Incognito

The light was about to change, and we were waiting at the curb. Her thumb and index finger circled my wrist, as far as they’d go, and her other fingers rested lightly on my palm. Touch is important to her. It’s her thing.

When the light finally changed, I was about to step off the curb, but her hand suddenly closed around my upper arm, not tight enough to hurt me because she knows her strength, but tight.

She’d heard something somewhere — somewhere close, probably. It wasn’t the first time. I whispered, “Don’t”, because I knew she could also hear me, even over the traffic noise and the jackhammer up the block and the normal city shouting. There were camera spikes where every third telephone pole used to be, and the cop on the opposite corner had a Detector hanging from his belt. “Don’t.”

By then I could hear it myself: a car, an old car, gas-burning, accelerating out of control, headed towards the intersection. She could’ve reached it before it got there, before it hit anything, she could’ve slowed it down safely, stopped it, prevented anyone from getting hurt. She might even have been able to do it without her face being seen, without biometrics being recorded. Maybe.

“Jack…”

The car appeared up the street, going seventy, seventy-five, careening out of control. I watched it scrape a parked car and overcorrect and go sideways. “Don’t.”

I haven’t watched the news. I don’t know if anybody died, or how many. The other people waiting to cross all got hit by flying glass or debris, cuts and bruises mostly. Nothing hit us; I don’t know how she does that. Cops said it was ‘just one of those things’. They waved us along, to concentrate on the injured.

She’s gonna hate herself eventually, or me, or both. I can live with that, because of what they would do to her if they found out, or what she would have to do to stop them.

Long Weekend Away Of The Comet

They rode for hours in silence, still processing, never having discussed it, not once, not a little, not even abstractly or by implication. Eventually she couldn’t stand the sound of the tires and the engine and the wind coming through the partially rolled-down window, and said, “Where are we going?”

“Does it matter?”

She didn’t have an answer, but she still wanted to know. “Yes. I suppose.”

“The cabin. Dad’s cabin, where we went that weekend after—”

“I remember.”

“It’ll be quiet.” There was a pause, after which he laughed nervously. “At least, you know, until…”

“The cabin’s fine.” She fished her phone out of a pocket, with it her earbuds, scrolled through her song library looking for something that didn’t make her feel like she’d wasted her life on terrible music. “What if you change your mind? What if I do? What if you suddenly want to be with your mother or Ben, or—”

“There are things I want to do with this thirty-six hours I can’t do with my mother.”

“Okay, fine, sure, but what if you change your mind anyway? One quick bang and you could suddenly feel like you want to see the old house, your brother, your action figure collection, I don’t know. That stuff.”

“Is that what you want to do? Find your parents?”

“Fuck my parents. But if you secretly deep down want to be with your family when the world ends I’d rather it not be a middle-of-the-night surprise, you know what I’m saying?”

“I want to be with you. At the cabin.”

“Okay.”

A car came up from behind, fast, slipped into the oncoming lane, shot by them like they were parked, and receded into the distance ahead. Ten minutes later they passed it wrapped around a tree; he slowed down but didn’t stop. “Jesus.”

After they were past it, she observed, “You have to wonder if they were half-trying to do that. Couldn’t take the suspense.”

“Or nobody to take to a cabin.”

Ode To Joy

When he came in, she leaned forward in the chair. “Can you help me? I think my voucher is wrong, I’m supposed to be—”

“Ma’am, I’m just the technician, if there’s a problem with your voucher you need to talk to the service counter.”

“But she said I should talk to you. Something about approval numbers and how she doesn’t have the authority to—”

“Was is Becky? I bet it was Becky. Short girl, dark hair? Becky.  She’s hopeless, never learned the system. She can always go back in and… never mind. Lemme see your chip. And go ahead and lean back and get comfortable.” He took it, held it up to the reader, touched a few buttons, scrolled, scrolled, traced the screen with his fingertip. “Yeah. So your usual Boost is ‘Moderate Contentment’?”

“But I just got promoted at work to a Level Five, and with my seniority—”

“I see it. So you should be at ‘Satisfaction and Occasional Joy’.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what: I can go ahead and give you the SOJ boost today, but next month the voucher really does need to be correct, or we both get in trouble. Okay?”

