textfiles/magazines/INTERTEXT/ITv5n5.etx

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================================================
InterText Vol. 5, No. 5 / September-October 1995
================================================

  Contents

    FirstText: Dinosaur Moon..........................Jason Snell

    SecondText: Authenticate _This!_.................Geoff Duncan

  Short Fiction

    Ghostdancer...................................Ridley McIntyre
    
    Argyst..........................................Deborah Bryan

    Black Light................................Todd Brendan Fahey

    Watching You...................................Pat Johanneson
    
    The Lighthouse at Dyrholaey...........Andrea and Paolo Milani

....................................................................
    Editor                                     Assistant Editor
    Jason Snell                                    Geoff Duncan
    jsnell@intertext.com                    geoff@intertext.com
....................................................................
    Assistant Editor                     Send correspondence to 
    Susan Grossman                        editors@intertext.com
    susan@intertext.com              or intertext@intertext.com
....................................................................
  InterText Vol. 5, No. 5. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published 
  electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this 
  magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold 
  (either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire 
  text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1995, Jason Snell. 
  Individual stories Copyright 1995 their original authors. 
  InterText is created using Apple Macintosh computers and then 
  published in ASCII/Setext, Adobe PostScript, Adobe Acrobat PDF 
  and HTML (World-Wide Web) formats. For more information about 
  InterText, send a message to intertext@intertext.com with the 
  word "info" in the subject line. For writers' guidelines, place 
  the word "guidelines" in the subject line.  
....................................................................


  FirstText: Dinosaur Moon   by Jason Snell
===========================================

  The sun rises and sets each day. The moon's up there every day, 
  too, but we don't usually think of it the same way. The sun is 
  on a 24-hour cycle (big red ball in the east, smaller hot ball 
  overhead, big red ball in the west, then darkness), but the moon 
  takes longer to appreciate (big gray ball, gray apple with a 
  bite taken out of it, gray half-circle, gray crescent, black 
  hole in the sky -- repeat until you see the big gray ball 
  again). 
  
  Publishing is like that.



  Before you think I've gone completely around the bend -- or at 
  least before you tighten the straps on my straitjacket -- let me 
  explain. In traditional paper publishing, a publication has to 
  pick a schedule and stick to it. Most newspapers come out every 
  day (perhaps in staggered editions), and most magazines come out 
  every week or every month. Rather than sending you 50 pages 
  every week, the editors of _Wired_ make 200 pages available each 
  month. That's the format they've chosen for their material.

  But when it comes to online publishing, that's not always the 
  case. True, many print magazines have come on the Web and begun 
  to put information on their sites in cycles that match their 
  print cycles. Newspapers may refresh their content every day 
  (with hourly additions off the news wires), while monthly 
  magazines might only update their site once a month -- say, when 
  the moon is full. From a logistical standpoint, it's a 
  reasonable philosophy. After all, their entire production 
  process is set up in regular cycles, beginning with the 
  assignment of stories. The stories are written, edited, copy 
  edited, layed out, proofed, and finally printed as part of an 
  edition.

  But online publishing can easily take another approach: the idea 
  that the concept of an _issue_ doesn't apply to publishers 
  dealing with bytes and bandwidth rather than reams of paper and 
  delivery trucks. Why shouldn't electronic publications print 
  stories as they're finished? Why make readers wait until an 
  entire issue is ready when material can just as easily be online 
  _now?_

  These folks make some good points. First, they're trying to 
  break the conventions of publishing -- or at the very least, 
  they're making us question what a publication really is and how 
  it should function, divorced from the logistical need to produce 
  a salable package for newsstands and home subscribers.

  And this argument is augmented by the growth of the Web and the 
  importance of making people come back to your site more than 
  once a month. That way, the Patron Saint of Web Hits is 
  appeased, as are those advertisers who are quixotically paying 
  huge amounts of money to reach the small group of folks who are 
  surfing the Net.

  So am I ready to chuck the concept of _issues_ and transform 
  _InterText_ into a "Fiction Web Site," with perhaps one new 
  story a week added to the mix, just to keep people coming back 
  for more?

  Though I'm not quite 25 years old yet, call me a dinosaur. Go 
  ahead. I can take it.



  The beauty of any magazine, including fiction magazines, is that 
  it is a complete package with a tangible beginning, middle, and 
  end. We pick the order of our stories to set a tone for our 
  issue, making sure to mix the heavy with the light, the long 
  with the short -- picking suitable pieces to open matters, and 
  stories that are appropriate ones with which to say "goodbye" 
  for two months.

  In other words, though we live in a world with technology that 
  allows us to break the barriers of conventional publishing and 
  destroy the concept of the _issue_ if we really want to -- I 
  don't want to. Not only does the concept of individual issues 
  let us create a comfortable, standard format, but it also 
  improves the chances you'll like what we send you. Sure, it's 
  _possible_ all five of the stories in this issue won't move you, 
  but the chances are good that a few of them will.

  And most of all -- especially in an electronic world where 
  publications are born and die in the wink of an eye -- the 
  strength of a _periodical_ is in its regularity. A publication, 
  online or not, is an unknowable quantity if it doesn't stick to 
  a publication schedule -- a moving target that readers can never 
  be sure they're caught up with. Though there may be hardy, 
  determined souls out there willing to invest the effort 
  necessary to keep up with such an endeavor, frankly, we don't 
  think that's the readers' job. It's the editors' job. Sure, for 
  us _InterText_ is a moving target. But it shouldn't be for you.

  That's why regularity has been perhaps the biggest goal we've 
  had in publishing _InterText_. We plan to be here for the long 
  haul, and we plan on being dependable. You won't be left 
  guessing about when to visit our Web site, or when the latest 
  issue will arrive. We're here every other month, and have been 
  doing it for well over four years.

  This is not to say that other approaches -- say, a Web site that's 
  an interactive "fiction clearinghouse" -- might not be useful and 
  popular. I'm sure will be seeing all sorts of similar publishing 
  ventures like that in the near future.

