
comfortable time in my life.
     The need to see him had been so urgent I  had  changed  my
plan  to  do  a  little shopping on the Platz, thereby doing my
bank balance a big favor. I had rushed  home,  dressed  in  the
scoop-necked, knee-length satiny black dress with the ballerina
skirt  that  currently lay tattered, wrinkled, and getting very
sweaty beneath my naked back, changed my hair  color  to  match
the  clothes, sprayed makeup on my eyes and mouth and polish on
my nails, doused myself with Fox's favorite scent, and was back
out the door in three minutes flat. I  had  taxied  to  Oregon,
worked  my  feminine  magic  on the poor boy and within fifteen
minutes had my knees in the air and my hands gripping his  bare
behind,  barking  like a dog and trying to force him through my
body and into the floor beneath us.
     Do you  see  why  ULTRA-Tingle  is  already  in  financial
trouble?
     Fox  usually  had  that  effect on me. Not always quite so
intense, it's  true.  I  was  experiencing  something  politely
called  hormone shock, or Change mania, but more often known as
going cunt crazy. One shouldn't expect to undergo such  radical
alterations  to  one's  body  without  a  certain  upset to the
psyche. With me it's always a  heightening  of  sexual  hunger.
Some people simply get irresponsible. I've got a friend who has
to  instruct  his  bank to shut off his line of credit for five
days after a Change, or he'd spend every shilling he had.
     What I was spending you can't put in a bank,  and  there's
no sense in saving it anyway.
     #
     Afterwards, he ordered a mountain of sushi and tempura and
when it was delivered, fired up the trailer and took us through
a long dark air duct and into Oregon.
     Like  all disneylands, it was a huge hemispherical bubble,
more or less flat on the bottom, the curved roof painted  blue.
The  first ones had been only a kilometer or two across, but as
the engineers figured out better  ways  to  support  them,  the
newer  ones  were  growing with no outer limit in sight. Oregon
was one of the biggest, along with two others  currently  under
construction: Kansas and Borneo. Fox tried his best not to bore
me  with  statistics;  I simply forget them a few minutes after
hearing them. Suffice it to say the place was very big.
     The floor was mostly rock and dirt shaped into  hills  and
two  mountains.  The  one  he'd  called Mount Hood was tall and
sharply pointed. The other was truncated and looked unfinished.
     "That's going to be a volcano," he said. "Or  at  least  a
good  approximation of an active volcano. There was an eruption
in this area in historic times."
     "You mean lava and fire and smoke?"
     "I wish we could.  But  the  power  requirements  to  melt
enough  rock  for  a worthwhile eruption would bust the budget,
plus any really good volume of smoke would hurt the  trees  and
wildlife.  What  it's  going  to do is vent steam three or four
times a day and shoot sparks at night. Should be  real  pretty.
The  project  manager's  trying to convince the money people to
fund a  yearly  ash  plume-nothing  catastrophic,  it  actually
benefits  the trees. And I'm pretty sure we'll be able to mount
a modest lava flow every ten or twenty years."
     "I wish I could see it better. It's pretty dim  in  here."
The  only  real light sources were at the scattered tree farms,
dots of bright green in the blasted landscape.
     "Let me get the sun turned on." He picked up  a  mike  and
talked  to the power section, and a few minutes later the "sun"
flickered and then blazed directly overhead.
     "All this will be covered in virgin forest; green  as  far
as  the  eye can see. Not at all like your shack in Texas. This
is a wet, cool climate, lots  of  snow  in  higher  elevations.
Mostly conifers. We're even putting in a grove of sequoias down
in  the  south  part,  though  we're  fudging  a  bit  on that,
geographically speaking."
     "Green'd be a lot better than this," I said.
     "You'll never be a true West Texan, Hildy,"  he  told  me,
and smiled.
     He  set us down on the Columbia River, at the mouth of the
gorge where it was wider and slower, on a broad,  flat  sandbar
of  an  island  which  was  the  center  of  what  he called an
ecological testbed. The beach was wide and hard-packed, full of
frozen ripples. Across  the  river  were  the  advertised  pine
trees,  but  near  us  there was only estuarine vegetation, the
sort of plants that didn't mind being flooded periodically.  It
ran  to  tall  skinny grasses and low, hardy bushes, few taller
than my head. There were some really huge logs half  buried  in
the  sand,  bleached  gray-white and rubbed smooth and round by
sun, wind, and water. I  realized  they  were  artificial,  put
there  to  impress  the  occasional  visitors,  who were always
brought here.
     We spread out a blanket on the sand and sat there  gorging
ourselves on the food. He stuck mostly to the shrimpoid tempura
while  I  concentrated  on the maguro, uni, hamachi, toro, tako
and paper-thin slices of fugu. I dredged each piece  in  enough
of  that wonderful green horseradish to make my nose run and my
ears turn bright red. Then we made love again, slow and  tender
for  the first hour, unusual for Fox, only getting intense near
the end. We stretched out in  the  sun  and  never  quite  fell
asleep,  just lolling like satiated reptiles. At least I hadn't
thought I was asleep until Fox woke me by flipping me over onto
my stomach and entering me without any warning. (No,  not  that
way.  Fox  likes to initiate it and he likes it rough, but he's
not into giving pain and I'm not into  receiving  it.)  Anyway,
these  things  even out. When Fox was a girl she usually forced
herself down on me before she was quite ready. Maybe he thought
all girls liked it that way. I didn't enlighten him, because  I
didn't  mind  it that much and the lovemaking that followed was
always Olympic quality.
     And afterwards . . .
