shot your puppy, damn
it," I said. "Cricket, will you explain the facts  of  life  to
her?  I  would, but I'm clean; you're the unethical monster who
violated a basic rule of journalism."
     "I will if you'll trade places with me. I  don't  think  I
want  to  watch  all  that  go  down."  She  was pointing at my
sandwich with a prim expression that was belied by what I could
see of the remnants of  her  free  lunch,  which  included  the
skeletons of three tiny birds, picked clean.
     So  we switched, and I got down to the serious business of
eating and drinking, all the while keeping one  ear  cocked  to
the jabbering around me, on the off chance somebody had managed
to  get  a  scoop  on the canonization. No one had, but I heard
dozens of rumors:
     "Lennon? Oh, c'mon, he was all washed up, that bullet  was
a good career move."
     ".  .  .  wanna  know who it's gonna be? Mickey Mouse, put
your money on it."
     "How they going to handle that? He doesn't even exist."
     "So Elvis does? There's a cartoon revival--"
     "And if they picked a cartoon, it'd be Baba Yaga."
     "Get serious. She's not in the  same  universe  as  Mickey
Mouse . . ."
     "--says  it's  Silvio.  There's  nobody  with one half the
rep--"
     "But he's got one problem, from the Flacks' point of view:
he ain't dead yet. Can't get a  real  cult  going  till  you're
dead."
     "C'mon,  there's no law says they have to wait, especially
these days. He could go on for five hundred more years. What'll
they do, keep reaching  back  to  the  twentieth,  twenty-first
century and pick guys nobody remembers?"
     "Everybody remembers Tori-san."
     "That's different."
     "--notice  there's  three men and only one woman. Granting
they might pick somebody still alive, why not Marina?"
     "Why not both of 'em? Might even get them  back  together.
What a story. A double canonization. Think of the headlines."
     "How about Michael Jackson?"
     "Who?"
     It kept on and on, a speculative buzz in the background. I
heard  half  a dozen more names proposed, increasingly unlikely
to my way of thinking. The only new one I'd heard, the only one
I hadn't thought of, was Mickey, and I considered  him  a  real
possibility.  You could have walked down to the Leystrasse that
very day and bought a shirt with his picture on the front,  and
cartoons  were  enjoying  a  revival. There was no law saying a
cult had to have a real object, what was being worshipped  here
was an image, not flesh and blood.
     Actually,   while   there   were  no  rules  for  a  Flack
canonization, there were guidelines that took on the  force  of
laws.  The  Flacks did not create celebrities, they had no real
axe  to  grind  in  this  affair.  They   simply   acknowledged
pre-existing  cult  figures, and there were certain qualities a
cult figure had to have. Everyone had their own list  of  these
qualities,  and  weighted  them  differently.  Once more I went
through my own list,  and  considered  the  three  most  likely
candidates in the light of these requirements.
     First,  and  most  obvious,  the Gigastar had to have been
wildly popular when alive, with a  planetary  reputation,  with
fans  who  literally  worshipped  him.  So forget about anybody
before the early twentieth century. That was the  time  of  the
birth  of  mass media. The first cult figures of that magnitude
were film stars like Charlie Chaplin. He  could  be  eliminated
because  he  didn't  fulfill  the  second qualification: a cult
following reaching down to the present  time.  His  films  were
still  watched and appreciated, but people didn't go crazy over
him. The only  person  from  that  time  who  might  have  been
canonized--if  a F.L.C.C.S. had existed then--was Valentino. He
died young, and was enshrined in that global hall of fame  that
was  still  in its infancy when he lived. But he was completely
forgotten today.
     Mozart? Shakespeare? Forget it. Maybe Ludwig  Van  B.  was
the  hottest  thing  on the Prussian pop charts in his day, but
they'd never heard of him in Ulan Bator . . .  and  where  were
his  sides?  He  never  cut  any, that's where. The only way of
preserving his music was to write it down on paper, a lost art.
Maybe Will Shakespeare would have won a carload  of  Tonys  and
been  flown  to  the  coast  to  adapt his stuff for the silver
screen. He was still very popular--As You Like It  was  playing
two  shows  a  day at the King City Center -but he and everyone
else from before about 1920 had a fatal  flaw,  celebrity-wise:
nobody  knew  anything  about  them.  There  was  no  film,  no
recordings. Celebrity worship is only  incidentally  about  the
art  itself. You need to do something to qualify, it needn't be
good, only evocative . . . but the real thing being sold by the
Flacks and their antecedents was image. You needed a real  body
to  rend  and  tear  in  the padloids, real scandals to tsk-tsk
over, and real blood and real tragedy to weep over.
     That was widely held to be  the  third  qualification  for
sainthood:  the early and tragic death. I personally thought it
could be dispensed with in some circumstances, but I won't deny
it's  importance.  Nobody  can  create  a   cult.   They   rise
spontaneously, from emotions that are genuine, even if they are
managed adroitly.
     For  my  money,  the man they should be honoring today was
Thomas Edison. Without his two key inventions, sound  recording
and  motion picture film, the whole celebrity business would be
bankrupt.
     Mickey, John, or Silvio? Each had a drawback. With Mickey,
it was that he wasn't real. So who cares? John .  .  .?  Maybe,
but  I judged his popularity wasn't quite in that stellar realm
that would appeal to the Flacks. Silvio? The big one,  that  he
was  alive.  But  rules are made to be broken. He certainly had
the star power. There was no more  popular  man  in  the  Solar
System.  Any  reporter in Luna would sell his mother's soul for
one interview.
     And then it came to me, and it was so obvious  I  wondered
why I hadn't seen it before, and why no one else had figured it
out.
     "It's  Silvio,"  I  told  Cricket.  I swear the lady's ear
tried to swivel toward me before her head did. That gal  really
has the nose for news.
     "What did you hear?"
     "Nothing. I just figured it out."
     "So  what  do  you want, I should kiss your feet? Tell me,
Hildy."
     Brenda was leaning over, looking at  me  like  I  was  the
great  guru. I smiled at them, thought about making them suffer
a little,  but  that  was  unworthy.  I  decided  to  share  my
Holmesian deductions with them.
     "First  interesting  fact,"  I said, "they didn't announce
this thing until yesterday. Why?"
     "That's easy," Cricket snorted. "Because Momby's elevation
was the biggest flop-ola since Napoleon promised to  whip  some
British butt at Waterloo."
     "That's  part  of  the  reason,"  I  conceded. It had been
before my time, but the Flacks were still  smarting  from  that
one.   They'd   conducted   a  threemonth  Who-Will-It-Be?-type
campaign, and by the time  the  big  day  arrived  The  Supreme
Potentate  Of  All  Universes would have been a disappointment,
much less Momby, who was a poor choice anyway. This was a bunch
whose whole raison d'etre was publicity, as an art and science.
Once burned, twice wear-a-fireproof-suit;  they  were  managing
this  one  the  right way, as a big surprise with only a day to
think about it. Neither press nor public could get bored in one
day.
     "But they've kept this one completely  secret.  From  what
I'm  told,  the  fact  that  Momby was going to be elevated was
about as secret from us, from the press,  as  Silvio's  current
hair  style.  The media simply agreed not to print it until the
big day. Now think about the Flacks. Not a closemouthed  bunch,
except  for  the  inner  circle, the Grand Flacks and so forth.
Gossip is their life blood. If twenty people knew who  the  new
Gigastar  was,  one  of them would have blabbed it to one of my
sources or one of yours, count on it. If ten  people  knew  I'd
give  you  even  money  I could have found it out. So even less
than that know who it's gonna be. With me so far?"
     "Keep talking, O silver-tongued one."
     "I've got it down to three  possibilities.  Mickey,  John,
Silvio. Am I wildly off-base there?"
     She  didn't  say  yes or no, but her shrug told me her own
list was pretty much like mine.
     "Each has a problem. You know what they are."
     "Two out of three of them are . . . well, old," Brenda put
in.
     "Lots of reasons for that," I said. "Look at the Four; all
born on Earth. Trouble is, we're a less  violent  society  than
the  previous  centuries.  We  don't  get enough tragic deaths.
Momby's the only superstar who's had the grace to  fix  himself
up  with  a tragic death in over a hundred years. Most everyone
else hangs around until he's a hasbeen. Look at Eileen Frank."
     "Look at Lars O'Malley," Cricket contributed.
     From the blank look on Brenda's face, I could see  it  was
like I'd guessed; she'd never heard of either of them.
     "Where are they now?" she asked, unconsciously voicing the
four words every celebrity fears the most.
     "In  the  elephants'  graveyard.  In a taproom in Bedrock,
probably, maybe on adjacent stools. Both of them used to be  as
big  as Silvio." Brenda looked dubious, like I'd said something
was bigger than infinity. She'd learn.
     "So what's your great leap of deduction?" Cricket asked.
     I waved my hand grandly around the room.
     "All this. All these trillions and trillions of television
screens. If it's Mickey or John, what's gonna happen, some  guy
backstage  dashes  off  a  quick  sketch  of them and comes out
holding it over his head? No, what  happens  is  every  one  of
these  screens starts showing Steamboat Willie and Fantasia and
every other cartoon Mickey was ever in, or . . . what the  hell
films did John Lennon make?"
     "You're the history buff. All I know about him is Sergeant
Pepper."
     "Well, you get the idea."
     "Maybe I'm dumb," Cricket said, not as though she believed
it.
     "You're  not.  Think  about  it."  She  did, and I saw the
moment when the light dawned.
     "You could be right," she said.
     "No 'could be' about it. I've got half a mind to  file  on
it  right  now.  Walter could get out a newsbreaker before they
make the big announcement."
     "So use my phone; I won't even charge you."
     I said nothing to that. If I'd had even one source telling
me it was Silvio I'd have called Walter and let him decide. The
history of journalism is filled  with  stories  of  people  who
jumped the headline and had to eat it later.
     "I guess I'm dumb," Brenda said. "I still don't see it."
     I  didn't comment on her first statement. She wasn't dumb,
just green, and I hadn't seen it myself until too  late.  So  I
explained.
     "Somebody  has  to  cue  up  the  tapes  to fill all these
screens. Dozens of techs, visual artists, and so forth. There's
no way they could orchestrate a thing like  that  and  keep  it
down to a handful of people in the know. Most of my sources are
just  those  kind  of  people, and they always have their hands
out. Kind of money I was throwing around last night, if anybody
knew, I'd know. So Mickey and John  are  out,  because  they're
dead.  Silvio  has the great advantage of being able to show up
here in person, so those television screens can show live feeds
of what's happening on the stage."
     Brenda frowned, thinking it over. I let her, and went back
to my sandwich, feeling good for more than just having  figured
it  out. I felt good because I genuinely admired Silvio. Mickey
Mouse is good, no question, but the real hero there was  Walter
Elias  Disney  and his magic-makers. John Lennon I knew nothing
about; his music didn't speak to  me.  I  never  saw  what  the
fanatics saw in Elvis, Megan may have been good, but who cared?
Momby  was  of  his  times, even the Flacks would admit, with a
bellyful of liquor, that he had been a mistake for the  church.
Tori-san deserved to be up there with the real musical geniuses
who  lived  before  the  Age of Celebrity came along to largely
preclude most peoples' chances of achieving real  greatness.  I
mean,  how  great can you get with people like me going through
your garbage looking for a story?
     Of all the people alive in the Solar System today,  Silvio
was  the  only man I admired. I'm a cynic, have been for years.