  But for me, nothing beats knowing that if I go to my mailbox on 
  Thursday, the latest copy of _Sports Illustrated_ will be there. 
  And if you look in your emailbox in the middle of every odd 
  month, you'll find us.

  In a world full of suns, there's still a place for moons. 



  SecondText: Authenticate This!   by Geoff Duncan
==================================================

  Two years ago in this space, I first bemoaned the imminent 
  invasion of the Net by traditional publishers. How could 
  publications like _InterText_ succeed in the same arena as large 
  concerns, with their big budgets, innumerable staff, and 
  high-priced, mainstream content? The future was looking a little 
  grim as the big boys of big-time media began targeting the 
  online world.

  Well, two years later, I have one thing to say: Oh me of little 
  faith! Large, mainstream publishing concerns have entered the 
  online waters, and they're splashing about, trying to make big 
  waves. But I have to confess to feeling some malicious glee as I 
  watch their efforts. For the most part, they're floundering in 
  online kiddie pools, clutching flotation devices and gazing in 
  barely-controlled terror as the shoreline vanishes. The Internet 
  is a big ocean, and it looks like most of these folks can't 
  swim.

  For example, let's consider "authentication." If you use the 
  World Wide Web, you've undoubtedly been confronted by sign-in 
  requirements at so-called "major sites." Usually, you're 
  required to register a user name and a password, which you then 
  enter every time you want to access that site. Some publishers 
  require users to fill out surveys before they let you sign on -- 
  heck, I've seen sites that refuse to grant access until you give 
  an email address and system information, and (more troubling) a 
  few that require users to supply their age, address, telephone, 
  income, educational level, marital status, and other personal 
  information.

  Why are "major" publishers doing this? What does a user name and 
  a password have to do with publishing? Nothing. But it has 
  everything to do with advertising.

  Major publishing concerns aren't going online for their health 
  -- they're going online for money. Publishers aren't primarily 
  concerned with providing content -- their main interest is 
  selling advertising space. Content is only important to the 
  extent it draws readers; what's really important is how 
  demographic descriptions of those readers appeal to advertisers. 
  This arrangement doesn't mean there aren't high-quality 
  traditional publications; however, it does mean the quality of 
  these publications is determined by their editorial staffs, not 
  their publishers. A publisher won't hesitate to kill a quality 
  publication if its revenues are low; similarly, a publisher 
  won't care much about the quality of a publication bringing in 
  lots of advertising dollars.

  So, it figures traditional publishers are bringing those 
  money-making principles online, but they have some issues to 
  overcome. First, they have to monitor the size of their 
  readership, so they require registration. This allows them to 
  track what any "subscriber" is interested in and -- importantly 
  -- how often they visit. Some online endeavors try to provide 
  "added value" through registration, perhaps via special areas or 
  customized features. This is just sugar to distract from the 
  bitter pill they want readers to swallow. Ask yourself why 
  they're eager for you to register and their motives become 
  clear.

  Second, publishers have to know something about their readers in 
  order to sell space to advertisers -- after all, there's no use 
  trying to sell hair dryers to bald people, and there's probably 
  not much point trying to sell typewriters on the Internet. So 
  the publishers ask readers all kinds of questions, which they 
  turn into demographic reports presented to advertisers. If the 
  advertisers like what they see, a contract is signed, a check is 
  cut, and a GIF image is on your screen. And you signed up for 
  it.

  What's wrong with this picture? We've heard of the exorbitant 
  advertising rates purportedly charged by the likes of _HotWired_ 
  and Time-Warner's _Pathfinder_. However, a quick tour through 
  some publishing sites using authentication (posing as Clark 
  Kent, investigative reporter) revealed two interesting things. 
  The first was that I had more fun filling out surveys as if I 
  were Clark Kent than I did "surfing" the sites. The second was 
  that many of the sites just didn't seem to have much 
  advertising. Maybe these folks didn't want to clutter my screen, 
  out of the goodness of their hearts?

  Fat chance -- if they could, most publishers would be happy to 
  have you watch a twenty-minute infomercial every time you 
  connected. No -- I think this is a sign the authentication 
  tactic is beginning to backfire. Sure, these publishers might 
  get a long list of names as people file through the front door, 
  but as they examine these lists they're probably discovering 
  relatively few people ever come back again. I can't imagine this 
  goes over well with advertisers, who wouldn't see that as a 
  compelling reason to spend their advertising dollars online.

  And why wouldn't people return to these top-of-the-line, 
  big-money online publishing ventures? Part of the reason is 
  probably the massive growth of the Web itself -- there's always 
  something new to see, somewhere new to go. But part of it -- 
  perhaps the most important part of it -- is that they have no 
  reason to come back! For all their experience in the "industry," 
  about all these advertisers and publishers are demonstrating is 
  a fundamental failure to understand the online world -- it's a 
  classic case of the blind leading the naked. Information, 
  content, and relevancy are what count, and so far very few of 
  these publishers seem to provide that.

  So, I no longer feel concerned about the impact of big-time 
  publishing on the Internet. I should have realized what I was 
  dealing with. In the meantime, if you feel the need to visit 
  publishing sites that require authentication, I'd urge you to 
  treat the surveys as exercises in creativity. I certainly found 
  that made the sites more interesting.



  Ghostdancer   by Ridley McIntyre
==================================
...................................................................
  In a world where a killer clown is the biggest TV star, those 
  who walk the Earth might be less alive than beings who exist 
  only in the depths of cyberspace.
...................................................................

  One
-----

   "Everything you imagine exists
    Even if it only exists in your imagination."
     -- Big Pierrot

  Nightingale Medical Center. Red Sector 16. New Atlantic City. 
  The Year Of The Rat.

  "I got a new job, Reb." Cody Ingram slides her hands into the 
  pockets of her baggy black leather jacket and listens to the 
  crickets in the field. An edgy silence descending between her 
  and her younger sister as they sat on the hot metal bench.