“That’s very kind of you, thank you.”

“Ever had ‘Occasional Joy’ before? It’s great. I get it twice a year through my wife’s contract.”

“I won a spelling bee when I was nine. My mother didn’t know what to do with me, sent me to Grandma’s for two weeks. Gran just said, ‘this is how a child is supposed to be’. But of course she was from before, you know, old folks don’t really understand.”

“My Granny can’t even program her phone; I wonder how she ever gets anything done. Now let’s get this voucher edited so you can enjoy the rest of your day.” He touched a few more buttons, and held the chip up to the reader again. It beeped, and he winked at her.

“Oh, thank you so much.”

“Okay, here we go. Eyes closed.”

Butterfly Kisses

“Father?”

“Shh. What do you see?” He moved out of the way, so that she could peer around the corner.

“Zombies. Twelve… fourteen?”

“Anything interesting about them?”

She looked again. Most were tight skin and bones, dry, sun-baked, old. But some, four or five, were freshly dead with wet gaping wounds. “Some of them are new.”

“How?”

She thought hard. “Someone got overrun.”

“Possibly. More likely from the inside out. Look what they’re wearing.”

The new ones, the fresh ones, were barefoot and in sleeping clothes. “Someone died during the night. He bit someone. They bit someone.” This is why father and mother don’t sleep in the same bed.

“Good.” Father nodded. “What else?”

She looked again. Five zombies out of fourteen were fresh. That was a lot… “It’s nearby. There’ll be supplies.”

“Good. Come on.”

They didn’t stop to kill the zombies, they stole away silently through the long grass. and into a stand of trees. When they were far enough away as not to be heard, she asked in a normal voice, “How do we find it?”

“I know where it is. We trade with them. We did. I recognized one of the zombies.” He stopped as they got to the edge of a road. “First we go home and I get help.”

“I want to come with you.”

He shook his head gravely. “It’s not a good idea. It’ll be a lot of zombies, in close quarters. And, there could be survivors there, still. They’ll be angry, on edge. They might not want to come in with us. Dangerous.”

“I can handle it.”

“You’re good with a bow, but we’ll be taking guns.”

Guns. She’d only ever seen them take out the guns once, when she was little, and she’d never found out why; whatever they’d been afraid of hadn’t happened. “You could teach me guns.”

“Not this time. Your mother would kill me. Now come.” He watched her face screw up in disappointment. He offered, “Maybe when you’re twelve.”

The Rake's Progress

They always cheer the King. When he comes out, they stand, they wave their little flags, the trumpets blare their fanfares and all is presumed to be well. After that it's up for grabs. They can root against his handpicked favorites all they want, so long as they cheer him.

Remember that lesson.

The favorite that day was a Raiegan brute named Carv. He'd been a soldier, but wanting for discipline, he was eventually sent into the arena. He'd made quite a career of it. Thirty-one times he'd walked out into the sunlight and the sand and the sawdust and then back out again under his own power. This time he'd entered with a longsword, probably enchanted, most assuredly sharp. The King likes success.

I was most definitely not the favorite. I had bedded the King's mistress, Kayla, except we hadn't bothered with the bed. They'd sent me out with a shortsword, no doubt on the King's specific instructions, for the symbolism. That's fine. Kayla knows better.

Carv was never one for ceremony. He came at me like a team of runaway horses.

They cheer the King, and they cheer action. They were expecting me to die quickly. Carv had the sense to draw things out. I'd seen him fight before: he'd wound his opponent early on, and then toy with them until his ears told him the crowd was ready for the end.

I dodged and scampered. I twisted and rolled. The crowd hated me: I wouldn't take it like a man. They began to boo. They chanted Carv's name.

Carv decided the wounding was overdue: he stepped in close, expecting me to run, so he could slash at the backs of my legs. Instead I ducked into his shadow. Carv suddenly found my short sword buried hilt-deep in his chest.

The Crown cannot appear ungracious: the purse was paid. I was released, shown to the East Gate and told never to be seen there again.

I wonder if Kayla misses me.