My childhood heroes have long since fallen by the wayside.  I'm
in  the  business  of  discovering  warts  on  people, and I've
discovered so many that the very idea of heroworship is quaint,
at best. And it's not as if Silvio doesn't have  his  warts.  I
know them as well as every padloid reader in Luna. It's his art
I  really  admire, the hell with the personality cult. He began
as a mere genius, the writer and performer of  music  that  has
often  moved  me  to tears. He grew over the years. Three years
ago, when it looked as if he was fading, he suddenly  blossomed
again  with  the  most stunningly original works of his career.
There was no telling where he might still go.
     One of his quirks, to my way of thinking, was  his  recent
embracing  of  the Flack religion. And so what? Mozart wasn't a
guy you'd want to bring home to meet the folks. Listen  to  the
music.  Look  at the art. Forget about the publicity; no matter
how much of it you read, you'll never really get  to  know  the
man.  Most  of  us like to think we know something about famous
people. It took me years to get over the  fallacy  of  thinking
that because I'd heard somebody speak about his or her life and
times  and  fears  on  a  talk  show that I knew what they were
really like. You don't. And the bad things you think  you  know
are  just  as fallacious as the good things his publicity agent
wants you to know. Behind the monstrous  facade  of  fame  each
celebrity  erects  around  himself  is just a little mouse, not
unlike you or me, who has to use the same kind of toilet  paper
in the morning, and who assumes the identical position.
     And  with  that  thought,  the lights dimmed, and the show
began.
     There was a brief musical introduction drawing  on  themes
from  the  works  of  Elvis  and  Tori-san, no hint of a Silvio
connection  in  there.  Dancers  came  out  and  did  a  number
glorifying  the  Church.  None of the prefatory material lasted
too long. The Flacks had learned their lesson from Momby.  They
would not out-stay their welcome this morning.
     It  was  no  more than ten minutes from the raising of the
curtain to the appearance of the Grand Flack himself.
     This was a man ordinary enough from the neck down, dressed
in a flowing robe. But in place of a head he had  a  cube  with
television screens on four sides, each showing a view of a head
from the appropriate angle. On top of the cube was a bifurcated
antenna known as rabbit ears, for obvious reasons.
     The  face  in  the  front screen was thin, ascetic, with a
neatly trimmed goatee and mustache and a prim mouth on which  a
smile always looked like a painful event. I'd met him before at
this  or  that  function.  He  didn't  appear publicly all that
often, and the reason was simply that he, and most of the other
Great Flacks, were no better as media personalities than I was.
For the church services  the  F.L.C.C.S.  hired  professionals,
people  who  knew how to make a sermon stand up and walk around
the room. They had no lack of talent for such jobs. The  Flacks
naturally  appealed  to  hopeful  artists  who hoped to one day
stand beside Elvis. But today was different, and oddly  enough,
the  Grand Flack's very stiffness and lack of camera poise lent
gravity to the proceedings.
     "Good morning! Fellow worshipers  and  guests  we  welcome
you!  Today  will  go  down  in history! This is the day a mere
mortal comes to  glory!  The  name  will  be  revealed  to  you
shortly! Join with us now in singing 'Blue Suede Shoes.'"
     That's  the  way  Flacks talk, and that's the way I'd been
recording it  for  many  years  now.  They'd  given  me  enough
stories, so if they had crazy ideas about how they wanted to be
quoted in print, it was all right with me. Flacks believed that
language   was   too  cluttered  with  punctuation,  so  they'd
eliminated the ., the ,, the ' and the ?  and  most  especially
the  ;  and  the  :. Nobody ever understood what those last two
were for, anyway. They were never  very  interested  in  asking
questions,   only   in  providing  answers.  They  figured  the
exclamation  point  and  the  quotation  mark  were   all   any
reasonable   person   needed  for  discourse,  along  with  the
underline, naturally. And they were big on typefaces.  A  Flack
news release read like a love letter to P.T. Barnum.
     I  abstained from the sing-along; I didn't know the words,
anyway,  and  hymnals  weren't  provided.  The  folks  in   the
bleachers  made  up  for  my  absence.  The boogying got pretty
intense for a while there. The Grand Flack just stood with  his
hands  folded,  smiling  happily  at his flock. When the number
came to an end he moved forward again, and I realized this  was
it.
     "And now the moment you've all been waiting for!" he said.
"The name  of  the  person  who from this day forward will live
with the stars!" The lights were dimming as he spoke. There was
a moment of silence, during which I heard an actual  collective
intake  of  breath . . . unless that was from the sound system.
Then the Grand Flack spoke again.
     "I give you SILVIO!!!!!"
     A single spotlight came on, and  there  he  stood.  I  had
known  it,  I  had  been ninety-nine percent sure anyway, but I
still felt a thrill in  my  heart,  not  only  at  having  been
correct, but because this was so right. No, I didn't believe in
all  the  Flackite  crap.  But he did, and it was right that he
should be so honored by the people who believed as  he  did.  I
almost had a lump in my throat.
     I  was  on  my  feet  with everyone else. The applause was
deafening, and if it was augmented by the  speakers  hidden  in
the ceiling, who cared? I liked Silvio enough when I was a man.
I  hadn't  counted on the gut-throbbing impression he'd make on
me as a female. He stood there, tall  and  handsome,  accepting
the adulation with only a small, ironic wave of his hand, as if
he  didn't really understand why everyone loved him so much but
he was willing to accept it so as not to embarrass  us.  False,
all  false, I well knew; Silvio had a titanic ego. If there was
anyone  in  Luna  who  actually  over-estimated  his  genuinely
awesome  talent,  it  was  Silvio.  But who among us can cast a
stone unless they have at least as much talent? Not me.
     A keyboard was rolled out and left in front of  him.  This
was  really  exciting. It could mean the opening of a new sound
for Silvio. For the last three  years  he'd  been  working  his
magic  on  the  body  harp.  I leaned forward to hear the first
chords, as did everyone in the audience, except one person.  As
he  made  his  move toward the keys, the right side of his head
exploded.
     Where were you when . . .?  Every  twenty  years  a  story
comes along like that, and anyone you ask knows exactly what he
was  doing  when  the news came in. Where I was when Silvio was
assassinated was ten meters away, close enough that  I  saw  it
happen  before  I  heard the shot. Time collapsed for me, and I
moved without thinking about  it.  There  was  nothing  of  the
reporter  in me at that moment, and nothing of the heroine. I'm
not a risk-taker, but I was up and out of my seat and  vaulting
onto  the  stage  before  he'd landed, loosely, the ruined head
bouncing on the floorboards. I leaned over him and  picked  him
up  by  the  shoulders, and it must have been about then that I
was hit, because I saw my blood splatter on his face and a  big
hole  appear  in his cheek and a sort of churning motion in the
soft red matter exposed behind the big hole in his  skull.  You
must  have  seen  it.  It's  probably  the  most famous bits of
holocam  footage  ever  shot.  Intercut  with  the  stuff  from
Cricket's  cam, which is how it's usually shown, you can see me
react to the sound of the second shot, lift my  head  and  look
over my shoulder and search for the gunman, which is what saved
me  from  having  my  own  brains blown out when the third shot
arrived. The post-mortem team estimated  that  shot  missed  my
cheek  by  a  few  centimeters. I didn't see it hit, but when I
turned back I saw the results. Silvio's face had  already  been
shattered  by the fragmented bullet that had passed through me;
the third projectile was more than enough to blow the remaining
brain tissue  through  a  new  hole  in  his  head.  It  wasn't
necessary; the first had done the fatal work.
     That's  when  Cricket  took  her  famous  still  shot. The
spotlight is still on us as  I  hold  Silvio's  torso  off  the
ground. His head lolls back, eyes open but glazed, what you can
see  of  them under the film of blood. I've got one bloody hand
raised in the air, asking a mute  question.  I  don't  remember
raising  the  hand;  I  don't know what the question was, other
than the eternal why?
     #
     The next hour was as confused as  such  scenes  inevitably
are. I was jostled to the side by a bunch of bodyguards. Police
arrived.  Questions were asked. Someone noticed I was bleeding,
which was the first time I was aware that  I'd  been  hit.  The
bullet  had  punched  a clean hole through the upper part of my
left arm, nicking the bone. I'd  been  wondering  why  the  arm
wasn't working. I wasn't alarmed by it; I was just wondering. I
never  did  feel  any pain from the wound. By the time I should
have, they had it all fixed up as  good  as  new.  People  have
since tried to convince me to wear a scar there as a memento of
that  day.  I'm  sure  I  could  use it to impress a lot of cub
reporters in the Blind Pig, but the whole idea disgusts me.
     Cricket was immediately off following the assassin  story.
Nobody  knew  who  he  or she was, or how he'd gotten away, and
there was a fabulous story for whoever tracked the person  down
and got the first interview. That didn't interest me, either. I
sat  there,  possibly  in  shock though the machines said I was
not, and Brenda stood beside me though  I  could  see  she  was
itching to get out and cover the story, any part of it.
     "Idiot,"  I  told her, with some affection, when I finally
noticed her. "You want Walter to fire you? Did somebody get  my
holocam feed? I don't remember."
     "I took it. Walter has it. He's running it right now." She
had a  copy of the Nipple in one hand, glancing at the horrific
images. My phone was ringing and  I  didn't  need  a  Ph.D.  in
deductive  logic  to  know it was Walter calling, asking what I
was doing. I turned it off, which  Walter  would  have  made  a
capital offense if he'd been making the laws.
     "Get  going.  See  if you can track down Cricket. Wherever
she is, that's where the news will be. Try not to let her leave
too many tracks on your back when she runs over you."
     "Where are you going, Hildy?"
     "I'm going home." And that's just what I did.

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

        CHAPTER THIRTEEN













     I had to turn the phone off at home,  too.  I  had  become
part of the biggest story of my lifetime, and every reporter in
the  universe  wanted to ask me a probing question: How did you
feel, Hildy, when you put your hand into the  stillwarm  brains
of  the only man on Luna you respected? This is known as poetic
justice.
     For my sins, I soon set the phone to answer to the four or
five newspeople  I  felt  were  the  best,  plus  the  grinning
homunculus  that  passed  for an anchor at the Nipple, and gave
them each a five  minute,  totally  false  interview,  full  of
exactly  the  sort  of stuff the public expected. At the end of
each I pleaded emotional exhaustion and said I'd grant  a  more
complete  interview  in  a  few days. This satisfied no one, of
course; from time to time my front door actually  rattled  with
the impact of frustrated reporters hurling their bodies against
three-inch pressure-tight steel.
     In  truth, I didn't know how I felt. I was numb, in a way,
but my mind was also working. I was thinking, and the  reporter
was  coming  alive  after  the horrid shock of actually getting
shot. I mean, damn it! Hadn't that fucking bullet ever heard of
the Geneva Conventions? We were noncombatants, we were supposed
to suck the blood, not produce it. I was angry at that  bullet.
I guess some part of me had really thought I was immune.
     I  fixed  myself  a  good meal and thought it over while I
did. Not  a  sandwich.  I  thought  I  might  be  through  with
sandwiches.  I  don't cook a lot, but when I do I'm pretty good
at it, and it helps me think. When I'd handed the last dish  to
the washer I sat down and called Walter.
     "Get  your  ass  in  here,  Hildy," he said. "I've got you
lined  up  for  interviews  from  ten  minutes  ago  till   the
tricentennial."
     "No," I said.
     "I  don't  think  this is a good connection. I thought you
said no."