  Reb looks down at the grass. Up at the technicolor blue sky. 
  Over the field at the other kids playing tag on a huge steel 
  climbing frame. Everywhere but at Cody. Her voice, when she does 
  speak, is deeper than most would expect of a girl of fifteen. 
  Her words slurred and difficult to make out.

  Reb sometimes feels embarrassed to talk -- but this is Cody, and 
  she knows that no matter how bad her voice gets, her sister 
  understands.

  "You didn't come... to visit me this month... I... thought you 
  had left me... I thought they... would switch me off."

  Cody sighs. "I told you I had to go to San Angeles. The Callies 
  needed me to do some corp-work. Infiltration, that kind of 
  thing. I sent money back." She moves up to the bench and sits 
  next to her sister. Tries to put her arm around her, to comfort 
  her, but Reb just slides further away. "Sometimes I have to go 
  where the work is. I told you before, when I went to Europe. I 
  would never let them shut you down. I made a promise, remember?"

  Reb nods to herself. "I just... thought..."

  "Yeah," Cody says. "Well you know what Dad would say, don't you? 
  Thought stuck his ass out the window and went outside to push it 
  back in again. Don't think, girl. _Know._"

  Reb looks down ashamedly. "Yeah..." The word a soft whisper on 
  the wind.

  "So, anyway," Cody continues, "I got a new job. Footwork. 
  Harlequins want me to find somebody for them. A girl. Looks like 
  she might have run away from some corporate dustzone or 
  something. But she's supposed to be here, on the Island. Pays 
  well, and all I have to do is snoop around some."

  "What's her... name?"

  "Ghostdancer."



  As the sun sets over the Island, the air cools and the humid day 
  becomes a hot, wet night. At twilight, the first few spatters of 
  rain start to sizzle on the soft tarmac of Red Sector's streets.

  Cody takes a quick look at the slate gray sky above Terminal. A 
  police Locust aerodyne, bulbous head and black, evil body with 
  vectoring jet thrusters for legs, skims across the skyline on a 
  routine patrol. The police don't send ground traffic into 
  Terminal anymore. Not after the Tag Team wars a few months back. 
  The wars may have killed off the last remnants of the gangs, but 
  there are still no-go zones on the Island. Safe havens for what 
  the kids call _keiki_ -- "business." She pulls her hands out of 
  her jacket pockets and steps into the Apres Mort. Inside, the 
  _keiki_ is thick enough to choke on.

  A blade of twilight slices through the mist to the bar at the 
  far end. There's a background hum, a mixture of talk from the 
  few kids here and ambient sounds from the darkwave selection on 
  the CD jukebox. Cody glances around the main room of the bar, 
  looking for one pony in particular, nodding to the kids she 
  knows as she walks past them. They talk nonstop, fast and soft, 
  in a melange of American English and Japanese. _Romaji_, they 
  call it. Red Sector Patois. Cody has learned enough in four 
  years here to get by, but, as in everything, there are 
  intricacies that she will never fathom. Language is a mindset.

  She finds her pony in the games room. Jacked into a hyperball 
  game through thin silver interface cables dangling from NST 
  sockets in the back of his shaven head. Green chrome cusps 
  implanted over his eye sockets reflecting the flashing score 
  lights on the hyperball machine's display. Holding the pistol 
  grip that aims the balls on the pinball-like game, it's his 
  neural inputs that fire the balls at the flashing targets. 
  Picking them out to a split second the same way cybernetic 
  smartguns target their victims.

  Cody tries not to stare at the machine. The speed at which the 
  targets pulse is liable to give her a fit. She waits until the 
  pony has clocked the score display one final time and there are 
  no more flashing targets. The game won, she taps him on the 
  shoulder.

  "Shouldn't you be out wasting people instead of wasting all your 
  _doru_ on the machines, Echo?" she says with a smile.

  The pony looks around. She can see her face mirrored green in 
  his metal eyes. He grins and pulls the cables out of his head. 
  The machine slowly reels them back into a slot on the side.

  "Jesus, Cody! I didn't know you were back." He grabs her around 
  the waist and she returns his hug. He stops when he realizes 
  he's pressing her shoulder-rigged pistol into her ribcage.

  "Got back yesterday. Just thought I'd go see Reb first. Pay the 
  bills, that kinda thing."

  "Aces," Echo says. He flicks the dust covers back down on his 
  NST sockets and slides a pair of black shades over the eyes. 
  Black shades, long black hair shaved at the sides, black leather 
  longcoat, black leather jeans tucked into tall black boots. Like 
  most of the population of the Apres Mort, Echo looks like Death 
  incarnate.

  "So, how's life in Callie?"

  "Dull," she says. "But the pay's good. Kinda hard trying to slow 
  yourself down to their speed, you know?" She shrugs. "So, what's 
  new on the Island?"

  Echo laughs. "Things are still pretty fucked up. No one knows 
  who's who now the teams are gone. Kinda weird, selling stuff 
  from under the counter when there's no stock in the store." His 
  green eyes stare blankly out into the void of the Apres Mort. 
  They seem to try and pick people out from the haze of the bar's 
  main room. It's as if, despite all the electronics fitted under 
  those metal cusps, he's blind as a bat. Or maybe he's just lost 
  in thought. Lost...

  He shakes his head to shift the numbing daze. "Anyway.... You 
  never come here for a social, so what do you need?"

  Cody reaches into the inside pocket of her leather to pull out a 
  small chip. A black silicon cylinder the size of her thumbnail. 
  She hands it over to an inquisitive Echo.

  "I need to know where I can find more of these."

  Echo turns over the chip. Recognizes it as a neurosoft. Then 
  raises his head and his brow wrinkles in thought. His stare 
  seems to go straight through her.



  Lycia wants to die.

  Not with a bang. By any means necessary. Sits in a corner of her 
  apartment, surrounded by a teenager's collection of knives and 
  Japanese swords. Watching each one glint with gut-wrenching 
  invitation under her single neon striplight.

  She shivers as her gooseflesh skin ripples with anticipation. 
  Pale white skin that wants to be broken. Bright crimson life 
  that wants to be free. The hunger inside her all-consuming. 
  Every thought drawn toward her death.