Five Dollars An Hour

She'd dialed the number they'd left in case of a problem, but it rang and rang and they never picked up. She'd have called the restaurant, but she'd forgotten the name. Something fancy and Italian…

They'd said it would be simple: he'd be asleep the whole time, he never wakes up after eight. No reason even to go down there. Why is the baby's bedroom in the basement? Never you mind, Cindy. There's food in the fridge and no boys allowed.

The noises just got louder, and now there was scratching at the locked basement door. She dialed again.

Meet Cute

"That," Mays intoned with an air of respect, "is a big-ass ship." It was a spoked wheel, spinning, presumably for gravity. It had appeared out of nowhere, like a magic trick. "FTL but no gravity plating? Odd…"

ELLE's computerized voice spoke through the comm systems. "This configuration does not appear in Company or Government records. Caution is advised."

"You bet your—"

"Is it possible they have not seen us? Perhaps they are here to mine the asteroid just as we are." Rebbo was at his shoulder; far above his shoulder, actually, at ten feet tall.

"That'd be one hell of a coincidence. ELLE?"

"Insufficient Data."

About what he expected. "Are they on an intercept course?"

"At their current speed and heading they will pass within ten kilometers of this side of the asteroid. So far they have made no detectable adjustments to speed and heading. I suggest a radar scan."

"Just start radiating at them? I don't think so."

A sudden dazzling light; Mays covered his eyes. "We're under attack! Bring up—"

"Searchlight only. They are illuminating a wide area of this face of the asteroid, centered on our position. There is no damage to the hull," ELLE reassured.

Rebbo observed, "It appears they are less concerned with radiation than you."

"Fine, ELLE, scan them. But don't blame me if they start shooting at us."

An hour later Mays was a hundred meters from the ship in a pressure suit, secured to the surface by piton and line, waiting while the visitors made their careful way across the rock towards him. "I can't see into the crawler very well, but I think there's three of them." He dialed his visor lens up a few points. "They're small. Half the size of a man. I wonder how many of them there are in that thing."

"It could be a colony ship," Rebbo observed. "Or a spacegoing colony. It's not unheard of for some species to—"

"I'll be damned."

"What?"

"One of them is waving."

Drabble "Just Like Candy"

He has an animal leer, a predatory way of watching with head down and dull eyes fixed and mouth slightly open in a toothy sneer. She doesn't care: it isn't as if she's ever going to fuck him.

There's nothing between the girls and the patrons, nothing but conventions and assumptions and the knowledge that between the time the bouncers grab a problem and the time the cops arrive to take it away a lot of damage can be done no one will be asked to explain.

For the ninth night in a row, he decides not to grab her.

Best Judgment

"It's right there." Wegman's, the afternoon sun breaking through clouds and lighting it like a beacon. With all the windows intact, and no visible debris out front, it looked like it hadn't been looted. There was no mystery as to why: the building was surrounded by the undead.

Violet shook her head. "A hundred yards across the field, zombies closing in from every direction. Then another fifty yards across the parking lot, between the cars. Then the doors, which might be locked—"

"The doors are glass, I have a crowbar"

"And then how many zombies are inside? Even if it's none, how long do you have before the ones outside follow you in and block your escape? How much food can you get in that time?"

"There's carts. I—"

"You good at dodging with a loaded cart? Are you gonna push it with one hand and shoot with the other? Did you suddenly become Chuck Norris without telling me?"

"We're almost out of food."

It was true, for what it was worth. "We've been almost out of food for months now. You need to get used to being almost out of food."

He shook his head in disgust; he raised the binoculars to his eyes. "I can see canned food stacked up inside. It's a whole display made of canned food. Vegetables."

"Great. You won't live to eat them."

"I'm going. You can stay if you want. It'd be easier if you helped."

"It's impossible either way. We'd need twenty people with rifles to crack this place, and that's assuming that it's actually worth the ammo we'd spend."

"I'm going."

"I'm not. And I'm not going to rescue you when you get surrounded."

His face hardened, and she knew it was over. He took off his pack, made sure his shoes were tied, made sure his clip was full, and set off in a dead run towards the store.

Violet waited until she heard him scream before she took his pack and left.