     "It's a perfect connection."
     "I could fire you."
     "Don't get silly. You want my exclusive interview  to  run
in  the Shit, where they'll triple the pittance you pay me?" He
didn't answer that for a long time, and I had nothing  else  to
say  just  yet,  so  we  listened to the long silence. I hadn't
turned on the picture.
     "What are you going to do?" he asked, plaintively.
     "Just what you asked me  to  do.  Get  the  story  on  the
Flacks.  You  said I was the best there was at it, didn't you?"
The quality  of  the  silence  changed  that  time.  It  was  a
regretful   silence,   as   in  how-could-I-have-said-anything-
so-stupid silence. He didn't say he'd  told  me  that  just  to
charm  me  out of quitting. Another thing he didn't say was how
dare I threaten him with selling out to a rival,  and  he  left
un-voiced  the horrible things he'd try to do to my career if I
did such a thing. The phone line was simply buzzing with things
he didn't say, and he didn't say them so loudly I'd  have  been
frightened  if  I  really feared for my job. At last he sighed,
and did say something.
     "When do I get the story?"
     "When I find it. What I want is Brenda, right now."
     "Sure. She's just underfoot here."
     "Tell her to come in the back way. She knows where it  is,
and I don't think five other people in Luna know that."
     "Six, counting me."
     "I  figured. Don't tell anyone else, or I'll never get out
of here alive."
     "What else?"
     "Nothing. I'll handle it all from  here."  I  hung  up.  I
started making calls.
     The  first  one  was  to the Queen. She didn't have what I
needed, but she knew somebody who knew somebody. She said she'd
get back to me. I sat down and made a list  of  items  I  would
need,  made several more calls, and then Brenda was knocking on
the back door.
     She wanted to know how I was, she wanted my  reactions  to
this  and that, not as a reporter, but as a concerned friend. I
was touched, a little, but I had work to do.
     "Hit me," I said.
     "Pardon?"
     "Hit me. Make a fist and smash it into my face. I need you
to break my nose. I tried it a  couple  times  before  you  got
here, and I can't seem to hit hard enough."
     She  gave  me that look that says she's trying to remember
all the ways out of this place, and how to get to them  without
alarming me.
     "My  problem,"  I  explained,  "is  I  can't risk going in
public with this face on me; I need it  rearranged,  and  in  a
hurry.  So  hit  me.  You  know  how;  you've  seen cowboys and
gangsters do it in the movies." I stuck my face out and  closed
my eyes.
     "You've . . . you've deadened it, I guess?"
     "What  kind  of nut do I look like? Don't answer, just hit
me."
     She did, a  blow  that  would  have  sent  a  housefly  to
intensive care if one had been sitting on the tip of my nose.
     She  had  to  try four more times, in the end using an old
spitball bat I found in my closet, before we got that sickening
crunching sound that said we'd done the trick. I  shouldn't  be
too hard on her. Maybe I was acting erratic, there was probably
an  easier way and she deserved more explanations, but I wasn't
in the mood for them. She had a lot worse to come, and I didn't
have time.
     It bled a lot, as you'd expect. I held my nose pressed  in
with  a  finger  on  the tip, and stuck my face in the autodoc.
When it healed, a few minutes later,  I  had  a  wide,  vaguely
African nose with a major hook on the end and a bend toward the
left.
     Part   of   getting   a  story  is  preparation,  part  is
improvisation, part perspiration and a little bit  inspiration.
There  are  small  items  I carry around constantly in my purse
that I may use once in five years, but when I need them, I need
them badly. A disguise is something I  need  every  once  in  a
while,  never  as  badly  as  I  did  then, but I'd always been
prepared for disguising myself on the spur of the moment.  It's
harder  now  than  it  used  to be. People are better at seeing
through small changes since  they're  used  to  having  friends
rework  their faces to indulge a passing fad. Bushy eyebrows or
a wig are no longer enough, if you want to be sure. You need to
change the shape of the face.
     I got a screwdriver and probed around  in  my  upper  jaw,
between  the  cheek  and gum, until I found the proper recessed
socket. I pushed the tip of the  blade  through  the  skin  and
slotted  it in the screw and started turning it. When the blade
slipped Brenda peered into my  mouth  and  helped  me.  As  she
turned the screwdriver, my cheekbone began to move.
     It's  a  cheap  and  simple device you can buy at any joke
shop and have installed in half an hour. Bobbie had  wanted  to
take  it  out.  He's offended at anything that might be used to
mar his work. I'd left them in, and now I was glad as I watched
my face being transformed in the mirror. When Brenda was  done,
my  face  was  much  wider and more gaunt, and my eyelids had a
slight downward slant. With the new nose, Callie herself  would
not  have know me. If I held my lower jaw so I had an overbite,
I looked even stranger.
     "Let me get that left one  again,"  Brenda  said.  "You're
lopsided."
     "Lopsided  is  good."  I  tasted  blood, but soon had that
healed up. Looking at myself, I  decided  it  was  enough,  and
turned  the  nerve  receptors  in  my face back on. There was a
little soreness on the nose, but nothing major.
     So I could have gotten some of the same effect by stuffing
tissue paper into my cheeks, I guess. If that's all I had,  I'd
have  used  it, but did you ever try talking with paper in your
mouth? An actor is trained to do it; I'm not.  Besides,  you're
always aware it's there, it's distracting.
     Brenda  wanted  to  know  what  we were going to do, and I
thought about what I could safely tell her. It wasn't much,  so
I sat her down and she looked up at me wide-eyed.
     "You  got  two choices," I told her. "One, you can help me
get ready for this caper, and then you can bow out, and no hard
feelings. Or you can go along to the end.  But  I'll  tell  you
going  in, you're not going to know much. I think we'll get one
hell of a story out of it, but we  could  get  into  a  lot  of
trouble."
     She thought it over.
     "How much can you tell me?"
     "Only  what I think you need to know at the moment. You'll
just have to trust me on the rest."
     "Okay."
     "You idiot. Never  trust  anybody  who  says  'trust  me.'
Except just this once, of course."
     #
     I went to the King City Plaza, one of the better hotels in
the neighborhood   of   the   Platz,  and  checked  in  to  the
Presidential Suite using  Brenda's  Nipple  letter  of  credit,
freshly re-rated to A-Double-Plus. I'd told Walter I might need
to  buy  an  interplanetary liner before this job was over, but
the fact was since he was paying for it, I just  wanted  to  go
first  class, and I'd never stayed in the Presidential Suite. I
registered us under the  names  Kathleen  Turner  and  Rosalind
Russell,  two  of  the  five  people  who've played the part of
Hildegard/Hildebrandt Johnson on the silver screen. The  fellow
at  the  front  desk must not have been a movie buff; he didn't
bat an eye.
     The suite came furnished with a staff, including a boy and
a girl in the spa, which was large enough for  the  staging  of
naval war games. In a better mood I might have asked the boy to
stick around; he was a hunk. But I kicked them all out.
     I  stood  in  the  middle of the room and said "My name is
Hildy Johnson, and I declare this to be  my  legal  residence."
Liz  had  advised that, for the benefit of the hidden mikes and
cameras, just in case the tapes were ever  brought  forward  as
evidence  in  a court of law. A hotel guest has the same rights
as a person in quarters she owns or rents, but it never hurt to
be safe.
     I made a few more phone calls, and spent the time  waiting
for  some of them to be returned by going from room to room and
stripping the sheets and blankets off the many beds. I chose  a
room with no windows looking out into the Mall, and went around
draping  sheets  over all the mirrors in the room. There were a
lot of them. The  call  I  was  waiting  for  came  just  as  I
finished. I listened to the instructions, and left the room.
     In  a  park  not  far  from  the hotel I walked around for
almost half an hour, which didn't surprise me. I assumed I  was
being  checked  out. Finally I spotted the man I'd been told to
look for, and sat on the other end of a park bench.  We  didn't
look at each other, or talk. He got up and walked away, leaving
a  sack  on  the bench between us. I waited a few more minutes,
breathed deeply, and picked up the sack. No hand reached out to
grab my shoulder. Maybe I didn't have the nerves for this  sort
of work.
     Back in the suite I didn't have long to wait before Brenda
knocked  on  the door, back from her shopping expedition. She'd
done well. Everything I'd asked for was  in  the  packages  she
carried.  We got out the costumes of the Electricians Guild and
put them on: blue coveralls with Guild  patches  and  equipment
belts.  Names  were  stitched  into  the  fabric  over the left
breast: I was Roz and she was Kathy.  Next  to  the  ceremonial
wrenches,  screwdrivers,  and circuit testers dangling from the
belt I clipped some of the items I'd just obtained  in  such  a
melodramatic  fashion.  They  fit  right  in.  We donned yellow
plastic hardhats and  picked  up  black  metal  lunchboxes  and
looked  at  each  other  in  the mirror. We burst out laughing.
Brenda seemed to be  enjoying  the  game  so  far.  It  was  an
adventure.
     Brenda looked ridiculous, as usual. You'd think a disguise
on Brenda  would work about as well as a wig on a flagpole. The
fact is, she is not that abnormal for her generation. Who knows
where this height thing is going to end? Another of many causes
of the generation gap Callie had  talked  about  was  a  simple
matter of dimension: people of Brenda's age group tended not to
frequent  the  older  parts  of the city where so many of their
elders lived . . . because they kept  hitting  their  heads  on
things. We built to a smaller scale in those days.
     There were no human guards on the workers' entrance to the
Flack  Grand Studio. I didn't really expect to encounter any at
all; according to the information I'd bought they only employed
six of them. People tended to rely on machines for that sort of
thing, and their trust can be misplaced, as I  demonstrated  to
Brenda  with one of the illegal gizmos. I waved it at the door,
waited while red lights turned green, and the door sprung open.
I'd been told that one of the three machines I had  would  deal
with  any  security system I'd find in the Studio. I just hoped
my trust wasn't misplaced, in either the shady  characters  who
sold this sort of stuff or the machines themselves. We do trust
the  little  buggers, don't we? I had no idea what the stinking
thing was doing, but when it flashed a  green  light  at  me  I
trotted right in, like Pavlov's dog Spotski.
     Up  three  floors, down two corridors, seventh door on the
left. And who should be standing there looking frustrated but .
. . Cricket.
     "If you touch that doorknob," I said, "Elvis  will  return
and  he won't be handing out pink Cadillacs." She jumped just a
little. Damn, that girl  was  good.  She  was  trying  to  pass
herself  off  as  some  kind  of  Flack functionary, carrying a
clipboard like an Amazon's shield. The good old  clipboard  can
be  the magic key to many places if you know how to use it, and
Cricket was born to the con. She looked at us haughtily through
dark glasses.
     "I beg your pardon," she sniffed. "What are you two  doing
.  . ." She had been flipping officiously through papers on her
board, as if searching for our names, which  we  hadn't  given,
when  she realized it was Brenda way up there under that yellow
hardhat. Nothing had prepared her for that, or for the  dawning
realization of who it was playing the Jeff to Brenda's Mutt.
     "Goddam," she breathed. "It's you, isn't it? Hildy?"
     "In  the  flesh.  I'm ashamed of you, Cricket. Balked by a
mere door? You've apparently forgotten your girl scout motto."
     "All I remember is never let him in the back door  on  the
first date."
     "Be  prepared,  love,  be prepared." And I waved one of my
magic wands at the door. Naturally, one of the lights  remained
obstinately  red.  So  I  chose  another  one at random and the
machine paid off like a crooked slot machine. We  went  through
the  door,  and  I suddenly realized what her dark glasses were
for.