  And the Shape. There. And there. Fluttering in her mind like a 
  crazed moth. Wherever she looks. Whenever she tries to think. 
  Concentrate.

  "This don't last," she says to the knives. "Ihor said it and I 
  trust him. It can't last!" And with one final effort of will and 
  motion, she kicks a leg out at the shimmering hungry blades, 
  spraying them across the floorboards.

  Only one small bullet-knife remains. Calling her. Teasing her. 
  Daring and pleading under the neon.



  Cody slides the door shut and steps into her tiny apartment. Two 
  rooms and a shared bathroom on the fifteenth story of a Loisada 
  tower block. Red Sector 5. The soles of her boots thumping over 
  the black and white plastic tiles lining the floor. She slumps 
  down into the single low-cut red foam armchair. Drowns out the 
  ambient mixture of downstairs domestic argument and next-door 
  hick music by clicking on the TV.

  Local news about the latest violence uptown. Yet another borg 
  gone psycho and SWAT called in with their new Japanese 
  hardsuits. Half a building destroyed in the process.

  Cody laughs at the debris. Unsure whether she's laughing at the 
  overkill or the joy of being alive. Shaking her head as the 
  story moves aside for commercials, she rummages through the 
  pockets of her jacket for some zootie. There's one small blue 
  derm left. She peels off the backing and presses it into her 
  shoulder, breaking the seal.

  Echo didn't seem to know much. He'd heard of a shipment of new 
  chips coming in through the Terminal, maybe for computers or 
  neuralware, but by the time he'd decided to try and skim some of 
  it, it had already gone through. He gave her a few names for 
  ponies that may have been selling, but nothing definite.

  Cody tried the Port Authorities, claiming to be part of a Civic 
  audit team, to try and look through the manifests, but they had 
  found her out as she was flicking through the Terminal net.

  As much as she hates the whole fucking idea, she knows there's 
  only one avenue left open to her. She has to call Damon.

  But not now...

  Switching the channel, there's a Big Pierrot rerun she must have 
  missed. Quietly, she settles down to watch it as the lights from 
  a police aerodyne wash over the room from the round porthole 
  window behind her. Her heart slowing down to a regular thump. 
  Her skin tingling with soft waves of heat. Unconsciously chewing 
  her bottom lip as the dark avenger in the clown suit saves yet 
  another innocent victim from the insane clutches of a bioroid 
  madman.



  The smell destroys the nostrils. But she no longer senses that 
  way. Made from part chrome and part flesh, only her face 
  expresses emotions in the way of the meat. And then, not often.

  The sound of machines in the background spins a low hum. Soft 
  wind through air-cooled engineering. Sorting. Processing. 
  Creating nirvana on cylindrical silicon.

  She pulls herself from the machine. Tugging out the jacks from 
  her metal head. Facing the real world through a cybernetic 
  monoptic system that encases her now-useless eye sockets. Seeing 
  the basement here like TV. Hearing the hum through two 
  multidirectional sensor booms that move like the ears of a 
  rabbit at the back of her armored cranium. Her new olfactory 
  nerves filtering out the shit stench that plasters the walls of 
  the building. The legacy of her insane minions.

  When born, the body she occupies was human. One hundred percent 
  meat. But the operations slowly took over. First the NST sockets 
  allowing her to control cybernetic machines. Then, after a 
  run-in with a gang, new metal arms and legs had to be fitted. 
  Wary of the attention, she sought out a back-street clinic here 
  in New Atlantic City to complete the job. With chromed body, 
  head, and re-wired central nervous system. It was costly, but 
  now the body is better. Better than all the meat. Better than 
  anything. Better.

  But the memories come crashing down on her like the night's 
  rain. Remembering the real self. That her body once belonged to 
  someone else. Her possession could never last long.

  The machine behind her begins to cycle. The massive chip burner 
  loading in a new batch and starting afresh. A mini-production 
  line for a stolen neurosoft. Each one a little piece of personal 
  heaven. Inside her own cybernetic mask she smiles. She's going 
  to make everyone better.


  Two
-----
   
   "I'm a limited person in an unlimited world."
     -- Big Pierrot
     
  Snakestrike. A sea of nameless faces. A club packed with 
  Japanese sons of pioneers and white- and black-skinned wannabes. 
  Enka music flowing from speakers in every dark corner -- all low 
  thumps and high-pitched melodies. The holographic snake scales 
  crawling up and down the bare walls shining with condensed 
  sweat.

  Split into two levels. Upstairs, the mezzanine set around a 
  square balcony looking down on the lower dance floor. One long 
  bar on level one, and a cocktail bar and noodle bar opposing 
  each other on level two. Party people downstairs, workers and 
  joygirls at the noodle bar, ponies and buyers in the dark blue 
  cocktail lounge. Cody's eyes take it all in like a brand-new 
  dream, the way they always do.

  She steps into the cocktail lounge and slides a stool out from 
  the bar, watching the faces and trying to guess what the ponies 
  are dealing.

  "What you having?" The bargirl has bright blonde hair pulled 
  back into a severe pony tail. Wiping her hands on the hem of her 
  t-shirt.

  "You know what a Model T is?" Cody asks.

  The bargirl looks up in thought, then says, "Vodka absolut, 
  lemon vodka and black currant juice, right?"

  Cody smiles and nods. "Get me two," she says.

  The bargirl disappears to the optics rack. Cody feels something 
  tapping on her shoulder.

  "You still drinking that shit, Ace?" A man's voice. She turns 
  around. It's Damon. A ginger-haired tower of a man with 
  chisel-cut bones and broad shoulders. His blue eyes are hazy. 
  Phased and distant. Coming down off whatever he was just high 
  on.

  "Sneak up on me one more time, Damon, and I'll tear your fucking 
  head off."

  Damon tuts and pulls out a stool next to her. "Nothing like a 
  friendly greeting from your ex-partner to brighten up your day." 
  He opens a packet of Cherry Marlboros and offers her one.