     There's always an afterwards. Perhaps that's  why  my  ten
years  with  Fox was the longest relationship I ever had. After
the sex, most of them want to talk to you,  and  I  always  had
trouble  finding people I wanted to talk to as well as have sex
with. Fox was the exception. So afterwards . . .
     I put the remains of my clothing back on.  The  dress  was
severely ripped; I couldn't get it to stay over my left breast,
and  there were gaping holes here and there. It suited my mood.
We walked along the river's edge in water  that  never  covered
our  feet.  I  was playing the castaway game. This time I could
pretend to be a rich socialite in  the  tatters  of  her  fancy
gown,  desperately  seeking good native help. I trailed my toes
in the water as I walked.
     This place was timeless and unreal in a way Scarpa  Island
never was. The sun still hung there at high noon. I picked up a
handful  of  sand and peered at it, and it was just as detailed
as the imaginary sand of my year-long  mental  environment.  It
smelled  different.  It was riverine sand, not white coral, and
the water was fresh instead of salty, with a different  set  of
microscopic  lifeforms  in  it.  The  water was warmer than the
Pacific waters. Hell, it was quite  hot  in  Oregon,  into  the
lower  forties.  Something  to do with the construction. We had
both dripped sweat all day. I had licked it off  his  body  and
found  it  quite  tasty.  Not  so  much the sweat as the body I
licked it from.
     The setting could not have been more perfect if I'd picked
it myself. Say, Fox, this place reminds me  of  an  odd  little
adventure  I  had  one day about a week ago, between 15:30.0002
P.M. and around, oh, let's say 15:30.0009. And isn't it amazing
how times flies when you're having fun.
     So I said something a little less puzzling than that,  and
gradually  told  him  the story. Right up to the punch line, at
which point I gagged on it.
     Fox wasn't as reticent as Callie.
     "I've heard of the technique,  of  course,"  he  said.  "I
ought  to  be  surprised  you hadn't, but I guess you still shy
away from technology, just like you used to."
     "It's not very relevant to my job. Or my life."
     "That's what you thought. It must seem more relevant now."
     "Granted. It's never jumped up and bit me before."
     "That's what I  can't  figure.  What  you  describe  is  a
radical  treatment  for mental problems. I can't imagine the CC
using it on you without your consent unless you  had  something
seriously wrong with you."
     He  let that hang, and once more I gagged. Give Fox points
for candor; he didn't  let  a  little  thing  like  my  obvious
humiliation stand in his way.
     "So  what  is  your  problem?"  he  asked,  artless  as  a
three-year-old.
     "What's the penalty for littering in here?" I said.
     "Go ahead. This whole area will be relandscaped before the
public gets to track things in with their muddy feet."
     I took off the ruined dress and balled it up as well as  I
could.  I  hurled  it  out toward the water. It ballooned, fell
into the gentle current.  We  watched  it  float  for  a  short
distance,  soak  up  water,  and hang up on the bottom. Fox had
said you could walk a hundred meters out from  the  island  and
not  be  in much deeper than your knees. After that it got deep
quickly. We had come to the point where the island ended at the
upstream end. We stood on the  last  little  bit  of  sand  and
watched the current nudge the dress an inch at a time. I drew a
ragged breath and felt a tear run down my cheek.
     "If I'd known you felt that way about the dress, I'd never
have torn  it."  When  I glanced at him he took the tear on the
tip of his finger and licked the  finger  with  his  tongue.  I
smiled  weakly.  I walked out into the water, heading upstream,
and could hear him following behind me.
     Some of it was the hormonal shock, I'm sure. I  don't  cry
much,  and  no  more when I'm female than when male. The change
probably released it, and it felt right; it was time to cry. It
was time to admit how frightened I was by the whole thing.
     I sat down in the warm water. It didn't cover my  legs.  I
started working my hands into the sand on each side of me.
     "It seems that I keep trying to kill myself," I said.
     He  was standing beside me. I looked up at him, wiped away
another tear. God, he looked good. I wanted  to  move  to  him,
make  him ready again with my mouth, recline on this watery bed
and have him move inside me with the slow,  gentle  rhythms  of
the  river.  Was  that  a life-affirming urge, or a death wish,
metaphorically speaking? Was I in the river of life, or  was  I
fantasizing about becoming part of the detritus that all rivers
sweep eternally to the sea? There was no sea at the end of this
river, just a deeper, saltier growing biome for the salmon that
would  soon  teem here, struggling upstream to die. The sky the
sun would wester and die in was a  painted  backdrop.  Did  the
figures of speech of Old Earth still pertain here?
     It  had  to be an image of life. I wasn't tired of livin',
and I was very skeered of dyin'. He just keeps  rolling,  don't
he? Isn't that what life's all about?
     Be  that  as  it may, Fox was not the man for gentle river
rhythms, not twice in one day. He'd get carried away and in  my
present  mood  I  would  snap  at  him. So I kissed his leg and
resumed my excavation work in the sand.
     He sat down behind me and put his legs on each side of  me
and  started massaging my shoulders. I don't think I ever loved
him more than at that moment. It was exactly what I  needed.  I
hung  my  head, went boneless as an eel, let him dig his strong
fingers into every knot and twitch.
     "Can I say . . . I don't want to hurt you,  how  should  I
say it? I should have been surprised to hear that. I mean, it's
awful,  it's  unexpected,  it's  not something you want to hear
from a dear friend, and I want to say 'No, Hildy, it  can't  be
true!'  You  know?  But  I  was  surprised to find that . . . I
wasn't surprised. What an awful thing to say."
     "No, go ahead and say it,"  I  murmured.  His  hands  were
working  on  my head now. Much more pressure and my skull would
crack, and more power to him. Maybe some of  the  demons  would
fly away through the fissures.