     We were in an ordinary corridor with three  doors  leading
off  of  it.  Music  was  coming  from behind one of the doors.
According to the map I'd paid a lot of Walter's money for, that
was the one. This time I had to use all three machines, and the
last one took its time, each red light going out only  after  a
baffling  read-out  of  digits on a numeric display. I guess it
was doing something arcane with codes. But the door opened, and
I didn't hear any alarms. You wouldn't, of course, but you keep
your ears tuned anyway. We went  through  the  door  and  found
ourselves in a small room with the Grand Council of Flacks.
     Or with their heads, anyway.
     The  heads  were  on  a shelf a few meters from us, facing
away toward a large screen which was playing It Happened At The
World's Fair. They were in  their  boxes--I  don't  think  they
could  be  easily  removed--so what we saw was seven television
screens displaying the backs of heads. If they  were  aware  of
our  presence  they  gave  no sign of it. Though how they could
have given any sign of it continues  to  elude  me.  Wires  and
tubes  grew  out  of  the bottom of the shelf, leading to small
machines that hummed merrily to themselves.
     Brenda was  looking  very  nervous.  She  started  to  say
something but I put a finger to my lips and put on my mask. She
did  the  same,  as Cricket watched us both. These were plastic
Halloweentype masks, modified with a voice scrambler,  and  I'd
gotten  them  mostly to calm Brenda; I didn't expect them to be
any use if it came to the crunch, since security cameras in the
hallways would surely have taken our pictures by now.  But  she
was  even  less  sophisticated  in  these  things  than  I, and
wouldn't have realized that.
     Cricket had had her hand in a coat pocket since we entered
the first corridor. The hand started to come out, and I pointed
over her shoulder and said "What the hell is that?" She looked,
and I took one of  the  wrenches  off  my  equipment  belt  and
clanged it down on the crown of her head.
     It  doesn't  work  like you see it on television. She went
down hard, then lifted herself up onto her hands,  shaking  her
head.  A rope of saliva was hanging out of her mouth. I hit her
again. Her head started to bleed, and she  still  didn't  clock
out.  The  third time I really put some english on it, and sure
enough Brenda grabbed my arm and spoiled my aim and the  wrench
hit  her  on  the  side  of the head, doing more damage than if
she'd left me alone, but it also did the job. Cricket fell down
like a sack of wet cement and didn't move.
     "What the hell are you doing?" Brenda asked. The scrambler
denatured her voice, made her sound like a creepoid from Planet
X.
     "Brenda, I said no questions."
     "I didn't plan on this."
     "I didn't, either, but if you crap out on me now  I  swear
I'll  break both your arms and leave you right beside her." She
faced me down, breathing hard, and I began to wonder if I could
handle her if it came to  it.  My  record  with  angry  females
wasn't  sterling, even when I had the weight advantage. At last
she slumped, and nodded, and I quickly dropped to one knee  and
rolled  Cricket  over and put my face close to hers. I felt her
pulse, which seemed okay, peeled back an  eyelid,  checked  the
pupils. I didn't know much more first aid than that, but I knew
she  was  in  no  danger.  Help  would be here soon, though she
wouldn't welcome it. I picked up the goofball that  had  rolled
out  of  her  limp  hand  and put it in my own pocket. I showed
Brenda a photo.
     "Look through those  cabinets  back  there,  find  one  of
these," I told her.
     "What are we--"
     "No questions, dammit."
     I checked the fourth and most expensive electronic burglar
tool I'd purchased, which had been functioning since we entered
the Studio.  All  green lights. This one was busily confounding
all the active and passive systems that might  be  calling  for
help for the seven dwarfs on the shelf. Don't ask me how; all I
know  is if one man can think up a lock, another can figure out
how to pick it. I'd paid heavily for the  security  information
about  the  Studio,  and  so far I'd gotten my money's worth. I
went around the shelf and stood  between  the  screen  and  the
Council,  saw seven of the infamous Talking Heads that had been
a television feature from the very beginning. I chose the Grand
Flack, and leaned close to his prim, disapproving features. His
first reaction was to use his limited movement to try  and  see
around me. More interested in the movie than in possible danger
to  himself.  I  guess  if  you live in a box you'd have to get
fairly fatalistic about such things.
     "I want you to tell me how to remove you  from  the  shelf
without doing any harm to you," I said.
     "Don't  worry about it," he sneered. "Someone will be here
to arrest you in a few minutes."
     I hoped he was bluffing, had no way of knowing for sure.
     "How many minutes can you live without these machines?" He
thought it over, made a head movement I interpreted as a shrug.
     "Detaching me is easy; simply lift the handle  on  top  of
the  box.  But  I'll  die in a few minutes." The thought didn't
seem to bother him.
     "Unless I plug you into one of these." I took the  machine
Brenda  had  located  and held it up in front of him. He made a
sour face.
     I don't know what the machine was called. What it did  was
provide  life  support  for his head, containing things like an
artificial heart, lungs, kidneys, and so forth, all quite small
since there wasn't that much life to support. I'd been told  it
would  sustain  him for eight hours independently, indefinitely
when hooked into an autodoc. The device was the same dimensions
as his head-box, and about ten centimeters deep. I placed it on
the floor and lifted the box by the handle. He  looked  worried
for  the  first  time.  A  few  drops of blood dripped onto the
shelf, where I could see a maze of metal pins,  plastic  tubes,
air  hoses.  There  was  a  similar  pattern of fittings on the
transport device, arranged so there was only one way you  could
plug  it  in.  I  positioned  the box over the life support and
pressed down.
     "Am I doing it right?" I asked the Grand Flack.
     "There's not much you  could  do  wrong,"  he  said.  "And
you'll never get away with this."
     "Try me." I found the right switches, turned off his voice
and three  of  the television screens. The fourth, the one that
had been showing his face, was  replaced  with  the  movie  the
group  had  been  watching  when  we arrived. "Let's get out of
here," I said to Brenda.
     "What about her? What about Cricket?"
     "I said no questions. Let's move."
     She followed me out into the corridor,  through  the  door
where  we'd  met Cricket, down more hallways. Then we rounded a
corner and met a burly man in a brown uniform who  crossed  his
arms and frowned at us.
     "Where are you going with that?" he asked.
     "Where  do  you  think, Mac?" I asked. "I'm taking it into
the shop. You try to run ten thousand of these  things,  you're
gonna get breakdowns."
     "Nobody told me nothing about it."
     I  set the Grand Flack on the floor with the movie side of
the screen facing the guard; his eyes strayed to the screen, as
I'd  hoped.  There's  something  about  a  moving  image  on  a
television  screen  that  simply  draws the eyes, especially if
you're a Flackite. I had one hand  on  my  trusty  wrench,  but
mostly  I flipped through the papers on my clipboard in a bored
manner. I came to one page--it seemed to be an insurance policy
for Cricket's  apartment  --and  pointed  triumphantly  to  the
middle of it.
     "Says  right  here.  Remove and repair one model seventeen
video  monitor,  work  order  number  45293a/34.  Work  to   be
completed by blah blah blah."
     "I guess the paperwork didn't get to me yet," he said, one
eye still  on  the screen. Maybe we were coming to his favorite
part. All I knew was if he'd asked to  see  the  paperwork  I'd
have  held  the  clipboard  out  to him and beaned him with the
wrench when he looked at it.
     "Ain't that always the way."
     "Yeah. I was just surprised to see you two here, what with
all the excitement with Silvio gettin' killed and all."
     "What the hell," I said, with  a  shrug,  picking  up  the
Grand  Flack  and tucking him under my arm. "Sometimes you just
gotta go that extra kilometer if you want to get a  head."  And
we walked out the door.
     #
     Brenda  made  it almost a hundred meters down the corridor
and then she said, "I think I'm going to faint." I steered  her
to  a  bench in the middle of the mall and sat her down and put
her head between her knees. She was shaking all  over  and  her
breathing was unsteady. Her hand was cold as ice.
     I  held  out  my  own hand, and was pleased to note it was
steady. I honestly hadn't been frightened after I detached  the
Flack  from  his shelf; I'd figured that if there was any point
where my devices might fail, that would be it. But I was  aided
by  something  that had helped many a more professional burglar
before I ever tried my hand at it. It  had  simply  never  been
envisioned  that  anyone would want to steal one of the council
members. As for the rest . . . well, you  can  read  all  these
wonderfully  devious  tales  about  how  spies in the past have
stolen military and state secrets with  elaborate  ruses,  with
stealth  and  cunning. Some of it must have been like that, but
I'd bet money that a lot of them had been stolen by people with
uniforms and clipboards who just went up to somebody and  asked
for them.
     "Is it over yet?" Brenda asked, weakly. She looked pale.
     "Not yet. Soon. And still no questions."
     "I'm  going  to  have a few pretty damn soon, though," she
said.
     "I'll bet you will."
     #
     In order to save time  I  hadn't  had  her  get  any  more
costumes  to stash along our getaway route, so we simply peeled
off the Electrician duds and stuffed them into the trash  in  a
public  rest  room and returned to the Plaza in the nude. I was
carrying the Grand Flack in a shopping  bag  from  one  of  the
shops  on  the Platz and we had our arms around each other like
lovers. In the elevator Brenda let go of me like I was  poison,
and we rode up in silence.
     "Can  we  talk  now?"  she asked, when I'd closed the door
behind us.
     "In a minute." I lifted the box out of the bag, along with
the few other items  I'd  saved:  the  magic  wands,  the  dark
glasses,  the  goofball. I picked up a newspad and turned it on
and we watched and read and listened for a few minutes,  Brenda
growing  increasingly  impatient.  There  was  no  mention of a
daring break-in at the Grand Studio, no all-points bulletin for
Roz and Kathy. I hadn't expected  one.  The  Flacks  understood
publicity,  and  while there is some merit in the old saw about
not caring what you print about me so long as you spell my name
right, you'd much prefer to see the news you manage  out  there
in  the  public  view.  This  story had about a thousand deadly
thorns in it if the Flacks chose to exploit it, and I was  sure
they'd think it over a long time before they reported our crime
to  the  police,  if  they ever did. Besides, their plates were
full with the assassination stories,  which  would  keep  their
staff  busy  for months, churning out new angles to feed to the
pads.
     "Okay," I said to Brenda. "We're safe for  a  while.  What
did you want to know?"
     "Nothing,"  she  said coldly. "I just wanted to tell you I
think you're the most disgusting, rottenest, most horrible .  .
." Her imagination failed when it came to finding a noun. She'd
have  to  work  on that; I could have suggested a dozen off the
top of my head. But not for the reasons she thought.
     "Why is that?" I asked.
     She was momentarily stunned at the enormity of my lack  of
remorse.
     "What  you  did to Cricket!" she shouted, half rising from
her chair. "That was so dirty and underhanded .  .  .  I  don't
think I want to know you anymore."
     "I'm  not  sure  I  do,  either.  But  sit  down.  There's
something I want to show you. Two things, actually." The  Plaza
has  some  charming  antique phones and there was one beside my
chair. I picked up  the  receiver  and  dialed  a  number  from
memory.
     "Straight Shit," came a pleasant voice. "News desk."
     "Tell  the  editor that one of her reporters is being held
against her will in the Grand Studio of the F.L.C.C.S. church."
     The voice grew cautious. "And who might that be?"
     "How many did you infiltrate this  morning?  Her  name  is
Cricket. Don't know the last name."