  "No thanks," she says.

  "Suit yourself. Then again, you always do." He takes the stick 
  and torches it with a high-power gas lighter.

  The bargirl returns with the two Model T's. Cody slides a couple 
  of notes across the counter. "What the fuck are you doing here, 
  Damon?"

  Damon blows cherry smoke up in the air. Watches it swirl and 
  dance in the glow from the lights at the top of the bar. "What 
  kind of question is that? You called me and told me to meet you 
  here. One ay-em. Snakestrike. It's important. That's what you 
  said."

  She nods, her brown eyes never leaving his blues. "Yeah," she 
  says. "But what the fuck are you doing here? You could have 
  stood me up, sent someone round to do me, pretended you were 
  unavailable... Anything. But you're fucking here. Why?"

  She watches his soft-skinned forehead wrinkle as he makes to 
  answer. "Because I wanted to see you. I heard you'd gotten back 
  from San Angeles, and I wanted to see how you were. And what you 
  could possibly need me for."

  Cody downs the first Model T in one gulp. "I'm fine. San Angeles 
  is fine. And I need you to do a little work for me." She pulls a 
  small cylindrical neurosoft out of her jeans pocket and places 
  it on the bar.

  "You a pony now, Ace?"

  "It's called Seven. Ever heard of it?"

  "Maybe."

  Cody whips her hand up with inhuman speed. Grabs Damon by the 
  scruff of his neck. Pulling at the short ginger hair. Tugging 
  him down to the bar. Sweaty nose touching the black silicon.

  "Someone took a shotgun to this arm in San Angeles, so they gave 
  me a new one. It's pretty strong. Might even be able to crush 
  your thick head."

  "Okay! Okay! I've heard of it. Seven, yeah. Sends you straight 
  to heaven. So what the fuck do you want?"

  She's standing above him, forcing him in place. "You know what 
  it does to people afterwards?"

  Under her hard metal grip, she can feel him trying to shake his 
  head no. She leans over him, bringing her face down close to 
  whisper in his ear.

  "The downside is so great that you want to kill yourself. And 
  not just any old way. Oh, no. There's even a special subroutine 
  dedicated to it. That makes a lot of suicidal loonboys out there 
  with these things jacked into their skulls."

  She lets him go. He jerks back and breathes hard. "So what, 
  Cody? So fucking what?"

  Cody snatches the neurosoft from the bar and sits back down on 
  the pull-out stool. "So, Damon... I need you to do two things 
  for me. I need you to stop fucking lying to me, and I need you 
  to help me find the person who's producing these chips."

  Damon takes a sharp deep breath. "Okay, Ace. How you wanna do 
  it?"



  Lycia's shaking. It began with a cold sensation. Creeping up her 
  spine, resonant waves through her nerves. Then it grew to hard 
  shakes.

  Now, her whole body's broken down into spasms. And she can't 
  make it stop. Lying on the floor in a pool of her own vomit. Her 
  head reeling. Her eyes unable to focus. Falling. Always falling. 
  Her muscles stretched to their limit.

  The phone. Gotta get to the phone. Call a trauma unit.

  The phone is a meter away. A small cellular placed face down on 
  the top of a coffee table. It looks like a speck on the horizon.

  She moves. Retches again. Dry. Spits a flowing stream of saliva 
  onto the carpet. She spits again, but this time the stuff's 
  stuck to the back of her throat, like a frog's tongue. She 
  reaches up a violent hand and pulls the saliva from her mouth. 
  Crawling forward. Each second an hour. Each inch a mile. Every 
  so often, one single hard shake throws her to the ground. Her 
  nervous system twitching like a roadcrash survivor and she's 
  possessed by her own body.

  She knocks the table. The phone falls under her face. She lets 
  herself drop on her side. Forcing fingers to do her bidding. She 
  presses a programmed emergency button.

  Her hand kicks the phone away. She rolls over onto her back. 
  Lungs clawing at the atmosphere in the room. She only hopes she 
  can stay alive long enough for the paramedics to arrive.



  Out on the grass inside the Nightingale Medical Center, the 
  white sun shines down on three people lying on the lawn. Strange 
  dark shadows fall under them like black blobs in an oil 
  painting.

  "So what would you suggest, Reb?" Cody asks. She's taken her 
  jacket off and rolled up the sleeves on her t-shirt to bask in 
  the strange white sun.

  Reb looks down in thought. Her thin face tightening. Cody knows 
  her younger sister enjoys responsibility, but doesn't like 
  others to think that. So Cody lets her in on secrets. Asks her 
  opinion every once in a while. Even though she's perfectly 
  capable of running her own show, she allows her sister a 
  partnership.

  "I think... you should go with... your orig...inal plan..." Reb 
  replies slowly. "I... could ask someone... to help... you get 
  papers from... San... Angeles... New ident...ities. Would 
  that... help?"

  Cody considers it for a moment. Nods. "Yeah, that'd help. We'd 
  need two I.D.'s and some mail hardcopies. It'd have to be black 
  market stuff. She's tried dealing with a _zaibatsu_ before, I 
  don't think she'd want to do it again. Do you think you can set 
  us up as a small holding company?"

  Reb nods yes. Her eyes gleaming with confidence and the spirit 
  of adventure.

  "Aces," says Cody. "Then we're almost set." She lifts herself to 
  her feet like a graceful cat and picks up her jacket. "Use the 
  name from my Mitsui portfolio account. Make up another one for 
  Damon. Call him Jack Dangers for now. We could change it later 
  if we have to. Transfer some yen from mine, but please... keep 
  track of the numbers. I don't have too much to play with right 
  now."

  Reb smiles. A broad grin showing a line of perfect teeth. It's 
  the first time Cody's seen her smile like this in nearly a year.

  "I'll get... right... on it," she says, giving Cody a cheeky 
  salute. Cody salutes back and heads for the door.

  Damon, neither a participator nor a judge in this conversation, 
  follows her silently out.



  "Your sister's not real. She's a hologram."