     "In  some  ways,  Hildy, you've always been the unhappiest
person I know."
     I let that sink in without protest, just as I was  sinking
very  slowly into the sand beneath me. I was a light brown sack
of sand he was shaping with his fingers. I found nothing  wrong
with this sensation.
     "I think it's your job," he said.
     "Do you really?"
     "It must have occurred to you. Tell me you love your work,
and I'll shut up."
     There was no sense saying anything to that.
     "Not  going  to  say  anything  about  how good you are at
reporting? No comments about how exciting it is? You are  good,
you  know.  Too  good, in my opinion. Ever get anywhere on that
novel?"
     "Not so's you'd notice."
     "What about working for another pad?  One  a  little  less
interested in celebrity marriages and violent death."
     "I  don't think that would help anything; I never had much
respect for journalism as a profession in the first  place.  At
least  the  Nipple  doesn't  pretend to be anything but what it
is."
     "Pure shit."
     "Exactly. I know you're right. I'm not happy in  my  work.
I'm  pretty  sure I'm going to be quitting soon. All that stops
me is I don't have any idea what I'd do as an alternative."
     "I hear there's openings in the Coolie's Union.  They  won
the  contract  for  Borneo. The Hodcarriers are still muttering
about it."
     "Nice to hear they get excited about  something.  Maybe  I
should,"  I  said,  half-seriously.  "Less wear and tear on the
nerves."
     "It wouldn't work out. I'll tell you what your problem is,
Hildy. You've always wanted to be . . . useful. You  wanted  to
do something important."
     "Make a difference? Change the world? I don't think so."
     "I  think  you  gave  up  on  it before I met you. There's
always been a streak of bitterness in you about that; it's  one
of the reasons we broke up."
     "Really? Why didn't you tell me?"
     "I'm not sure I knew it at the time."
     We were both quiet for a while, tromping down memory lane.
I was  pleased  to  note  that,  even with this revelation, the
memories were mostly good. He kept  massaging  me,  pushing  me
forward  now  to get at my lower back. I offered no resistance,
letting my head fall forward. I could see my hair  trailing  in
the water. I wonder why people can't purr like cats? If I could
have,  I would have been at that moment. Maybe I should take it
up with the CC. He could probably find a way to make it work.
     He began to slow down in his work. No one ever wants  that
sort  of  thing  to  stop,  but I knew his hands were tiring. I
leaned back against him and he encircled me with his arms under
my breasts. I put my hands on his knees.
     "Can I ask you something?" I said.
     "You know you can."
     "What makes life worth living for you?"
     He didn't give it a flip answer, which I'd half  expected.
He thought it over for a while, then sighed and rested his chin
on my shoulder.
     "I don't know if that's really answerable. There's surface
reasons.   The   most   obvious   one  is  I  get  a  sense  of
accomplishment from my work."
     "I envy you that," I said. "Your work doesn't  get  erased
after a ten-second read."
     "There's  disappointment  there, too. I had sort of wanted
to build these things." His  arm  swept  out  to  take  in  the
uncompleted  vastness  of Oregon. "Turned out my talents lay in
other directions. That would be a sense of  accomplishment,  to
leave something like this behind you."
     "Is   that   the   key?   Leaving  something  behind?  For
'posterity?'"
     "Fifty years ago I might have said yes. And it's certainly
a reason. I think it's the reason for most people who have  the
wit  to  ask  what life's all about in the first place. I'm not
sure if it's  enough  reason  for  me  anymore.  Not  that  I'm
unhappy;  I  do  love  my  work, I'm eager to arrive here every
morning, I work late, I come in on weekends. But as to  leaving
something  that  I created, my work is even more ephemeral than
yours."
     "You're right,"  I  said  in  considerable  amazement.  "I
hadn't thought that was possible."
     "See?"  he  laughed.  "You  learn something new every day.
That's a reason for living. Maybe a  trivial  one.  But  I  get
satisfaction  in  the act of creation. It doesn't have to last.
It doesn't have to have meaning."
     "Art."
     "I've  begun  to  think  in  those   terms.   Maybe   it's
presumptuous,  but  we  weatherfolks  have  started  to  get  a
following for what we do. Who knows  where  it  might  go?  But
creating  something  is  pretty important to me." He hesitated,
then plowed ahead. "There's another sort of creation."
     I knew exactly what he meant. When all was said and  done,
that was the primary reason for our parting. He had had a child
shortly  afterward-I'd  asked him never to tell me if I was the
father. He had thought I should have one as  well,  and  I  had
told him flatly it was none of his business.
     "I'm sorry. Shouldn't have brought it up," he said.
     "No,  please.  I  asked;  I  have  to be ready to hear the
answers, even if I don't agree."
     "And you don't?"
     "I don't know. I've thought about it.  As  you  must  have
guessed,  I've  been  doing  a  lot  of thinking about a lot of
things."
     "Then you'll  have  considered  the  negative  reason  for
wanting  to  live.  Sometimes  I  think  it's the main one. I'm
afraid of death. I don't know what it is, and I don't  want  to
find out until the last possible moment."
     "No heavenly harps to look forward to?"
     "You  can't  be serious. Logically, you have to figure you
just stop existing, just go out like a light. But I defy anyone
to really imagine that. You know I'm not a mystic, but  a  long
life  has  led me to believe, to my great bemusement, that I do
believe there's something after death. I can't prove  one  iota
of this feeling, and you can't budge me from it."
     "I  wouldn't try. On my better days, I feel the same way."
I sighed one of the weariest sighs I can remember sighing.  I'd
been  doing  it  a  lot  lately,  each one wearier than the one
before. Where would it end? Don't answer.