Secondhand

It was a litany for the pair of them, Bobby Christopher and his brother, whose name I don't remember: Fenwick and that gas mask, man. Don't he know this shit ain't airborne? Hasn't he seen the movies? And what the fuck kind of gay-ass name is Fenwick?

Fenwick just ignored them. He'd seen a lot of people turn that first weekend without having gotten bit and come to his own conclusions. He only took the mask off to eat, and he did that away from the group.

The brothers would taunt him, sometimes. We'd be clearing a house, everybody with shotgun or crossbow or whatever at the ready: "Hey, Fenwick, go ahead and go first. You're the one with the gas mask." And he'd do it. He never sassed back. I don't know if it was because he didn't want to risk it or what. After a while, Fenwick going first was just the way we did things.

Of course, he got lots of kills that way, and first dibs on the scavenge too; that didn't sit well with Bobby Christopher. Why the fuck does fucking Fenwick get the only solar iPhone charger? Man, I want to listen to some music too. It never occurred to him to simply ask to borrow it.

Things got tense. It'd happened before. Usually somebody would just be gone one morning: taken whatever they'd brought in and climbed down off of whatever roof we were on and walked away. But Fenwick wasn't going anywhere, and neither was Bobby Christopher or his brother.

It was the used bookstore that ended it. Fenwick wanted something new to read; nobody really cared enough to talk him out of it, much less go in with him. People are expected to use their own judgment.

He came out, he'd been bit. Nobody really said anything. Bobby Christopher managed, "That sucks, bro."

Fenwick gave him the charger and the mask, and then went back inside the bookstore and locked the door behind him.

The Maiden

"There."

Sythe looked, but her eyes weren't as good as Runk's. "I still don't see anything."

"He'll move, and then you'll—"

And then she had it, in the mist of distance: the figure of a horse, all-white, nosing at the forest floor for something to eat. "I see it. So?"

"Keep watching."

"What do you need me for? You've caught wild horses before. That's how you got Challa."

"It won't let me get near. Keep watching."

The distant animal seemed to hear their furtive whispers, and raised its head to consider them. There was a horn in the center of its forehead, as long as a broadsword and the color of ivory. "What?"

"Now do you understand? Take this," he handed her a rope tied into a loop at one end, "and walk over there. Once you're close enough, you know what to do. It should lie down with its head in your lap and go to sleep. If you haven't been lying to mother."

"About—" She blushed. "I haven't lied."

"Then go."

"What happens if I catch it?"

"Then mother won't have to worry about your dowry anymore," he chuckled, "because we'll be rich. Now, go on."

Sythe took a deep breath, and then moved with as much grace as she could manage across the forest floor, eyes fixed on the creature, heart pounding in her chest. When she could hear the air moving through its nostrils, she lowered herself to sit cross-legged on the mossy ground.

Some ways behind, Runk was trying to get her attention. "Psst!" He was clutching the front of his shirt, gesturing as if to pull it open.

She blushed again, and whispered, "You're crazy."

He glowered at her.

When she turned back, the unicorn had stepped within a few feet, towered over her with head turned to fix her with one questioning eye.

Sythe sighed in resignation, and then hissed over her shoulder: "Don't look!"

She fumbled with nervous fingers at the ties of her blouse.

The New Amsterdam Vampire Bowling Team

"You're up."

The display over the lane has our names: Me, Coral, Wen, Rocky. No Gunnar, of course, and there'll be no mention of why.

"I don't understand why we're here."

"I figured we needed a change."

I throw my first ball. It's been forty years, maybe fifty, but the muscles remember: the ball curves elegantly and the pins scatter. An 'X' appears on the scoreboard as I return to my seat next to Coral. "These people will be full of cholesterol."

"The clubbers were always full of liquor. What's the difference?" She gets up to bowl, throws a strike as flawless as mine.

I shake my head, look around. Rocky is at the jukebox, looking for music; but of course there's nothing in it old enough for him to like. Wen is battling a stand-up arcade game, the kind that cost a dollar, and there are children watching her. "I don't think they're playing."

"Bowl for Wen, I'll bowl for Rocky."