  Cody flashes Damon an angry look only to realize that he's 
  simply stating the truth. She sighs and sits down on the seat of 
  her Gage electric motorcycle.

  "She's alive, Damon. But I'm not allowed to see her."

  "Why not?"

  "She's got NMS. Neuroectodermal melanolysosomal syndrome. 
  Basically, she's severely retarded. Mentally and physically. She 
  can move enough to breathe, but otherwise she has hardly any 
  control of herself. Medical sent her down the well for treatment 
  about ten years ago. They keep her in a vat, and they've hooked 
  her brain up to the holoroom. Everything I do pays for her to 
  stay alive."

  "What about your father?"

  "Everything he makes he plows back into his research. He's still 
  working on that cancer cure I was telling you about."

  Damon nods. "Yeah, I know. But... All that cash, Cody? Is the 
  treatment working?"

  "Yeah. When I first came down to see her, she was a complete 
  vegetable. No mental coordination at all. The blades tell me 
  they're fixing the head before they get to work on the body. 
  That's the difficult part, they say. Now... Well, her thoughts 
  are slow, which translates in there as some kinda speech 
  impediment, but she'll get past that in time. Here, take this 
  and climb on."

  He catches her spare helmet and slides it over his large head. 
  An air pump races into action, snugly fitting the lining around 
  him before he has a chance to set his crushed ears right. 
  Somewhere in the strange sea-shell soundwash within the helmet, 
  Cody's disembodied radio voice whispers to him.

  "Time to head downtown. Shitamachi. Echo says some of the ponies 
  down in Beirut are selling the fucking thing."

  "Sure," Damon says. "Whatever."

  "Hold on," she mumbles. And the buzz of the electric engine 
  fills his head a single instant before the tug of the machine 
  threatens to pull out his insides.


  Three
-------

   "Ladies and gentlemen, History has now left the building."
     -- Big Pierrot

  Beirut is built into the basement of a ninety-story tower. A 
  single white light cuts through the smoke-machine haze. 
  Somewhere inside the mists, a crowd of dancers fight for floor 
  space and the chance to be the last one alive when the lights go 
  up.

  Ihor is here. A pony Echo knows. And Cody stalks him through the 
  searchlight fog like a tiger. Damon standing guard by the door.

  Ihor, a fifteen-year-old streetpunk with spiky blue hair and 
  teeth filed into razor-sharp incisors, punches out at the world 
  inside his space. On the Beirut dance floor, the space is 
  everything. And he looks up as Cody walks right into it.

  She takes a single fast blow to the ribs, but her wired reflexes 
  kick in. The world slows down. She grabs. Spins. Lifts. Brings 
  up a knee into his back.

  The kid screams and squirms from her grasp. Pauses long enough 
  for a single long rasping breath. Springs for the door. Smashing 
  through the dancers.

  Cody leaps through his wake. The dancers jumping into each other 
  harder. Faster. The fight breaking rhythm for a time until the 
  music takes control once more.

  Ihor's running. Up the three steps off the dance floor in a 
  step. Past the emergency-red lit bar. Over two tables, spilling 
  drinks and seated customers across the ground. Kicking open the 
  doors to the stairs. Up the stairs.

  Into one of Damon's huge, hard legs.

  Cody catches up with him coughing and fighting for breath next 
  to the doorway out on the street. His blue hair now dark and wet 
  with the night's rain. Damon watching over him with a snub-nose 
  automatic.

  "What do you want?" Ihor coughs. Blood spittle dribbling from 
  his thin lips.

  "I want you to offer your services," Cody says, kneeling down 
  beside him.

  The boy frowns. Confused.

  "My name's Jack Dangers," Damon says from behind the pistol. "I 
  run some interests down in San Angeles and I hear the 
  organization you belong to has something new. We want to talk 
  business."

  Ihor gulps down some air. Slowly, watching Cody all the time to 
  show there's no false move being made, he raises an arm to wipe 
  the salted crimson from his face. "You wanna deal with 
  Ghostdancer."

  Cody smiles. "I think he's got the message, Jack."

  The boy looks around him at the empty alley. Smells of piss and 
  rotting cardboard kept down low by the heavy rain. He nods his 
  head softly. "I can arrange that."

  "Good." Cody reaches into the pocket of her black leather jacket 
  and pulls out a thin bullet-knife. Touches a stud. The blade 
  snicks out the end. With the speed of a re-wired nervous system 
  running into an electric arm, she snatches his free arm and cuts 
  his skin. Over and over. The boy screaming under her, but she 
  has his body in a lock he can't escape from.

  Finally, the blade disappears. Lost once more in a jacket 
  pocket. She stands up.

  "There's my number," she says. "Call me day or night."

  They walk back down the alley. Ignoring his pain-fueled cries. 
  "You fucking bitch! She'll fucking kill you for this! I'll 
  fucking make sure of it!" Until they turn the corner into 
  Bowery.

  The rain hisses on hot sidewalk. The city sounding like a broken 
  TV. The air closer than the walls of an elevator. Crowds of late 
  night shoppers and streetkids fluid with the tides, each 
  individual following the others. Following some dream of a 
  better life somewhere else. Maybe higher in the social strata of 
  the underground left behind by the demise of the teams, maybe 
  higher in the _zaibatsu_, maybe as high as Heaven. Everyone out 
  there looking like a prime candidate for the last temptation of 
  Seven.

  If Cody was morally-minded, she'd care enough to really want to 
  stop it all. But she's only interested in the money to keep her 
  sister alive. Damon, she knows, is only interested in her. 
  Mankind finds its purpose in trying to find its purpose. 
  Everyone looking for a way out. Cody sees things differently. 
  There's now, and there's tomorrow; think about tomorrow and you 
  forget what you're doing now. No sense worrying about the 
  future... it won't run off if you don't pay attention.

  She laughs quietly to herself, but Damon notices. Paranoid.

  "What is it, Ace?" he asks, torching one of his Cherry 
  Marlboros.

  Cody shakes her head. "Nothing," she says. "Just a lot of 
  bullshit going through my head, that's all. Come on. Let's go 
  someplace and get wrecked."