     "So," I said. "We've got job  dissatisfaction.  Somehow  I
just  don't think that's enough. There are simpler solutions to
the problem. The restless urge to create. Childlessness." I was
ticking them off on my fingers. Probably not a  nice  thing  to
do,  since  he'd  tried  his best. But I had hoped for some new
perspective, which was entirely unreasonable but all  the  more
disappointing  when  none appeared. "And fear of death. Somehow
none of those really satisfy."
     "I shouldn't say it, but I  knew  they  wouldn't.  Please,
Hildy,  get  some  professional counseling. There, I said it, I
had to say it, but since I've known you for  a  long  time  and
don't  like to lie to you, I'll also say this: I don't think it
will help you. You've never been one to accept somebody  else's
answers  or  advice. I feel in my gut that you'll have to solve
this one on your own."
     "Or not solve it. And don't apologize;  you're  completely
right."
     The  river  rolled  on,  the sun hung there in the painted
sky. No time passed, and took a very long interval  to  do  so.
Neither  of  us felt the pressure to speak. I'd have been happy
to spend the next decade there, as long as  I  didn't  have  to
think.  But  I  knew  Fox  would eventually get antsy. Hell, so
would I.
     "Can I ask you one more thing?"
     He nibbled my ear.
     "No, not that. Well, not yet, anyway." I  tilted  my  head
back  and  looked  at  him,  inches away from my face. "Are you
living with anyone?"
     "No."
     "Can I move in with you for a while? Say, a week? I'm very
frightened and very lonely, Fox. I'm afraid to be alone."
     He didn't say anything.
     "I just want to sleep with somebody for a while.  I  don't
want to beg."
     "Let me think about it."
     "Sure."  It should have hurt, but oddly enough, it didn't.
I knew I would have said the same thing. What I didn't know  is
how  I  would have decided. The bald truth was I was asking for
his help in saving my life, and we both knew enough to  realize
there  was  little  he could do but hug me. So if he did try to
help and I did end up killing myself . . . that's a hell  of  a
load  of  guilt to hazard without giving it a little thought. I
could tell him there were no strings,  that  he  needn't  blame
himself  if the worst happened, but I knew he would and he knew
I knew it, so I didn't insult him by telling him that lie and I
didn't up the stakes by begging any  more.  Instead  I  nestled
more  firmly  into  his  arms and watched the Columbia roll on,
roll on.
     #
     We walked back to the trailer. Somewhere in the journey we
noticed the river was no longer flowing. It became  smooth  and
still, placid as a long lake. It reflected the trees on the far
side  as  faithfully as any mirror. Fox said they'd been having
trouble with some of the pumps. "Not my department,"  he  said,
thankfully.  It could have been pretty, but it gave me a chilly
feeling up and down the spine. It reminded me of the frozen sea
back at Scarpa Island.
     Then he got a remote unit from the trailer and said he had
something to show me. He tapped out a few codes and  my  shadow
began to move.
     The  sun  scuttled  across  the sky like some great silver
bird. The shadow of each tree  and  bush  and  blade  of  grass
marked  its passage like a thousand hourglasses. If you want to
experience disorientation, give that  a  try.  I  found  myself
getting  dizzy,  swayed  and  set my feet apart, discovered the
whole thing was a lot  more  interesting  when  viewed  from  a
sitting position.
     In  a  few minutes the sun went below the western horizon.
That was not what Fox had wanted to show me. Clouds were rising
in that direction, thin wispy ones, cirrus I think, or at least
intended to look like cirrus. The invisible  sun  painted  them
various  shades of red and blue, hovering somewhere just out of
sight.
     "Very pretty," I said.
     "That's not it."
     There was a distant boom,  and  a  huge  smoke  ring  rose
slowly  into the sky, tinged with golden light. Fox was working
intently. I heard a faraway whistling sound, and the smoke ring
began to alter in shape. The top was pressed down,  the  bottom
drawn  out.  I  couldn't  figure out what the point of all this
was, and then  I  saw  it.  The  ring  had  formed  a  passable
heart-shape. A valentine. I laughed, and hugged him.
     "Fox, you're a romantic fool after all."
     He  was  embarrassed.  He hadn't meant it to be taken that
way--which I had known, but he's easy  to  tease  and  I  could
never  resist  it.  So he coughed, and took refuge in technical
explanation.
     "I found out I could make a sort  of  backfire  effect  in
that wind machine," he said, as we watched the ring writhe into
shapelessness. "Then it's easy to use concentrated jets to mold
it,  within limits. Come back here when we open up, and I'll be
able to write your name in the sunset."
     We showered off the sand and he asked if I'd like to see a
scheduled blast in Kansas. I'd never seen a nuke before,  so  I
said  yes. He flew the trailer to a lock, and we emerged on the
surface, where he turned control over to the autopilot and told
me  about  some  of  the  things  he'd  been  doing  in   other
disneylands  as  we  looked  at the airless beauty falling away
beneath us.
     Maybe you have to be there  to  appreciate  Fox's  weather
sculpture.  He  rhapsodized about ice storms and blizzards he'd
created, and it meant nothing  to  me.  But  he  did  pique  my
interest. I told him I'd attend his next showing. I wondered if
he  was  angling  for  coverage in the Nipple. Well, I've got a
suspicious mind, and I'd been  right  about  things  like  that
often enough. I couldn't figure a way to make it interesting to
my  readership  unless  somebody  famous attended, or something
violent and horrible happened there.
     #
     Oregon was a showplace compared to  Kansas.  I'd  like  to
have had a piece of the dust concession.