     "And who are you, ma'am?"
     "A  friend  of  the  free press. Better hurry; when I left
they were tying her down and cueing up  G.I.  Blues.  Her  mind
could be gone by now." I hung up.
     Brenda sputtered, her eyes wide.
     "And you think that makes up for what you did to her?"
     "No, and she doesn't deserve it, but she'd probably do the
same thing  for  me  if  the  situation  was reversed, which it
almost was. I know the editor at the Shit; she'll have a flying
squad of fifty shock troops down there in ten minutes with some
ammunition the Flacks will understand,  like  mock-ups  of  the
next hour's headline if they don't cough up Cricket pronto. The
Flacks  will  want  to  keep  this quiet, but they aren't above
trying to get our names out of Cricket since it  looks  like  a
falling out among thieves."
     "And if it wasn't, what was it?"
     "It  was  the  golden  rule,  honey,"  I  said, putting on
Cricket's dark glasses and  holding  up  the  goofball  between
thumb  and  forefinger.  "In journalism, that rule reads 'Screw
unto others before they screw you.'"  I  flicked  the  goofball
with my thumb and tossed it between us.
     Damn,  but  those things are bright! It reminded me of the
nuke in Kansas, seeming  to  scorch  holes  right  through  the
protective  lenses.  It  lasted  some fraction of a second, and
when I took the glasses off Brenda  was  slumped  over  in  her
chair. She'd be out for twenty minutes to half an hour.
     What a world.
     I  picked  up  the head of the church and carried him into
the room I'd  prepared.  I  set  him  on  a  table  facing  the
wall-sized  television  screen,  which  was  turned  off at the
moment. I rapped on the top of the box.
     "You okay in there?" He didn't answer. I  turned  a  latch
and  opened  the front screen, which was still showing the same
movie on both its flat surfaces,  inner  and  outer.  The  face
glared at me.
     "Close  that door," he said. "It's just ten minutes to the
end."
     "Sorry," I said, and closed it. Then I took my wrench--I'd
developed a certain fondness for  that  wrench--and  rapped  it
against the glass screen, which shattered. I had a glimpse of a
blissfully  smiling  face  as  the  shards  fell,  then  he was
screaming insults. Somewhere I heard a little motor whirring as
it pumped air through whatever he used for a larynx.  He  tried
uselessly  to  twist himself so he could see one of the screens
to either side of him,  which  were  also  tuned  to  the  same
program.
     "Oh,  were you watching that?" I said. "How clumsy of me."
I pulled a cord out of the wall and patched his player into the
wall television set, turned the sound down low. He grumped  for
a  while,  but in the end he couldn't resist the dancing images
behind me. If he'd noticed I was letting him  see  my  face  he
didn't  seem  worried  about  the  possible implications. Death
didn't seem to be high on his list of fears.
     "They're going to punish you for this, you know," he said.
     "Who would 'they' be? The police? Or do you have your  own
private goon squads?"
     "The police, of course."
     "The police will never hear about this, and you know it."
     He just sniffed. He sniffed again when I broke the screens
on each  side of his head. But when I took the patch cord in my
hand he looked worried.
     "See you later. If you get hungry, holler." I  pulled  the
cord out of the wall, and the big screen went blank.
     #
     I  hadn't  brought  any  clothes  to  change  into.  I got
restless and went down to the lobby and browsed around in  some
of  the  shops  there,  killed a half hour, but my heart wasn't
really in it. In spite of all  my  rationalizations  about  the
Flacks, I kept expecting that tap on the shoulder that asks the
musical  question,  "Do  you  know a good lawyer?" I picked out
some loose harem pants in gold silk and a  matching  blouse,  a
lounging  pajama ensemble I guess you'd call it, mostly because
I dislike parading  around  with  no  clothes  in  public,  and
because Walter was picking up the tab, then I thought of Brenda
and  got  interested. I found a similar pair for her in a green
that I thought would do nice things to her eyes.  They  had  to
extrude  the arms and legs, but the shirt waist was okay, since
it was supposed to leave the midriff bare.
     When I got back to the suite Brenda was no longer  slumped
in  the  chair. I found her in the bathroom, hugging the toilet
and crying her eyes out,  looking  like  a  jumbo  coat  hanger
somebody  had  crumpled up and left there. I felt low enough to
sit on a sheet of toilet paper and swing my feet, to  borrow  a
phrase  from  Liz.  I'd  never  used  a  goofball  before,  had
forgotten how sick they were  supposed  to  make  you.  If  I'd
remembered, would I still have used it? I don't know. Probably.
     I  knelt  beside  her and put my arm around her shoulders.
She quieted down to a few whimpers, didn't try to move away.  I
got  a  towel and wiped her mouth, flushed away the stuff she'd
brought up. I eased her around until she  was  sitting  against
the  wall.  She  wiped  her eyes and nose and looked at me with
dead eyes. I pulled the pajamas out of the sack and  held  them
up.
     "Look what I got you," I said. "Well, actually I used your
credit card, but Walter's good for it."
     She  managed a weak smile and held out her hand and I gave
them to her. She tried to show an interest, holding  the  shirt
up  to  her  chest.  I  think  if she'd thanked me I'd have run
screaming to the police, begging to be arrested.
     "They're nice," she said. "You think it'll  look  good  on
me?"
     "Trust  me,"  I said. She met my eyes without flinching or
giving me one of her apologetic smiles  or  any  other  of  her
arsenal  of  don't-hit-meI'm-harmless  gestures.  Maybe she was
growing up a little. What a shame.
     "I don't think I will," she said. I put a hand on each  of
her shoulders and put my face close to hers.
     "Good,"  I  said,  stood, and held out a hand. She took it
and I pulled her up and we went back to the main  room  of  the
suite.
     She  did  cheer  up  a little when she got the clothes on,
turning in front of a big mirror  to  study  herself  from  all
angles, which reminded me to look in on my prisoner. I told her
to wait there.
     He  wasn't  nearly  as bad off as I'd thought he would be,
which worried me more than I let him know. I couldn't figure it
out until I crouched down to his  level  and  looked  into  the
blank television screen he faced.
     "You  tricky rascal," I said. Looking at the inert plastic
surface of the screen, I could see part of  a  picture  on  the
screen  directly behind his head, the only one I hadn't smashed
out. I couldn't tell what the movie was,  and  considering  how
little of it he could see he might not have known, either, with
the  sound  off, but it must have been enough to sustain him. I
picked him up and turned him around facing away from  the  wall
screen.  He  made  a  fascinating  centerpiece,  sure  to start
interesting conversations at  your  next  party.  Just  a  head
sitting  on  a  thick  metal  base,  with  four  little pillars
supporting a flat roof above him. It was like a little temple.
     He was looking really worried now.  I  crouched  down  and
looked at all the covered mirrors and glass. I found no surface
that  would  reflect  an  image to him if I were to turn on the
screen behind him, which I did.  I  debated  about  the  sound,
finally  turned  it  on,  figuring it would torment him more to
hear it and not be able to see. If I was wrong, I could  always
try  it the other way in an hour or so, if we were granted that
much time. Let's face it, if anybody was looking for  us,  we'd
be  easy  to find. I waved at him and made a face at the string
of curses that followed me out of the room.
     How to get information out of somebody that  doesn't  want
to  talk? That's the question I'd asked myself before I started
this escapade. The obvious answer is torture, but even  I  draw
the line at that. But there's torture and then there's torture.
If  a  man  had  spent  most  of his life watching passively as
endless images marched by right in front  of  his  face,  spent
every  waking hour watching, how would he react if the plug was
pulled? I'd find out  soon  enough.  I'd  read  somewhere  that
people in sensory deprivation tanks quickly became disoriented,
pliable,  lost  their  will to resist. Maybe it would work with
the Grand Flack.
     Brenda and I spent a silent half hour  sitting  in  chairs
not  too  far  from  each other that might as well have been on
other planets. When she finally  spoke,  it  startled  me.  I'd
forgotten she was there, lost in my own thoughts.
     "She was going to use that thing on us," she said.
     "Who,  Cricket?  You  saw  it fall out of her hand, right?
It's called a goofball. Knocks you right  out,  from  what  I'm
told."
     "You were told right. It was awful."
     "I'm  really  sorry, Brenda. It seemed like a good idea at
the time."
     "It was. I asked for it. I deserved it."
     I wasn't sure about that, but it had been the quickest way
to show her what we'd narrowly averted. That's  me:  quick  and
dirty,  and  explain  later.  She  thought  about it a few more
minutes.
     "Maybe she was just going to use it on the Flacks."
     "Sure she was; she didn't expect to find us there. But you
didn't see her handing out pairs of  glasses.  We'd  have  gone
down with the Flacks."
     "And she'd have left us there."
     "Just like we left her."
     "Well,  like you said, she didn't expect us. We forced her
hand."
     "Brenda, you're trying to apologize for her, and it's  not
necessary.  She forced my hand, too. You think I liked cracking
her on the head? Cricket's my friend."
     "That's the part I don't understand."
     "Look, I don't know what her plan was. Maybe she had drugs
on her, too, something to make the  Flacks  talk  right  there.
That  might  have  been  the best way, come to think of it. The
penalties for . . . well, I guess for headnapping,  it's  going
to be pretty stiff if they catch me."
     "Me, too."
     I  showed  her  the  gun  I'd  bought from Liz; she looked
shocked, so I put it away. I  don't  blame  her.  Nasty  little
thing, that gun. I can see why they're illegal.
     "Just  me.  If  it comes to it, you can say I held that on
you the whole time. I won't have  trouble  convincing  a  judge
I've  lost  my  mind.  Anyway, you can be sure Cricket had some
plan of attack in mind, and she improvised when we entered  the
picture. The story's the thing, see? Ask her about it when this
is all over."
     "I don't think she'd talk to me."
     "Why not? She won't hold a grudge. She's a pro. Oh, she'll
be mad,  all  right, and she'll do just about anything to us if
we get in her way again,  but  it  won't  be  for  revenge.  If
cooperation  will  get  the story, then she'd rather cooperate,
just like me. Trouble was, this story is too big  to  share.  I
think we both figured out as soon as we saw each other that one
of us wasn't walking out of that room. I was just faster."
     She was shaking her head. I'd said all I had to say; she'd
either understand it and accept it, or look for another line of
work. Then she looked up, remembering something.
     "What  you  said. I can't let you do that. Take the rap, I
mean."
     I pretended anger, but I was touched again. What  a  sweet
little  jerk  she  was. I hoped she didn't get eaten alive next
time she met Cricket.
     "You  sure  as  hell  will.  Stop  being  juvenile.  First
revenge,  then  altruism.  Those  things  are  for very special
occasions, rare circumstances. Not when they get in the way  of
a  story.  You  want  to be altruistic in your private life, go
ahead, but not on Walter's time. He'll fire  you  if  he  hears
about it."
     "But it's not right."
     "You're  even  wrong  there. I never told you what we were
going to do. You couldn't be held responsible. I went to a  lot
of trouble to set it up that way, and you're an ungrateful brat
for thinking of throwing all my work away."
     She  looked as if she was going to cry again, and I got up
and got a drink. Maybe I wiped my eyes, too, standing there  in
the  kitchen  tossing down a surprisingly bitter bourbon. You'd
think they'd do better at two thousand per night.
     #
     When the Grand Flack had had two hours with nothing moving
to look at but the flickering lights cast on the other walls by
the screen behind his head, I stuck my own head into the  room,
wondering if I could manage to keep it attached to my shoulders
by the time this was all over. He looked at me desperately. His
whole face was drenched with sweat.