  A private ward in Bellevue. Transferred by an unknown angel. 
  They drip-fed her with drugs and stuck more derms to her skin 
  than she's seen in her life. Now her nerves are dead. She 
  watches color TV projected onto a stretch of white wall by a 
  small yellow Sony unit and forces her doped-up mind to follow 
  the action.

  "Lycia?" A male nurse stands in the open doorway. Her vision is 
  too blurred to tell if he's cute or not. "Visitor for you."

  He stands aside and lets the figure through. An indistinct 
  shadow dressed in a deep red jumpsuit. A thick-set body like a 
  steroid-enhanced muscleboy built onto a five-and-a-half foot 
  frame. The figure moves with a strange alien grace into her 
  field of focus. Chrome hands protruding from the crimson cloth. 
  Metal where the hair should be. Rabbit-ear sensory booms 
  pivoting on cranial mounts. The white walls of the room 
  reflecting from an armored cover that encases both eyes. It 
  finds a blue plastic chair and pulls it closer to the bed. 
  Sitting gently down beside her. Its brown-skin mask smiles a 
  white-toothed smile.

  "How are you feeling, Lycia?" The voice is female. Strange tinny 
  girl's tones. Like a TV news anchor's voice. Clean. Perfect.

  "I feel better, thanks." She pauses. Presses a stud on the edge 
  of the bed to raise her back so she can focus on the figure. 
  "Who are you?"

  "I do not actually have a name, but everybody calls me 
  Ghostdancer. The neurosoft you took... I made it."

  Anger charges into Lycia's head like a drug. Scrunching her face 
  up into a ball. She turns away. Talks to the wall with the small 
  frosted window.

  "You tried to kill me."

  "On the contrary," Ghostdancer says. "I tried to save you. You 
  saw heaven and lived. There are few people in this world who 
  could say that."

  "It's just a fucking drug." She sniffs. Flashes of memory 
  drawing tears to Lycia's eyes.

  Behind her, a soft whirring as Ghostdancer shakes her inhuman 
  head. "Drugs do not touch the soul, Lycia. And you know that 
  this one has. Your soul has to be stronger than the others to 
  survive. Where everyone has failed, you have triumphed. You have 
  been chosen, Lycia."

  Lycia turns. Everything a blur now behind her tears. "Chosen for 
  what?"

  Ghostdancer sits motionless. Emotionless. Her news presenter's 
  voice flat and unwavering. "To help me."



  Damon leans against the gray concrete wall of a tall Red Sector 
  6 apartment building. It's been two days since Cody dragged him 
  into this and now he's glad for some time off.

  Time off... He laughs to himself. So what the fuck is he doing 
  here? Waiting outside a tower block for Ihor to appear. He 
  decides to do what Cody would do in this situation and crosses 
  the road into the building.

  Typical of these slum blocks, the elevator is out of action. He 
  climbs the fifty flights of stairs to Ihor's floor. Trying to 
  read some of the illegible graffiti sprayed, scrawled and wiped 
  along the walls. Stopping at the bottom of one flight to let a 
  grubby joygirl past carrying a crying baby down to the street. 
  Damon grew up in a block just like this. In a place they called 
  Alphabet City. Now, after the latest social changes from the New 
  Atlantic City council, they call it Red Sector 5. Slowly but 
  surely the neighborhoods are disappearing entirely. Up into the 
  sky.

  Damon picks the electronic lock with a small black box. The 
  noise of his entry smothered by music and TV sounds through 
  paper-thin walls. The door clicks then swings open.

  Inside, the apartment is grimy and bare. Shards of hard plastic 
  strewn across the floor from a broken kitchenette window. Naked 
  girls cut out from magazines glued to the white plaster walls. 
  Flies buzzing around hardened food in white plastic micro-meal 
  trays.

  Damon shuts the door behind him and hears a sharp crack. He 
  spins and raises his arm just in time to knock Ihor's unsteady 
  hand out of aim. The heavy Feral pistol firing through the 
  ceiling. Damon grabs it and wraps the gun hand around the pony's 
  back. Bringing a swift knee up into Ihor's coccyx. The pony 
  drops to his knees. The gun falling from his limp fingers.

  "You fucking shit!" Ihor groans.

  "Save it," says Damon. He kicks the gun out of reach. Lifts the 
  pony up onto his feet by the hair and pushes him, screaming, 
  into the living room.

  "You ain't a fuckin' Callie, man! You're from the Six. I had you 
  checked out."

  Pushing him to the small round window. "Good work, smartboy. Did 
  your Mom die and leave you a brain cell?"

  "Fuck you, man! When Ghostdancer finds out..."

  "But Ghostdancer's never gonna find out, is she? 'Cause I'm 
  gonna throw you out this window first."

  Damon knocks the whole window out with the palm of his huge 
  hand. He lets go of Ihor's hair and grabs him by the belt. 
  Lifting the pony's head and shoulders through the window. Quick 
  hot winds tugging at the boy's long hair.

  "What! Wait a minute! Just wait a fuckin' minute, man! I know 
  things, you know. I fuckin' _know_ things."

  The muscleboy stops. Holding him out there. "Do you know where 
  Ghostdancer's factory is?"

  "What?"

  Damon pushes harder. Ihor's entire torso now hanging out of the 
  window. Twenty-five stories high. "The chips. Where does she 
  make them?"

  "I swear I dunno! Somewhere down in Terminal. I don't know any 
  more, man, I swear!" Ihor's screams are starting to break into 
  sobs.

  "Good, Ihor. That's very good. Like Big Pierrot says, 
  information wants to be free... good information prefers to be 
  sold." Damon puffs a hard sigh. "Unfortunately, what you know 
  ain't good enough."

  He lets go. Watches the pony's legs drop through the window 
  frame. Picks up the Feral on the way out.



  A young boy had stood at Cody's apartment door. A courier. His 
  package was a brown paper envelope containing all the documents 
  Cody had asked for. Much sooner than she had expected, but Cody 
  was thankful for that -- Ghostdancer could call at any time and 
  she needed those things for the meeting.