     They   were  still  in  the  process  of  excavation.  The
half-dome was nearly complete, with just some relatively  small
areas  near  the  north  edge  to blast away. Fox said the best
vantage point would be near the west edge; if we'd gone all the
way to the south the dust would have  obscured  the  blast  too
much to make the trip worthwhile. He landed the trailer near an
untidy  cluster of similar modular mobile homes and we joined a
group of a few dozen other firework fans.
     This show was strictly "to the trade." Everyone but me was
a construction engineer; this sort of thing was not open to the
public. Not that  it  was  really  rare.  Kansas  had  required
thousands  of  blasts like this, and would need about a hundred
more before it was complete. Fox described it as the  best-kept
secret in Luna.
     "It's  not  really much of a blast as these things go," he
said. "The really big ones would jolt the structure  too  much.
But  when  we're  starting  out, we use charges about ten times
larger than this one."
     I noticed the "we." He really  did  want  to  build  these
places instead of just install and run the weather machines.
     "Is it dangerous?"
     "That's  sort  of a relative question. It's not as safe as
sleeping in your bed. But these  things  are  calculated  to  a
fare-thee-well.  We  haven't  had a blasting accident in thirty
years." He went on to tell me more  than  I'd  wanted  to  know
about  the  elaborate  precautions, things like radar to detect
big chunks of rock that might be heading our way, and lasers to
vaporize them. He had me completely reassured, and then he  had
to go and spoil it.
     "If  I  say run," he said, seriously, "hop in the trailer,
pronto."
     "Do I need to protect my eyes?"
     "Clear leaded glass will do it. It's the  UV  that  burns.
Expect  a  certain  dazzle  effect at first. Hell, Hildy, if it
blinds you the company's insurance will get you some new eyes."
     I was perfectly happy with the eyes  I  had.  I  began  to
wonder if it had been such a good idea, coming here. I resolved
to  look  away for the first several seconds. Common human lore
was heavy with stories of what could happen to you in a nuclear
explosion, dating all the way back to Old  Earth,  when  they'd
used a few of them to fry their fellow beings by the millions.
     The  traditional  countdown  began  at  ten.  I put on the
safety glasses and closed my eyes at two. So naturally I opened
them when the light shone  through  my  eyelids.  There  was  a
dazzle,  as  he'd  said,  but my eyes quickly recovered. How to
describe something that bright? Put all the bright  lights  you
ever  saw  into  one  place, and it wouldn't begin to touch the
intensity of that light. Then there was the ground  shock,  and
the  air  shock,  and finally, much later, the sound. I mean, I
thought I'd been hearing the sound of  it,  but  that  was  the
shock waves emanating from the ground. The sound in the air was
much  more  impressive. Then the wind. And the fiery cloud. The
whole thing took several minutes to unfold. When the flames had
died away there was a scattering of applause and a few  shouts.
I turned to Fox and grinned at him, and he was grinning, too.
     Twenty  kilometers  away,  a  thousand people were already
dead in what came to be called the Kansas Collapse.

        =*= =*= =*= =*=

        CHAPTER TEN







     None of us were aware of the disaster at the time.
     We drank a toast in champagne,  a  tradition  among  these
engineering  people.  Within ten minutes Fox and I were back in
the trailer and heading for an air lock. He  said  the  fastest
way  back  to  King  City was on the surface, and that was fine
with me. I didn't enjoy driving through the system  of  tunnels
that honeycombed the rock around a disneyland.
     We  had  no  sooner  emerged  into  the  sunlight than the
trailer was taken over by the autopilot, which informed us that
we would have to enter a holding pattern  or  land,  since  all
traffic  was  being  cleared  for  emergency vehicles. A few of
these streaked silently past us, blue lights flashing.
     Neither of us could remember an emergency of this apparent
size on the surface. There were occasional pressure  losses  in
the  warrens, of course. No system is perfect. But loss of life
in these accidents was rare. So we turned  on  the  radio,  and
what we heard sent me searching through Fox's belongings in the
back  of the trailer until I came up with a newspad. It was the
Straight Shit, and in other circumstances I would  have  teased
him  unmercifully  about that. But the story that came over the
pad was the type that made  any  snide  remarks  die  in  one's
throat.
     There  had been a major blowout at a surface resort called
Nirvana. First reports indicated some loss of  life,  and  live
pictures  from security cameras--all that was available for the
first ten minutes we watched--showed bodies lying motionless by
a large swimming pool. The  pool  was  bubbling  violently.  At
first  we thought it was a big jacuzzi, then we realized with a
shock that the water was boiling. Which meant there was no  air
in  there, and those people were certainly dead. Their postures
were odd, too. They all seemed to be holding on  to  something,
such  as  a  table  leg or a heavy concrete planter with a palm
tree.
     A story like that evolves in its own fractured way.  First
reports  are  always  sketchy,  and  usually  wrong.  We  heard
estimates of twenty dead, then fifty, then, spoken in awe,  two
hundred.  Then  those  reports  were  denied, but I had counted
thirty corpses myself.  It  was  maddening.  We're  spoiled  by
instant  coverage, we expect news stories to be cogent, prompt,
and nicely framed by steady cameras. These cameras were steady,
all right. They were immobile, and after  a  few  minutes  your
mind  screamed for them to pan, just a little bit, so you could
see what was just out of sight. But that  didn't  happen  until
about ten minutes after we landed, ten minutes that seemed like
an hour.
     At  first  I  think  it  affected me more than Fox. He was
shocked and horrified, naturally, and so was I, on  one  level.
The  other  level, the newshound, was seething with impatience,
querying the autopilot three times a minute when we  could  get
up  and  out  of  there so I could go cover the story. It's not
pretty, I know, but any reporter will understand  the  impulse.