     "This series is one of my favorites," he whined.
     "So look at the tape later," I said.
     "It's  not  the same, dammit! I've already heard the story
line."
     I thought it was a bit of luck to have one of his favorite
soap operas  playing  just  when  I  needed  a  lever  to   pry
information  out  of  his  head,  then  I  thought it over, and
realized that whatever was playing at the moment was  bound  to
be his favorite. He watched them all.
     "I missed David and Everett's big love scene. Damn you."
     "Are you ready to answer some questions?"
     He  started  to  shake  his head--he had a little movement
from the neck stump, up and down, back and  forth--and  it  was
like  a hand took his chin and forced it up and down instead. I
guess it was the invisible hand of his addiction.
     "Don't  run  off,"  I  said.  "I've  got  to  get  another
witness."  I  turned around, and bumped into Brenda, who'd been
standing behind me. She wasn't wearing her mask and  I  thought
about  getting  angry about that, but what the hell. She was in
it as an accessory, unless I could make my duress theory  stand
up in court. Which point I hoped never to reach.
     We  pulled  up  chairs  on each side of the big screen and
turned him around so he could see it. I thought this might take
a long time, as his eyes never  left  the  screen,  never  once
looked  at  us,  but he was quite good at watching the show and
talking to us at the same time.
     "For the record," I said, "have you been harmed in any way
since we took you on this little trip?"
     "You made me miss David and Everett's--"
     "Aside from that."
     "No," he said, grudgingly.
     "Are you hungry? Thirsty? You need to . .  .  is  there  a
drain  on  this thing? A waste dump of some kind? Need to empty
the beer cooler?"
     "It's not a problem."
     So I had him answer a few more questions,  name  rank  and
serial  number  sort  of  things,  just  to  get  him  used  to
responding.  I've  found  it's  a  good  technique,  even  with
somebody  who's used to being interviewed. Then I got around to
asking the question this had all been about,  and  he  told  me
pretty much what I'd expected to hear.
     "So  who's  idea  was  it  to assassinate Silvio?" I heard
Brenda gasp, but I kept my eyes on the  Flack.  He  pursed  his
lips  angrily,  but kept watching the screen. When it looked as
if he might not answer I reached for the  patch  cord  and  the
story came out.
     "I  don't  know  who  told  you about it; we kept security
tight, just the inner circle knew what was going to happen. I'd
like his name later."
     I decided not to tell him just yet that  nobody  had  told
me.  Maybe  if  he  thought  he'd  been  betrayed  he'd pull no
punches. I needn't have worried.
     "You don't care about whose idea it was, though. You don't
care. All you need is someone who'll admit to it. I'm here,  so
I'm  elected  to  break the story, so let's just say it was me,
all right?"
     "You're willing to take the blame?" Brenda asked.
     "Why not? We all agreed it was the thing to  do.  We  drew
lots  to  select  a  culprit  to  stand  up  for the crime, and
somebody else lost, but we can work that out,  just  so  I  get
time to warn them, get our stories straight."
     I  looked  at Brenda's face to see how she was reacting to
this, both the story itself and the blatant engineering of  the
story  between  me  and  the man who bought the hit. What I saw
made me think there was hope for her in the news business  yet.
There  is  a  certain  concentrated,  avid-forblood  look  that
appears on the faces of reporters on the trail of  a  very  big
story  that you'd have to visit the big cat house at the zoo to
see duplicated in its primal state. From the look  on  Brenda's
face,  if a tiger was standing between her and this story right
now, the cat would soon have a  tall-journalist-sized  hole  in
him.
     "What  you  mean  is,"  Brenda  went  on, "you had someone
picked out to go to jail if someone ever uncovered the  story."
Which  meant  she still hadn't completely comprehended this man
and his church.
     "Nothing like that. We  knew  the  truth  would  come  out
sooner  or  later."  He  looked sour. "We'd hoped for later, of
course, so we'd have time to milk it from every possible angle.
You've been a real problem, Hildy."
     "Thank you," I said.
     "After all we've done for you people," he  pouted.  "First
you  get in the way of the second bullet. Serves you right, you
getting hurt."
     "It never hurt. It passed right through me."
     "I'm sorry to hear  that.  Those  bullets  were  carefully
planned.  Something  about penetrating the forehead, the cheek,
something like that, spreading out later and  blowing  out  the
back of the skull."
     "Dum-dums,"  Brenda  said, unexpectedly. She looked at me,
shrugged. "When you got hit, I looked it up."
     "Whatever," the Flack continued. "The  second  one  spread
out  when  it  hit you, and did way too much damage to Silvio's
face, plus getting your blood  splattered  all  over  him.  You
ruined the tableau."
     "I thought it was pretty effective, myself."
     "Thank  Elvis  for  Cricket.  Then,  as if you hadn't done
enough, here you are breaking the  law,  making  me  break  the
story two weeks early. We never thought you'd break the law, at
least not to this extent."
     "So prosecute me."
     "Don't  be silly. That would look pretty foolish, wouldn't
it? All the sympathy would be  with  you.  People  would  think
you'd done a public service."
     "That's what I was hoping."
     "No  way.  But there's still time to get the right spin on
this thing, and do us both a lot of good. You know  us,  Hildy.
You  know we'll work with you to get a story that will maximize
your readership interest, if you'll only give us a  few  things
here and there in the way of damage control."
     There  were  a  few  things  going  on  here that I didn't
understand, but I couldn't  get  to  the  questions  just  yet.
Frankly,  though I've seen a lot of things in my career, done a
lot of things, this one was about to make me gag. What I really
wanted to do was go out and find a baseball/6 field and play  a
few innings using this terrifying psychopath as the ball.
     But  I got myself under control. I've interviewed perverts
before, the public always wants to know about perverts.  And  I
asked  the  next  question,  the  one that, later, you wish you
could take back, or never hear the answer to.
     "What I can't figure . . . or maybe I'm  dense,"  I  said,
slowly.  "I  haven't found the angle. How did the church expect
to look good out of all this? Killing him, that  I  understand,
in  your  terms.  You  can't  have a live saint walking around,
farting and belching, out of control. Silvio should  have  seen
that.  Think  how embarrassed the Christians'd be if Jesus came
back; they'd have to nail the sucker up again before  he  upset
too many applecarts."
     I  stopped,  because he was smiling, and I didn't like the
smile. And for just a moment he let his dreamy eyes drift  from
the  screen  and  look  into  my  own.  I  imagined I saw worms
crawling around in there.
     "Oh, Hildy," he said, more in sorrow than in anger.
     "Don't you oh Hildy me, you coffee-table cocksucker.  I'll
tear  you  out  of  that  box  and shit down your neck. I'll--"
Brenda put a hand on mine, and I got myself back under control.
     "They'll put you in jail for five hundred years," I said.
     "That wouldn't frighten me," he said, still smiling.  "But
they won't. I'll do time, all right. I figure three, maybe five
years."
     "For  murder?  For conspiracy to murder Silvio? I want the
name of your lawyer."
     "They won't be able  to  prove  murder,"  he  said,  still
smiling. I was really getting tired of that smile.
     "Why do you say that?"
     I  felt  Brenda's  hand on mine again. She had the look of
someone trying to break it gently.
     "Silvio was in on it, Hildy," she said.
     "Of course he was," The Grand  Exalted  Stinking  Baboon's
Posterior  said.  "And  Hildy,  if I'd been a vindictive man, I
could have let you run with the first story. I  almost  wish  I
had. Now I'll never enjoy David and Everett's . . . well, never
mind.  I'm  telling  you  as a show of good faith, prove we can
work together again  in  spite  of  your  backstabbing  crimes.
Silvio  was  the  one who suggested this whole thing. He helped
interview the shooter.  That's  the  story  you'll  write  this
afternoon,  and that's the story we always intended to come out
in a few weeks' time."
     "I don't believe you," I said, believing every word of it.
     "That's of little interest to me."
     "Why?" I said.
     "I presume you mean why did he want to die. He was  washed
up, Hildy. He hadn't been able to write anything in four years.
That was worse than death to Silvio."
     "But his best stuff . . ."
     "That's  when he came to us. I don't know if he was ever a
true believer; hell, I don't  know  if  I'm  a  true  believer.
That's  why  we  call  ourselves  latitudinarian.  If  you have
different ideas on the divinity of Tori-san, for  instance,  we
don't  drive you out of the church, we give you a time slot and
let you talk it over with people who agree with you.  We  don't
form sects, like other churches, and we don't torment heretics.
There  are no heretics. We aren't doctrinaire. We have a saying
in the church, when  people  want  to  argue  about  points  of
theology: that's close enough for sphere music."
     "'Hum  a  few  bars  and I'll see if I can pick it up,'" I
said.
     "Exactly. We make no secret of the fact that what we  most
want  from parishioners is for them to buy our records. What we
give  them  in  return  is  the  chance  to  rub  elbows   with
celebrities. What surprised the founding Flacks, though, is how
many  people really do believe in the sainthood of celebrities.
It even makes some sense, when you think  about  it.  We  don't
postulate  a  heaven.  It's  right  here  on the ground, if you
achieve  enough  popularity.  In  the  mind  of  your   average
star-struck  nobody,  being  a  celebrity  is  a thousand times
better than any heaven he can imagine."
     I could see he did believe in one thing, even if it wasn't
the Return of the King. He believed  in  the  power  of  public
relations.  I'd  found  a  point  in  common with him. I wasn't
delighted by this.
     "So you'll play it as, he came to you for  help,  and  you
helped him."
     "For  three years we wrote all his music. We attract a lot
of artists, as you know. We picked three of the best, and  they
sat down and started churning out 'Silvio' music. It turned out
to be pretty good. You never can tell."
     I thought back over the music I had loved so much, the new
things I had believed Silvio had been doing. It was still good;
I couldn't  take  that  away  from the music. But something had
gone out of me.
     This was a whole new world for Brenda, and she was as rapt
as any three-year-old at mommy's knee, listening to  Baba  Yaga
and the Wolves.
     "Will  that  be part of the story?" she asked. "How you've
been writing his music for him?"
     "It has to be. I was against it at first, but then it  was
shown  to  me  that everyone benefits this way. My worry was of
tarnishing the image of a Gigastar. But if it's boosted  right,
he  becomes  a  real  object  of  sympathy,  his cult gets even
stronger. He's still got his old music, which was all his.  The
church   comes  out  well  because  we  tried  everything,  and
reluctantly gave in to his request to martyr himself--which  is
his  right.  We  broke  some  laws  along the way, sure, and we
expected some punishment, but  handled  right,  even  that  can
generate sympathy. He asked us. And don't worry, we've got tons
of  documentation  on  this, tapes showing him begging us to go
along. I'll have all that wired over to your newsroom  as  soon
as  we iron out the deal. Oh, yes, and as if it all wasn't good
enough, now the real musicians who stood behind Silvio all this
time get to come out of the shadows and get their own  shot  at
Gigastardom."
     "Shot does seem the perfect word in this context," I said.
     #
     The  first part of that interview was almost comic, when I
think back on it. There I was, thinking I had  it  all  figured
out,  asking  who had planned to kill Silvio. And there he was,
thinking I knew the whole story already, thinking I was  asking
him  who  had suggested to Silvio that, dead, he could become a
Flack Gigastar.