We finish the first frame and start the second. I should be looking around, picking out a 'donor', arranging to bump into them, compliment them on their play, whatever, but instead I'm concentrating on the game. I used to play at a place in the fifties, a road house with a bar attached. The balls were coated with rubber, then; Things change. My ball sails down the lane and crashes into the pins, a little too loud. Another 'X' appears on the screen.

We finish out the second frame. As I get up to start the third, Coral is staring at the board: there are too many 'X' marks for her liking. "You should throw a spare. No perfect games, we don't want to attract attention."

The annoyed look that crosses my face is subtle and ephemeral, but she notices. We've known each other a long time.

"What?"

"I wanted the turkey."

She rolls her eyes. "Fine. But you're leaving at least three pins standing by the end." Coral knows best.

Masked

"Step forward."

The line was long, as it always was on a work day at that hour. They would be harried and overwhelmed by the sheer number of human workers. They would be more likely to make mistakes. Assuming they made mistakes; no one was sure.

"Step forward." The Vylid had a soft, raspy voice like a dry wind blowing through crumpled paper. The man three people in front of Marla moved hesitantly up to stand at the white line, between the pair of huge Grodon guards.

From behind her, a whisper. "I don't recognize you."

Marla, standing with arms crossed in front of her, said nothing.

The whisper came again. "Are you supposed to be here?"

Marla glanced over her shoulder: a middle-aged woman, too thin. "There's no talking in line."

"Step forward."

The woman moved forward, staying just behind Marla. "Where are you from?"

"You're going to get us punished, we shouldn't be talking."

"They don't care, if you're quiet." The woman leaned in closer. "They'll scan you. They scan everyone. You know that, right?"

Marla ran her thumb over the three symbols on her forearm. The brand felt strange, foreign. "I'm where I'm supposed to be."

"Step forward."

Marla would be next. One of the massive guards stepped heavily away from the table, came lumbering slowly down the line, came right past her.

The woman whispered again when the guard was out of earshot, "It's all right, you can tell them you got on the wrong bus, that you made a mistake."

"Step forward."

Marla didn't hesitate; the die was cast now.

She handed her ID card to the remaining guard, who handed it to the seated Vylid. The willowy creature typed something into its computer, and then nodded to the guard. Marla offered her arm.

The Grodon held a scanner against her forearm where the three symbols were tattooed on a grafted piece of a dead woman's skin. The scanner beeped.

The raspy voice spoke to her. "Move through."

Smart

Mickle slipped the tablet into his mouth, held it on his tongue. The girl with the blue hair and the cleavage and the nursing degree handed him a glass of water, watched him drink, watched him swallow. He opened his mouth so that she could see the tablet was gone. She nodded, took the glass from his hand, stood, and walked out of the room.

"So, no sex then?"

"Not that kind of trip," she called back over her shoulder.

People moved past, in the hall, whispering. Someone laughed, a jarring, guttural sound. He wanted to get up and pull the door closed, but something made him dismiss the idea as too much trouble. He settled back into the pillows, got comfortable.

For some reason he started thinking about his ex, the break-up, how she had left him suddenly, how she'd been so angry, how she wouldn't explain. It occurred to him that it hadn't been all that sudden, if he was going to be honest with himself. He'd been dismissive, and emotionally absent, and though he hadn't cheated, it isn't as though he hadn't considered it. In fact he'd gone right up to the line and poked it with his toes. Of course Jinn had left. He'd been a fool.

His mind wandered. He thought about the last big argument, about that movie she'd liked that hadn't made any sense to him. But he couldn't remember why, it seemed so straightforward now. The whole thing was a metaphor for—

Oh.

It was the trip. The drug was buffing his cognitives.

He started thinking about all the mysteries in his life, setting them up, knocking them down like paper targets. It just got easier and easier; to hold a problem in his mind was to grasp its solution. He fished his phone out of his pocket, started reading the stock market pages, leaving himself notes. He cancelled his lottery subscription.

Mickle was already on the way down when he started thinking about cancer.

They Call Me Fleet

Panix escaped from Ultramax again, and D1 sent us after her, also again. B Team gets all the tough assignments while A Team gets the parades. Maybe if there were five of us we'd make it look easy, too.