You  want  to  move.  You tuck the horror of the images away in
some part of your mind  where  police  and  coroners  put  ugly
things,  and  your pulse pounds with impatience to get the next
detail, and the next, and the next. To be stuck on  the  ground
fifteen klicks away was torture of the worst kind.
     Then  a  fact  was mentioned that made it all too real for
Fox. I didn't catch its importance. I just looked over  at  him
and saw his face had gone white and his hands were trembling.
     "What's the matter?" I said.
     "The time," he whispered. "They just mentioned the time of
the blowout."
     I listened, and the announcer said it again.
     "Was that . . .?"
     "Yes. It was within a second of the blast."
     I  was still so preoccupied with wanting to get to Nirvana
that it was a full minute before I realized what  I  should  be
doing.  Then  I  turned  on  Fox's phone and called the Nipple,
using my secondhighest urgency code to guarantee  quick  access
to  Walter.  The  top  code,  he  had told me, was reserved for
filing on the end of the universe, or  an  exclusive  interview
with Elvis.
     "Walter,  I've got footage of the cause of the blowout," I
said, when his ugly face appeared on the screen.
     "The cause? You were there? I thought everybody--"
     "No, I wasn't there. I was in Kansas.  I  have  reason  to
believe  the  disaster was set off by a nuclear explosion I was
watching in Kansas."
     "It sounds unlikely. Are you sure--"
     "Walter,  it  has  to  be,  or  else  it's   the   biggest
coincidence  since  that  straight flush I beat your full house
with."
     "That was no coincidence."
     "Damn right it wasn't, and someday I'll tell you how I did
it. Meantime,  you've  wasted  twenty   seconds   of   valuable
newstime.  Run  it  with a disclaimer if you want to, you know,
'Could this have been the cause of the tragedy in Nirvana?' "
     "Give it to me."
     I fumbled around on the dash, and swore under  my  breath.
"Where's the neurofeed on this damn thing?" I asked Fox. He was
looking  at  me strangely, but he pulled a wire from a recessed
compartment. I fumbled it into my occipital  socket,  and  said
the  magic  words that caused the crystalline memory to recycle
and spew forth the last six hours of holocam recordings in five
seconds.
     "Where the hell are you, anyway?" Walter was saying. "I've
had a call out for you for twenty minutes."
     I told him, and he said he'd get  on  it.  Thirty  seconds
later  the  autopilot was cleared into the traffic pattern. The
press has some clout in situations like this, but I hadn't been
able to apply it from my beached position. We rose into the sky
. . . and turned the wrong way.
     "What the hell are you doing?" I asked Fox, incredulously.
     "Going back to King City," he said, quietly.  "I  have  no
desire  to  witness  any  of  what we've seen first-hand. And I
especially don't want to witness you covering it."
     I was about to blast him out  of  his  seat,  but  I  took
another  look,  and he looked dangerous. I had the feeling that
one more word from me would unleash something I didn't want  to
hear,  and  maybe  even  more  than  that.  So  I swallowed it,
mentally calculating how long it would take me to get  back  to
Nirvana from the nearest King City air lock.
     With  a  great  effort  I pulled myself out of reportorial
mode and tried to act like a human being. Surely I could do  it
for a few minutes, I thought.
     "You  can't be thinking you had anything to do with this,"
I said. He kept his eyes forward, as if he really  had  to  see
where the trailer was going.
     "You told me yourself--"
     "Look,  Hildy.  I  didn't  set the charge, I didn't do the
calculations. But some of my friends did.  And  it's  going  to
reflect  on  all of us. Right now I have to get onto the phone,
we're going to have to try and find out what went wrong. And  I
do  feel  responsible,  so  don't  try  to  argue me out of it,
because I know it isn't logical. I just wish you wouldn't  talk
to me right now."
     I didn't. A few minutes later he smashed his fist into the
dashboard  and  said,  "I  keep  remembering us standing around
watching. Cheering. I can still taste the champagne."
     I got out at the airlock, flagged a taxi, and told  it  to
take me to Nirvana.
     #
     Most disasters look eminently preventable in hindsight. If
only the  warnings had been heeded, if only this safety measure
had been implemented, if only  somebody  had  thought  of  this
possibility,  if  only, if only. I exempt the so-called acts of
God, which used to include things like earthquakes, hurricanes,
and meteor strikes. But hurricanes are infrequent on Luna. Moon
quakes are almost as rare, and selenography is exact enough  to
predict  them  with  a high degree of accuracy. Meteors come on
very fast and very hard, but their numbers are small and  their
average  size is tiny, and all vulnerable structures are ringed
with radars powerful enough to detect any  dangerous  ones  and
lasers  big  enough  to  vaporize them. The last blowout of any
consequence had happened almost sixty years before  the  Kansas
Collapse.   Lunarians  had  grown  confident  of  their  safety
measures. We had grown complacent enough to overcome our innate
suspicion of vacuum and the surface, some of us, to  the  point
where the rich now frolicked and tanned in the sunlight beneath
domes  designed to give the impression they weren't even there.
If someone had built a place like Nirvana a hundred  years  ago
there  would  have  been few takers. Back then the rich peopled
only the lowest, most secure levels and  the  poor  took  their
chances with only eight or nine pressure doors between them and
the Breathsucker.
     But  a century of technological improvements, of fail-safe
systems that transcended the merely  careful  and  entered  the
realms  of  the  preposterous, of pyramided knowledge of how to
live in a hostile environment . . . a hundred years of this had
worked as sea-change on Lunar society. The  cities  had  turned
over, like I've heard lakes do periodically, and the bottom had
risen to the top. The formerly swank levels of Bedrock were now
the   slums,  and  the  Vac  Rows  in  the  upper  levels  were
now--suitable renovated--the place to be. Anyone who aspired to
be somebody had to have a real window on the surface.