     Because  Silvio  had   not   come   up   with   the   idea
independently. What he had proposed was his own election, live,
into  the  ranks  of  the Four. It was explained that only dead
people could qualify, and one thing led to another. The council
was against his plan at first. It was Silvio  who  figured  out
the  angle  to  make the church look good. And it was an act of
suicide. What the Grand Flack would go to jail for was a series
of civil offenses, conspiracies, false advertising,  intent  to
defraud,  thing  like  that.  What  sort  of penalty the actual
assassin would get, when found, I had no idea.
     It scared me, later, that we'd missed  understanding  each
other by such a seemingly trivial point. If he'd known I didn't
know  the key fact before he admitted what he did, I thought he
might have found that little window of opportunity  to  pay  me
back  for  making  him miss his soap opera, some way that would
have ended with Hildy Johnson in  jail  and  the  aims  of  the
church  still  accomplished.  There  might  have been a way. Of
course, there was nothing to really  prevent  him  from  filing
charges anyway, I'd known that going in, but though he might be
devious, he'd never take a chance on it backfiring, knowing the
kind  of power Walter would bring to bear if I ever got charged
with something after bringing him a story like that.
     Brenda wanted to rush right off and get  to  work,  but  I
made  her  sit  down  and  think  it  out, something that would
benefit her later in her career if she remembered to do it.
     Step one was to phone in the confession as recorded by her
holocam. When that was safely at the Nipple newsdesk there  was
no  chance  of  the  Flack  going  back  on  his word. We could
interview him at our leisure, and plan just how to  break  this
story.
     Not  that  we  had  a lot of time; there's never much time
with something like this. Who  knows  when  someone  will  come
sniffing  down  the  tracks  you've left? But we took enough to
carry the head back to the Nipple, where he was put on  a  desk
and  allowed  to  use  his telephone and was soon surrounded by
dozens of gawking reporters listening in as Brenda  interviewed
him.
     Yes,  Brenda.  On  the  tube ride to the offices I'd had a
talk with her.
     "This is all going under your byline," I said.
     "That's ridiculous," she said. "You did all the  work.  It
was your not accepting the assassination on the face of it that
. . . hell, Hildy, it's your story."
     "It  was  just  too perfect," I said. "Right when I picked
him up, it went through my mind. Only I thought they'd set  him
up, the poor chump."
     "Well, I was buying it. Like everybody else."
     "Except Cricket."
     "Yeah.  There's  no  question  of me taking the credit for
it."
     "But you will. Because I'm offering it, and it's the  kind
of  story  that  will  make your name forever and you'd be even
dumber than you act if you turned it down. And because it can't
be under my name, because I don't work for the Nipple anymore."
     "You quit? When? Why didn't Walter tell me?"
     I knew when I had quit, and Walter didn't tell her because
he didn't know yet, but why confuse her?  She  argued  with  me
some   more,   her  passion  growing  weaker  and  her  gradual
acceptance more tinged with guilt. She'd get over the guilt.  I
hoped she'd get over the fame.
     She  seemed to be enjoying it well enough at the moment. I
stood at the back of the room, rows of empty desks  between  me
and  the  excited  group  gathered  around  the  triumphant cub
reporter.
     And Walter emerged from his high tower. He waddled  across
the  suddenly-silent newsroom, walking away from me, not seeing
me there in the shadows. No one present could remember the last
time he'd come out of his office just for a news story.  I  saw
him  hold  out  his  hand  to  Brenda. He didn't believe it, of
course, but he was probably  planning  to  grill  me  about  it
later.  He  was  still  bestowing  his  sacred  presence on the
reporters when I got on his elevator and  rode  it  up  to  his
office.
     His  desk sat there in a pool of light. I admired the fine
grain of the wood, the craftsmanship of the thing. Of  all  the
hugely  expensive  antiques Walter owned, this was the only one
I'd ever coveted. I'd have liked a desk of  my  own  like  that
some day.
     I  smoothed  out  the  gray  fedora hat in my hand. It had
fallen off my head when I jumped onto the stage, into a pool of
Silvio's blood. The blood was still caked on it. The thing  was
supposed  to  be  battered,  that was traditional, but this was
ridiculous.
     It seemed to me the hat had seen enough use. So I left  it
in the center of Walter's desk, and I walked out.

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

        CHAPTER FOURTEEN








     I  had  to go home by the back way, and even that had been
discovered. One of my friends must have been bribed: there were
reporters gathered  outside  the  cave.  None  had  elected  to
actually  enter  it,  not  with the cougar in residence. Though
they knew she wouldn't hurt  them,  that  lady  is  a  menacing
presence at best.
     My  re-arranged  face  almost did the trick. I had made it
into the cave and they all must have  been  wondering  who  the
hell  I  was and what my business was with Hildy, when somebody
shouted "It's her!" and the stampede was on.  I  ran  down  the
corridor  with  the  reporters on my heels, shouting questions,
taping my ignominious flight.
     Once inside, I viewed the front door camera. Oh,  brother.
They  were  shoulder  to shoulder, as far as the eye could see,
from one side of the corridor to the other. There were  vendors
selling  balloons  and  hot  dogs, and some guy in a clown suit
juggling. If I'd ever wondered where the term media circus came
from, I wondered no longer.
     The police had set up ropes to keep a clear space for fire
and emergency crews, and so my neighbors could get  through  to
their  homes. As I watched, one neighbor came through, his face
set in a scowl that was starting to look permanent. For lack of
anything else to do, many of the reporters shouted questions at
him, to which he replied with stony silence. I could see I  was
not  going  to  win  any  prizes  at my next neighborhood block
party.  This  whole  thing  was  bound  to  get  petitions   in
circulation,  politely requesting me to find another residence,
if I didn't do something.
     So I spent several hours boxing my possession, folding  up
my  furniture, sticking stamps on everything and shoving it all
in the mail tube. I thought about mailing myself along with it,
but I didn't know where I'd go. The things  I  owned  could  go
into storage; there wasn't that much of it. When I was done the
already-spare apartment was clean to the bare walls, except for
some  items  I'd  set  aside,  some of which I'd already owned,
others ordered and mailed to me. I went  to  the  bathroom  and
fixed my cheekbones, left the nose alone because I'd let Bobbie
do  that  when I could get to him safely. What the hell, it was
still under the ninety-day warranty and there was  no  need  to
tell  him I'd broken it intentionally. Then I went to the front
door and let myself appear on the outside monitor. No way was I
going to un-dog those latches.
     "Free food at the end  of  the  corridor!"  I  shouted.  A
couple of heads actually turned, but most remained looking back
at me. Everyone shouted questions at once and it took some time
for  all  that to die down and for everyone to realize that, if
they didn't shut up, nobody got an interview.
     "I've said all  I'm  going  to  say  about  the  death  of
Silvio,"  I told them. There were groans and more shouts, and I
waited for  that  to  die  down.  "I'm  not  unsympathetic,"  I
continued.  "I  used to be one of you. Well, better, but one of
you." That got me some derisive shouts, a few laughs.  "I  know
none  of  your editors will take no for an answer. So I'll give
you a break. In fifteen minutes this door will open, and you're
all free to come in. I don't guarantee you  an  interview,  but
this idiocy has got to stop. My neighbors are complaining."
     I knew that last would buy me exactly no sympathy, but the
promise  of  opening  the door would keep them solidly in place
for a while. I waved to them, and switched off the screen.
     I told the door to open up in fifteen minutes, and hurried
to the back.
     A previous call to the  police  had  cleared  the  smaller
group  out  of  the  corridor  back  there. It was not a public
space, so I could do that, and the reporters had to retreat  to
Texas, from which they could not be chased out, so long as they
didn't  violate  any  of  the  appropriate  technology  laws by
bringing in modern tools or clothing. That was fine with me;  I
knew the land, and they didn't.
     I came out of the cave cautiously. It was full night, with
no "moon,"  a fact I'd checked in my weather schedule. I peered
over the edge of the cliff and saw them  down  there,  gathered
around  a campfire near the river, drinking coffee and toasting
marshmallows. I shouldered my pack, settled all my other  items
so  they  would  make no noise, and scaled the smaller, gentler
slope that rose behind the cave. I soon came to stand on top of
the hill, and Mexico lay spread out before me in the starlight.
     I started off, walking south, keeping  my  spirits  up  by
envisioning the scene when the hungry hordes poured through the
door to find an empty nest.
     #
     For the next three weeks I lived off the land. At least, I
did as  much  of that as I could. Texas or Mexico, the pickings
could be mighty slim in these parts, partner. There  were  some
edible  plants, some cactus, none of which you'd call a gourmet
delight, but I dutifully tried as many of them as I could  find
and  identify  out  of  my  disneyland  resident's  manual. I'd
brought along staples like pancake batter and powdered eggs and
molasses and corn meal, and some spices, mostly chili powder. I
wasn't entirely on my own. I could sneak into Lonesome Dove  or
New Austin when things started getting low.
     So in the morning I'd eat flapjacks and eggs, and at night
beans  and  cornbread,  but  I supplemented this fare with wild
game.
     What I'd had in mind was venison. There are plenty of deer
and antelope  playing  around  my  home,  even  a  few  buffalo
roaming.  Buffalo  seemed a bit extreme for one person, but I'd
brought a bow and arrow hoping to bag a pronghorn or small buck
deer. The discouraging word was, those  critters  are  hard  to
sneak up on, hard to get in range of, if your range is as short
as  mine.  As  a  resident of Texas, I was entitled to take two
deer or antelope each year, and I'd never bagged even one.  I'd
never  wanted  to.  You  can use firearms for this purpose, but
checking them out of the disneyland office  was  a  process  so
beset  with  forms  in triplicate and solemn oaths that I never
even considered it. Besides, I wondered, in passing, if the  CC
would  allow me such a lethal weapon in view of my recent track
record.
     I  was  also  allowed  a  virtually  unlimited  quota   of
jackrabbits,  and that's what I ate. I didn't shoot any, though
I shot at them. I set snares. Most mornings I'd find one or two
struggling to get free. The first one was hard to kill and  the
killing  cost  me my appetite, but it got easier after that. It
was just as I "remembered"  it  from  Scarpa.  Before  long  it
seemed natural.
     I  had  found  one  of the very few places in Luna where I
could hide out until the Silvio story cooled off. I  calculated
that  would  take  about  a  month.  It would be a year or more
before the whole thing was old news, but I was sure my own part
in the travesty would be largely forgotten sooner than that. So
I spent my days wandering the length and  breadth  of  my  huge
back  yard.  There  wasn't  a  lot  to do. I occupied myself by
catching rattlesnakes. All this takes is a  certain  amount  of
roaming  around,  and  a bit of patience. They just coil up and
hiss and rattle when you find them, and can be captured using a
long stick and a bit of rope to loop around their necks. I  was
very  careful  handling them as I couldn't afford to be bitten.
That would mean either  returning  to  the  world  for  medical
treatment,  or surrendering myself to the tender mercies of Ned
Pepper. If you call up an old Boy Scout  manual  and  read  the
section on snakebite, it'll curl your hair.
     Once  a  week  I'd creep up on the entrance to my old back
door. By the second week there was no one there. I went over to
my unfinished cabin and counted the  reporters  camped  nearby.
They  had  figured  out where I was, in a general way. I'm sure
somebody in town had reported my stealthy  shopping  trips.  It
stood  to  reason that, having abandoned my apartment, I'd show
up at the cabin sooner or later. And they  were  right.  I  did
plan to return there.