I had to stand up Mandy, who was already seated at the restaurant waiting for me. We're trying the whole 'let's go back to dating' thing. We'll see if it works. At least this time I called; I think she took that as a step in the right direction.

Panix and I have history. She's the one who gave me my Cape name in the first place. My, but you're fleet of foot, aren't you? Well, it won't save you! She'd regretted those words later, in solitary confinement.

Rapture took to the air immediately. The Central Bank has a roof with a helicopter pad, and she figured to strike from above while I launched the frontal assault.

The good thing about Panix: she doesn't have lackeys. She doesn't use robots or mutated animals or escaped mental patients. She's arrogant enough to think she can knock over a bank alone. The bad thing about Panix is, it's possible on any given day that she might be right.

I walked up to the front door, peered through the glass. Panix was standing in the middle of the ornate marble lobby with something that looked like a net-gun. I grokked her plan: tie me down, literally, while she deals with Rapture.

Rapture, who was floating down the unobstructed center of some nearby stairwell, due to arrive momentarily.

It's not a bad plan. What she didn't know was: I've gotten faster in the two years since we last met. I was through the door and halfway across the lobby at her before she even realized I was inside. By the time she got the gun up and trained, I was behind her, tapping her on the shoulder.

Panix doesn't understand. Rapture takes to the air; I can fly.

Metal Fatigue

He walks stiffly, clanking and clattering, groaning and hissing with each step. The newer models glide past him, around him: they carry lighter loads and can move faster than he ever did when new. To them, he is an obstacle to be negotiated.

He hooks up to the Dispensary via a 'legacy' connector. He talks to it in an accent it must find quaint. Screens flash yellow warnings, orange cautions: he is decades out of warranty. But work must be done, and so his tanks begin to fill with the biopacket.

He is even slower leaving full than he had been arriving empty. His progress away from the Dispensary must, to the newer models, seem glacial. He makes for the open waste.

There are specific, inviolable rules to it: the area must be a certain distance removed from any existing patches of Earthlife, within a certain distance of an existing settlement, and flat enough for him to perform the entire programmed biopacket dispersal pattern without interruption or deviation.

The ground must be broken, turned over, mixed. This is where he is still valuable: the smaller models dig fast, but more shallowly.

The new patch of living soil will spring to life, sprouting with bacteria and then grasses and then trees. It would happen naturally, were the process left to nature, but humans are impatient.

He turns to head back to the Dispensary, but something is wrong; his weight shifts oddly, his gyros attempt to correct and fail, and he falls to the ground across the boundary between dead ground and the newly seeded soil.

He goes into diagnostic mode. Among a litany of issues one is new: his right leg, rusty and weakened by years of stress, has broken in two. He knows there will be no replacement: he was built on Earth, and no one is making spare parts.

He doesn't shut down to save power; there would be no point. The grass begins to grow around him, and then the trees.

The New Amsterdam Vampire Social Club

It's busy tonight.

Rocky is already there, at a booth in the corner, coke laid out in lines on the table, surrounded by glassy-eyed would-be model types in transition between humoring him and ensorcelled by him. Wen dances, glimpses of her small frame flashing from within a sea of moving bodies. Coral leans against the bar, drink in hand, daring men to approach her with her wry but icy stare. Gunnar won't show for another hour. Gunnar doesn't really go for the scene anymore.

I don't blame him. But there are rules.

Five of the several hundred people packed into this club will have a moment of terror and probably ecstasy and possibly death. Though, to be fair, a couple of those people may not even be here yet: Wen is fickle, and impetuous, and often changes her mind at the last minute. Gunnar will choose one at random, possibly one who's just walked in the door. Gunnar doesn't care.

Rocky will pick the prettiest girl he can seduce, which won't be the prettiest girl in the club or usually even at his table. Low self-esteem is Rocky's wingman. Coral will choose the one who earns it.

Mine will live, and so will Coral's. Rocky's usually lives, and so does Wen's, though her control is questionable. This might be one of those nights. Gunnar's will die.