     There were some exceptions. Old reactionaries like  Callie
still  liked  to  burrow  deep, though she had no horror of the
surface. And a significant minority still  suffered  from  that
most  common  Lunar  phobia,  fear of airlessness. They managed
well enough, I suppose. I've read that a lot of people  on  Old
Earth feared high places or flying in aircraft, which must have
been a problem in a society that valued the penthouse apartment
and quick travel.
     Nirvana was not the most exclusive surface resort on Luna,
but it  wasn't  the  type hawked in three-day two-night package
deals, either. I've never understood the attraction  of  paying
an  exorbitant amount for a "natural" view of the surface while
basking in the carefully filtered rays of  the  sun.  I'd  much
prefer just about any of the underground disneys. If you wanted
a  swimming  pool,  there were any number belowground where the
water was just as wet. But some  people  find  simulated  earth
environments  frightening.  A  surprising number of people just
don't like plants, or the insects that  hide  themselves  among
the  leaves,  and have no real use for animals, either. Nirvana
catered to these folks, and to the urge to be seen  with  other
people  who  had  enough money to blow in a place like that. It
featured  gambling,  dancing,  tanning,  and   some   amazingly
childish  games organized by the management, all done under the
sun or the stars in the awesome beauty of Destination Valley.
     And it had damn well better be awesome. The  builders  had
spent a huge amount of money to make it that way.
     Destination  Valley  was a three-kilometer Lunar rift that
had been artfully carved into the  kind  of  jagged  peaks  and
sheer  cliffs  that a valley on "The Moon" should have been, if
God had employed a more flamboyant set designer,  the  sort  of
lunar  feature everybody imagined before the opening of the age
of space and the return of the first, dismal pictures  of  what
Luna  really  looked like. There were no acned rolling hillocks
here,  no  depressing  gray-and-white  fields  of  scoria,   no
boulders  with  all  the edges rubbed off by a billion years of
scorching days and bitter cold nights . . . and  none  of  that
godawful  boring dust that covers everything else on Luna. Here
the craters had sharp edges lined with jagged teeth. The cliffs
soared straight up, loomed over you like  breaking  waves.  The
boulders  were studded with multi-colored volcanic glasses that
shattered the raw sunlight into a  thousand  colors  or  glowed
with   warm   ruby   red  or  sapphire  blue  as  if  lit  from
within--which some of them were.  Strange  crystalline  growths
leaped toward the sky or spread across the ground like sinister
deep-sea  creatures,  quartzes  the size of ten-story buildings
embedded themselves in the ground as if dropped  from  a  great
height,  and  feathery  structures  with hairs finer than fiber
optics, so fragile they would  break  in  the  exhaust  from  a
passing  p-suit, clung like sea urchins and glowed in the dark.
The horizon was sculpted with equal care into a range to  shame
the  Rockies for sheer rugged beauty . . . until you hiked into
them and found they  were  quite  puny,  magnified  by  cunning
lighting and tricks of forced perspective.
     But  the valley floor was a rockhound's dream. It was like
walking into a mammoth geode. And it was all the naked  geology
that, in the end, had proven to be the downfall of Nirvana.
     One  of  the  four  main pleasure domes had nestled at the
foot of a cliff called, in typical breathless  Nirvanan  prose,
The  Threshold  Of  Heavenly  Peace.  It  had  been  formed  of
seventeen  of  the  largest,  clearest  quartz   columns   ever
synthesized,  and  the  whole structure had been ratnested with
niches for spotlights, lasers, and image projectors. During the
day it did nice things with the sunlight, but the real show was
at night, when light shows ran constantly. The effect had  been
designed to be soothing, relaxing, suggesting the eternal peace
of  some  unspecified  heaven.  The  images  that could be seen
within were not well-defined. They were almost-seen,  just  out
of  sight, elusive, and hypnotic. I'd been at the opening show,
and for all my cynicism about the place itself,  had  to  admit
that the Threshold was almost worth the price of a ticket.
     The detonation in Kansas had nudged an unmapped fault line
a few  klicks  from  Nirvana, resulting in a short, sharp quake
that lifted Destination Valley a few  centimeters  and  set  it
down with a thud. The only real damage done to the place, other
than  a lot of broken crockery, was that one of the columns had
been shaken loose and crashed down on dome  #3,  known  as  the
Threshold   Dome.   The   dome   was  thick,  and  strong,  and
transparent, with no ugly  geodesic  lines  to  mar  the  view,
having  been formed from a large number of hexagonal components
bonded together in a process that was  discussed  endlessly  in
the  ensuing weeks, and which I don't understand at all. It was
further  strengthened  by  some   sort   of   molecular   field
intensifier. It should have been strong enough to withstand the
impact of Tower #14, at least long enough to evacuate the dome.
And  it had, for about five seconds. But some sort of vibration
was set up in the dome material, and somehow magnified  by  the
field  intensifier,  and  three of the four-meter hex panels on
the side away from the cliffs  had  fractured  along  the  join
lines  and  been  blown  nearly into orbit by the volume of air
trying to get through that hole. Along with the  air  had  gone
everything  loose, including all the people who weren't holding
on to something, and many who were. It must have been a hell of
a wind. Some of the bodies were found up  on  the  rim  of  the
valley.
     By  the time I got there most of the action was long over.
A blowout is like that. There's a few  minutes  when  a  person
exposed  to  raw vacuum can be saved; after that, it's time for
the coroner. Except for a few people  trapped  in  self-sealing
rooms who would soon be extricated--and no amount of breathless
commentary   could   make   these   routine   operations  sound
exciting--the rest of the Collapse story was confined to ogling
dead bodies and trying to find an angle.