     At  the  end  of  the  third week there were still a dozen
people at the cabin. Enough was enough, I decided. So I  waited
until  long  after  dark,  watching  them  forlornly  trying to
entertain each other without benefit of  television,  saw  them
crawl  into  sleeping bags one by one, many riproaring drunk. I
waited still longer, until their fire  was  embers,  until  the
surprising  cold  of the desert night had chilled the snakes in
my bag, making them dopey and  tractable.  Then  I  stole  into
their camp, silent as any red Indian, and left a rattler within
a few feet of each of the sleeping bags. I figured they'd crawl
in to get warm, and judging from the screams and shouts I heard
about an hour before sunrise, that's just what they did.
     Morning  found  them  all  gone. I watched from a distance
through my field glasses as I made my breakfast of pancakes and
left-over rabbit chili as they drifted back one  by  one  after
having been treated by autodocs. The sheriff showed up a little
later and started writing out citations. If anything, the cries
were  even  louder  when the reporters found out the price they
would have  to  pay  for  non-resident  killing  of  indigenous
reptiles.  He  wasn't impressed at all by their pleas that most
of the snakes had been killed by accident, in the  struggle  to
get out of the sleeping bags.
     I thought they might post a guard the next night, but they
didn't.  City  slickers,  all  of them. So I crept in again and
left the remainder of my stock. After my second raid, only four
of the hardiest returned. They  were  probably  going  to  stay
indefinitely,  and  they'd  be alert now. Too bad they couldn't
prove I'd sicced the snakes on them.
     I walked up to the cabin and started changing my  clothes.
It  took  them  a  minute  or  two  to notice me, then they all
gathered around. Four people can hardly be called  a  mob,  but
four  reporters  come close. They all shouted at once, they got
in my way, they grew angrier by the minute. I treated  them  as
if  they  were unusually mobile rocks, too big to move, but not
worth looking at and certainly not something to talk  to.  Even
one word would only serve to encourage them.
     They  hung  around  most  of  the day. Others joined them,
including one idiot who had  brought  an  antique  camera  with
bellows, black cape, and a bar to hold flash powder, apparently
hoping  to  get  a  novelty  picture  of some kind. There was a
novelty picture in it, when the powder slipped down  his  shirt
and  ignited  and the others had to slap out the flames. Walter
ran the sequence in his seven  o'clock  edition  with  a  funny
commentary.
     Even  reporters  will give up eventually if there's really
no story there. They wanted  to  interview  me,  but  I  wasn't
important  enough  to  rate  a come-and-go watch, supplying the
'pad with those endlessly fascinating shots of a person walking
from his door to his car,  and  arriving  home  at  night,  not
answering the questions of the throng of reporters with nothing
better  to do. So by the second day they all went away, gone to
haunt someone else. You don't give  assignments  like  that  to
your top people. I'd known guys who spent all their time staked
out  on this or that celebrity, and not one could pour piss out
of a boot.
     It felt good to be alone again.  I  got  down  to  serious
work, finishing my un-completed cabin.
     #
     Brenda  came  by  on  the second day. For a while she said
nothing, just stood there and  watched  me  hammering  shingles
into place.
     She looked different. She was dressed well, for one thing,
and had done some interesting things with make-up. Now that she
had some  money,  I supposed she had found professional advice.
The biggest new thing about her was that she was about  fifteen
kilos  heavier.  It  had  been  distributed  nicely, around the
breasts and hips and thighs. For the  first  time,  she  looked
like a real woman, only taller.
     I  took  the  nails  out of my mouth and wiped my forehead
with the back of my hand.
     "There's a thermos of lemonade by the  toolbox,"  I  said.
"You can help yourself, if you'll bring me a glass."
     "It's  talking,"  she  said. "I was told it wouldn't talk,
but I had to come see for myself." She had  found  the  thermos
and  couple  of  glasses,  which  she inspected dubiously. They
could have used a wash, I admit it.
     "I'll talk," I said.  "I  just  won't  do  interviews.  If
that's  what  you  came  for, take a look in that gunny sack by
your feet."
     "I heard about the snakes," she said. She was climbing  up
the  ladder to join me on the ridge of the roof. "That was sort
of infantile, don't you think?"
     "It did the job." I took the glass  of  lemonade  and  she
gingerly  settled  herself beside me. I drained mine and tossed
the glass down into the dirt. She was wearing brand  new  denim
pants,  very  tight to show off her newly-styled hips and legs,
and a loose blouse that managed to hide  the  boniness  of  her
shoulders,  knotted  tight between her breasts, baring her good
midriff. The tattoo around her navel seemed out of  place,  but
she  was  young.  I fingered the material of her blouse sleeve.
"Nice stuff," I said. "You did something to your hair."
     She patted it self-consciously, pleased that I'd noticed.
     "I was surprised Walter didn't sent you out here," I said.
"He'd figure because we worked together, I  might  open  up  to
you. He'd be wrong, but that's how he'd figure it."
     "He  did send me," she said. "I mean, he tried. I told him
to go to hell."
     "Something must be wrong  with  my  ears.  I  thought  you
said--"
     "I  asked  him  if  he  wanted  to  see  the hottest young
reporter in Luna working for the Shit."
     "I'm flabbergasted."
     "You taught me everything I know."
     I wasn't going to argue with that, but I'll admit  I  felt
something  that  might  have  been a glow of pride. Passing the
torch, and all that, even if the  torch  was  a  pretty  shoddy
affair, one I'd been glad to be rid of.
     "So  how's  all  the notoriety treating you?" I asked her.
"Has it cost you your sweet girlish laughter yet?"
     "I never know when you're kidding." She'd been gazing into
the purple hills, into the distance, like me.  Now  she  turned
and faced me, squinting in the merciless sunlight. Her face was
already  starting to burn. "I didn't come here to talk about me
and my career. I didn't even come to thank  you  for  what  you
did.  I was going to, but everybody said don't, they said Hildy
doesn't like stuff like that, so I won't. I  came  because  I'm
worried about you. Everybody's worried about you."
     "Who's everybody?"
     "Everybody.  All  the people in the newsroom. Even Walter,
but he'd never admit it. He told me to ask you to come back.  I
told  him  to  ask you himself. Oh, I'll tell you his offer, if
you're interested--"
     "--which I'm not."
     "--which is what I told him. I  won't  try  to  fool  you,
Hildy.  You  never  got close to the people you worked with, so
maybe you don't know how they feel about you. I won't say  they
love  you, but you're respected, a lot. I've talked to a lot of
people, and they admire your generosity and the  way  you  play
fair with them, within the limits of the job."
     "I've  stabbed  every one of them in the back, one time or
another."
     "That's not how they feel. You  beat  them  to  a  lot  of
stories,  no question, but the feeling is it's because you're a
good reporter. Oh, sure, everybody knows you cheat at cards--"
     "What a thing to say!"
     "--but nobody can ever catch you at it, and I  think  they
even admire you for that. For being so good at it."
     "Vile calumny, every word of it."
     "Whatever. I promised myself I wouldn't stay long, so I'll
just say  what  I  came  here  to  say.  I don't know just what
happened, but I saw that Silvio's death  wasn't  something  you
could  just  shrug  off.  If  you  ever  want to talk about it,
completely off the record, I'm willing to listen.  I'm  willing
to  do  just about anything." She sighed, and looked away for a
moment, then back. "I don't really know if  you  have  friends,
Hildy.  You  keep  a part of yourself away from everyone. But I
have friends, and I need them. I think of  you  as  one  of  my
friends.  They can help out when things are really bad. So what
I wanted to say, if you ever need a friend, any  time  at  all,
just call me."
     I didn't want this, but what could I do, what could I say?
I felt  a  hot lump in the back of my throat. I tried to speak,
but it would get into entirely too much if I ever started, into
things I don't think she needed or wanted to know.
     She patted my knee and started to get down off the roof. I
grabbed her hand and pulled her back. I kissed her on the lips.
For the first time in many days I smelled a human  smell  other
than  my  own sweat. She was wearing a scent I had worn the day
we kidnapped the Grand Flack.
     She would have been happy to go farther but it  wasn't  my
scene  and  we  both  knew it, and both knew I'd had nothing in
mind other than to thank her for  caring  enough  to  come  out
here.  So  she  climbed  down  from the roof, started back into
town. She turned once, waved and smiled at me.
     I worked furiously all afternoon, evening,  and  into  the
night, until it grew too dark to see what I was doing.
     #
     Cricket  came  by  the next day. I was working on the roof
again.
     "Git  down  off'n  that  there  shack,  you  cayuse!"  she
shouted.  "This  here  planet  ain't big enough fer the both of
us." She was pointing a chromeplated  six-shooter  at  me.  She
pulled  the  trigger, and a stick shot out and a flag unfurled.
It said BANG! She rolled it up and put the gun back on her  hip
as I came down the ladder, grateful of the interruption. It was
the hottest part of the day; I'd taken my shirt off and my skin
shone as if I'd just stepped out of the shower.
     "The hombre back in the bar said this stuff would take the
hide off  of  a  rattlesnake," she said, holding up a bottle of
brown liquid. "I told him that's what  I  intended  to  use  it
for."  I held out my hand. She scowled at it, then took it. She
was dressed in full, outrageous  "western"  regalia,  from  the
white  Stetson  hat to the highheeled lizard boots, with many a
pearly button and rawhide fringe in between. You  expected  her
to  whip  out a guitar and start yodeling "Cool Water." She was
also sporting a trim blonde mustache.
     "I hate the soup strainer," I said, as  she  poured  me  a
drink.
     "So  do  I,"  she admitted. "I'm like you; I don't care to
mix. But my little daughter bought it for me for  my  birthday,
so  I  figure  I  have  to  wear it for a few weeks to make her
happy."
     "I didn't know you had a daughter."
     "There's a lot you don't know about me. She's at that  age
when  gender  identity starts to crop up in their minds. One of
her friend's mother just got a Change, and  Lisa's  telling  me
she  wants  to have a daddy for a while. Hell, at least it goes
with the duds." She had been  digging  in  a  pocket.  Now  she
flipped out a wallet and showed me a picture of a girl of about
six,  a sweeter, younger version of herself. I tried my hand at
a few complimentary phrases, and became aware she  was  curling
her lip at me.
     "Oh,  shut  up,  Hildy,"  she said. "You being 'nice' just
reminds me of why you're doing it, you louse."
     "Did you have any trouble getting out of the Studio?"
     "They roughed me up pretty  good.  Knocked  out  my  front
teeth,  broke  a couple of fingers. But the cavalry arrived and
got pictures of the whole thing, and right now they're  talking
to  my lawyers. I guess I got you to thank for that; the timely
arrival, I mean."
     "No need to thank me."
     "Don't worry, I wasn't going to."
     "I was surprised it was so easy to get the drop on you."
     She brought out two shot glasses and poured  some  of  her
rattlesnake-hide  remover in each, then looked at me in a funny
way.
     "So am I. You can probably imagine, I've been thinking  it
over.  I  think  it was Brenda being there. I must have thought
she'd slow you down. Jog your elbow in some way  when  it  came
time  to do the dirty deed." She handed me a glass, and we both
drained them. She made a face; I was a little more used to  the
stuff,  but  it  never  goes  down easy. "All subconscious, you
understand. But I thought you'd hesitate, since it's so obvious
how much she looks up to you. So while I was waiting  for  that
window  of vulnerability I made the great mistake of turning my
back on you, you son of a bitch."
     "Bitch will do."
     "I meant what I said. I was thinking of the male  Hildy  I
knew, and he would have hesitated."