Wen sees me and waves. I smile and nod and begin scoping the crowd. I don't always choose a woman, but—

"How are you?" Coral is at my elbow. She never talks to me until after, until the post-game. This is unusual.

"Shouldn't you be working your magic? You've only got an hour before Gunnar—"

"Gunnar's not coming."

"Meaning?"

"Gunnar was a liability. He made us more vulnerable." She fixed me with her eyes. I'm serious about this now. "I made an executive decision."

Meaning Gunnar is dust, somewhere, probably nearby, and I am not to make a scene. We don't have a leader, except for Coral.

Orthodoxy

The blindfold came off, but he instantly squeezed his eyes shut: there was a bright light in front of him, shining directly at his face.

"Better to keep them open, let them adjust," said a terrifyingly friendly voice.

He opened them into a squint. The edges of his vision resolved into shapes, the shapes resolved into people. One of them, a man standing against the wall, checked his watch. "Let's get on with it."

"Right." The first voice belonged to a balding man sitting across the table; he was a touch heavy, but otherwise thoroughly nondescript. "Mr. Ordry, do you know why you're here?"

"Not really, no."

"I think you do. The computer thinks you do too. Heart rate, blush response, eye movement. it's all right here." He pointed to a datapad on the table in front of him. "There are more sensors taped to your skin right now than I have in my car. And it's a nice car, Mr. Ordry."

"Congratulations."

"I think he's got a smart mouth," the watch-checker opined.

"Mr. Ordry, let me ask you again. Do you know why you're here?"

"I honestly can't think of a good reason."

"Listen, pal." The standing man had stepped forward, grabbed the lamp and pushed it closer, angled it to maximize its dazzling effect. "You'd best be advised to cooperate. This interview can get very uncomfortable, very quick. Am I making myself clear?"

"I think so."

"Good." He stepped back, leaving the lamp in place.

"Now then." The seated man smiled. "Why don't you tell me why you think you're here."

"I refused to take the CSFT during my review. Then they made me take it or I'd be fired. I guess I didn't do so well."

"You didn't. You didn't do at all well, Mr. Ordry." The seated man shook his head. "The Comprehensive Spiritual Fitness Test is an important tool for weeding out problematic employees. And citizens, for that matter, Mr. Ordry."

"Whatever."

"You're a dangerous man, Mr. Ordry."

Dome 8, Section 17, Level 8, Hatch 124, Knock 5 Times

The view-port slid open, and a pair of eyes assessed him. "Can I help you?"

"I'm Rocky. Jimmy the Bits sent me."

"But that's not what he told you to say, is it." It wasn't a question.

"…'Flow my tears'?"

"That's better."

The door hissed and swung open. The bouncer was immense, and missing an arm. Rocky didn't imagine he'd have any trouble breaking someone's neck even with only the one, but the Company wouldn't have kept him on in the mines. "Twenty scrip."

He'd thought it'd be more; he handed over the bill, which the bouncer held up to the light.

"It's good."

"Can't trust an Eek freak. Though you're not one yet, I suppose." He grinned. "Give it time. Up the ladder, down the corridor, door's open."

"Thanks."

The room was small, full of stale, fetid air. The Eekogle sat in a bowl-shaped chair. Bed? Its tentacles hung flaccid over the rim. It was surrounded by Eek freaks, sitting motionless on the floor. It was watching football on the wallscreen.

There was a handler in the corner, reading a book. His face was blotchy, discolored: old burn marks? He delivered his instructions without looking up. "Sit anywhere. Leave your pressure suit on, the medical sensors will tell us if you're having a bad trip. When you're ready, just stick out your tongue."

Rocky picked an empty patch of carpet, and sat. The man next to him was older, thin, balding. His suit lights showed green but he was sweating, breathing shallow, slack-jawed.

"It's psychotropic," the handler said. "Their ancestors developed it as a defense against predators. None of the megafauna on their planet will even give them a second look now. Not even if they're starving."

Rocky stared at the Eekogle for a long time, without moving.

You only live once. Rocky stuck out his tongue. One of the alien's tentacles lifted from the chair rim, stretched out, elongating towards him. The tip glistened with a clear excretion.

Rocky licked it.