     The bodies definitely were not  the  story.  Your  average
Nipple  reader  enjoys  blood  and gore, but there is a disgust
threshold that might be  defined  as  the  yuck  factor.  Burst
eyeballs and swollen tongues are all right, as is any degree of
laceration  or  dismemberment.  But  the thing about a blow-out
death is, the human body has a certain amount of gas in it,  in
various cavities. A lot of it is in the intestine. What happens
when  that  gas  expands  explosively and comes rushing out its
natural outlet is not something to use as a lead item  in  your
coverage. We showed the bodies, you couldn't help that, we just
didn't dwell on them.
     No,  the real story here was the same story any time there
is a big disaster. Number two: children. Number  three:  tragic
coincidences. And always a big number one: celebrities.
     Nirvana didn't cater to children. They didn't forbid them,
they just  didn't  encourage  mommy  and daddie to bring little
junior along, and most of the clientele wouldn't have done  so,
anyway.  I  mean,  what  would that say about your relationship
with  the  nanny?  Only  three  children  died  in  the  Kansas
Collapse--which simply made them that much more poignant in the
eyes  of the readership. I tracked down the grandparents of one
three-yearold and got a genuine reaction shot when they learned
the news about the child's death. I needed a stiff drink or two
after that one. Some things a reporter does  are  slimier  than
others.
     Then  there's  the  "if-only" story, with the human angle.
"We were planning to spend the week at Nirvana, but  we  didn't
go  because  blah  blah blah." "I just went back to the room to
get my thingamabob when the next thing I knew  all  the  alarms
were  going  off  and I thought, where's my darling hubby?" The
public  had  an  endless  appetite  for  stories   like   that.
Subconsciously,  I think they think the gods of luck will favor
them when the tromp of doom starts to thump.  As  for  survivor
interviews,  I find them very boring, but I'm apparently in the
minority. At least half of them  had  this  to  say:  "God  was
watching  over me." Most of those people didn't even believe in
a god. This is the deity-as-hit-man view of  theology.  What  I
always  thought  was,  if  God was looking out for you, he must
have had a real hard-on for all those folks he belted into  the
etheric like so many rubbery javelins.
     Then  there  were the handful of stories that didn't quite
fit  any  of  these  categories,  what  I  call   heart-warming
tragedies.  The  best  to come out of Nirvana was the couple of
lovers found two kilometers from  the  blowout,  still  holding
hands.  Given  that  they'd  been blown through the hole in the
dome, their bodies weren't in the  best  shape,  but  that  was
okay, and since they'd outdistanced the stream of brown exhaust
that  no doubt would have seemed to be propelling them on their
way, had anyone survived to report on  that  improbable  event,
they  were  quite  presentable. They were just lying there, two
guys with sweet smiles on their faces, at the base  of  a  rock
formation  the  photographer had managed to frame to resemble a
church window. Walter paid through the nose to run  it  on  his
front feed, just like all the other editors.
     The  reporter  on that story was my old rival Cricket, and
it just goes to show you what initiative can accomplish.  While
the  rest  of  us  were  standing  around the ruins of dome #3,
picking our journalistic noses,  Cricket  hired  a  p-suit  and
followed  the  recovery  crews  out into the field, bringing an
actual film camera for maximum clarity. She'd bribed a team  to
delay  recovery  of  the pair until she could fix smiles on the
faces and  pick  up  the  popped-out  eyeballs  and  close  the
eyelids.  She knew what she wanted in that picture, and what it
got her was a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize that year.
     But the  big  story  was  the  dead  celebs.  Of  the  one
thousand,  one hundred and twenty-six dead in Nirvana, five had
been Important in one way or another.  In  ascending  order  of
magnitude,  they  were  a  politician  from Clavius District, a
visiting pop singer from Mercury, a talk-show host and hostess,
and Larry Yeager, whose newest picture's release date was moved
up three weeks to cash in  on  all  the  public  mourning.  His
career  had been in decline or he wouldn't have been at Nirvana
in the first place, but while being seen alive in a place  like
that  was  a  definite indicator that one's star was imploding,
soon to be a black hole--Larry had formerly moved in  only  the
most  rarefied orbits--where you die is not nearly as important
to a posthumous career as how  you  die.  Tragically  is  best.
Young  is  good.  Violently,  bizarrely,  notoriously . . . all
these things combined in  the  Kansas  Collapse  to  boost  the
market  value  of  the Yeager Estate's copyrights to five times
their former market value.
     Of course there was the other story.  The  "how"  and  the
"why."  I'm always much more concerned in where, when, and who.
Covering the investigations into the Collapse, as always, would
be an endless series of boring meetings and hours and hours  of
testimony  about  matters I was not technologically equipped to
handle anyway. The final verdict would not be in for months  or
years,  at  which  time the Nipple would be interested in "who"
once more, as in "who takes the fall for this fuck-up?" In  the
meantime  the  Nipple  could  indulge in ceaseless speculation,
character assassination, and violence to many reputations,  but
that  wasn't  my  department.  I read this stuff uneasily every
day, fearing that Fox's name would  somehow  come  up,  but  it
never did.
     What  with  one  thing  and another . . . mostly bothering
widows and orphans, I am forced to admit .  .  .  the  Collapse
kept  me  hopping  for  about  a  week.  I indulged in a lot of
mind-numbing preparations,  mostly  Margaritas,  my  poison  of
choice,  and  kept  a  nervous  weather  eye  open for signs of
impending depression. I saw some-there's no way you can cover a
story like that without feeling grief yourself, and  a  certain
selfloathing