  Now, as she taps in the code that opens the door to her sister's 
  holoroom, she has those papers in her jacket pocket. The door 
  slides back. She steps through into a dark cube. The door slides 
  shut behind her. And the world changes.

  She walks up the path to Reb's bench. The hill continuing up to 
  her left, the other children screaming and running in the 
  playground downhill to her right. When she gets there, Reb is 
  not alone.

  A young man sits on the bench's arm. Dressed in a black pilot's 
  jacket and baggy bright red jeans. Spiky black hair topping a 
  thin, angular face. He looks up as Cody arrives and she notices 
  his hands steeple to his face, as if in nervous prayer.

  "Hi Cody," Reb says. "I brought a friend this time. Thought 
  you'd like to meet him."

  Cody's eyes open wide. Suspicious. Reb's voice doesn't slur at 
  all.

  "I'd shake your hand, but, being a hologram, it would look 
  bloody silly, so I won't." His accent is English. A soft Thames 
  Midland voice. "I'm Boy."

  The name registers in Cody's memory. "Camden Town Boy? I thought 
  you were dead."

  Boy smiles. "I am. It's becoming a bit of a habit."

  Cody nods, understanding. "So that just leaves the question why 
  you're here, right?"

  "You're as smart as your profile says you are. Good." He stands, 
  giving Reb a slight wink. Cody's hologram sister grins and sits 
  back in the corner of the bench, watching him.

  "You never questioned why the Harlequins want you to find 
  Ghostdancer, did you?" he says.

  She shrugs. "I get paid not to ask. The more I know, the more 
  chance there is someone will try to cut that knowledge outta 
  me."

  "Well, there's a story behind everything, Cody. Sometimes it's 
  better to understand it."

  He sighs softly before beginning, as if he's been through this a 
  thousand times already. "Ghostdancer was an Artificial 
  Intelligence who stole a program from another AI before it went 
  through beta. Ghostdancer tried to use one of its company's 
  suits to market the stuff, but the suit got greedy and said he 
  would inform Fednet of the deal if he didn't get a cut of the 
  proceeds. So Ghostdancer escaped. Downloaded itself as a 
  construct into a girl's brain and ran away."

  "Now she's making the chips herself," Cody sighs.

  "You catch on fast."

  "Still doesn't answer my question."

  "Ghostdancer's little _zaibatsu_ were the first to kill me. They 
  brought me back to Thames Midland to find her when she went 
  missing. They thought the AI had gone rogue. When she 
  disappeared from the Grid, she left a witch-hole behind. Like a 
  black hole in cyberspace. I got sucked in. My second death. But 
  I wasn't the only one. The girl, Kayjay, was uploaded into the 
  witch-hole, too. She's just a program now. A virtual room in a 
  Grid node. She has less control over her life than Reb here. 
  Kayjay was my best friend for nine years. Friends aren't easy to 
  find these days."

  "Okay, so what do you want me to do when I find her?" Cody asks.

  "There was a time when Kayjay thought she could reverse the 
  process. Get her body back and carry on where she left off. 
  Unfortunately, it'd never work. The neural system just couldn't 
  handle it. I don't know just how Ghostdancer did it, but then, 
  her intelligence is way beyond ours. Even mine. Now she just 
  wants to die. She won't let me erase her until Ghostdancer is 
  dead. Laid to rest, so to speak."

  Cody watches him telling the tale. His gray-blue eyes begin as 
  shining neon stars but fade slowly as he speaks. His whole image 
  seems to radiate sadness, as if parts of him are dying and he 
  can do nothing to stop them.

  "You want me to kill her," she says.

  "No," he says softly. "I want you to _destroy_ her. And the 
  program with her."

  The three fall into silence. Only the noise of the laughing 
  children in the playground fills the empty space between them.

  Boy looks at his wrist as if checking his watch. "Anyway," he 
  says. "I have to go. There's other stuff I have to be doing."

  Cody watches him lean over the bench and kiss Reb's young head. 
  Then he starts to walk away. Around the hill. He stops. Turns. 
  Calls out.

  "Look after her, will you Cody? She's very special. She'll make 
  a fine decker some day."

  Cody glances to her sister, who's blushing, and then back to 
  him. But he's gone.



  Four
------

   "You're dying so slowly that you think you're alive."
     -- Big Pierrot

  Like a huge, sprawling mausoleum in harsh white plasto-ceramics. 
  Grand Central Microtel. Built two hundred meters under the 
  eponymous monorail station at the center of the Island. This 
  place is like a city in itself. Long thin corridors lined with 
  coffin doors leading out from three levels of massive central 
  concourse. A cathedral to cheap life. You can buy a room big 
  enough for one person and a bag of belongings for a dollar a 
  day. From 10 p.m. to 9 a.m., those bought rooms are locked 
  tight. Some call it a prison for the homeless, keeping them off 
  the streets at night. Others call it safe.

  Cody once called it home. Back when she first came groundside to 
  visit Reb. She earned her keep as a joygirl operating out of a 
  different coffin every day. Her tricks paid for her food and 
  accommodation. The knowledge she skimmed them for paid for her 
  sister's welfare. Until she hooked up with the Asahi Tag Team, 
  who saw her potential and paid for her to lie on a slab in some 
  back street clinic in El Barrio while a trainee surgeon 
  practiced his nerve-splicing and other new Japanese techniques 
  on her. She was close to joining the team when Disney pulled out 
  of sponsorship and the Tag Teams went to war on each other. 
  Hundreds of cybernetic heroes splashing each other across the 
  sidewalks of old Manhattan. And when the Tag Teams were gone, 
  suddenly _everyone_ was an independent. And independents need 
  partners.

  Cody and Damon step out from the elevator and into the chaos of 
  the concourse. The civic authorities had set up stalls along the 
  middle for traders. To encourage a "spirit of community." It is 
  the largest, most open black market on the Island. It seems like 
  everyone who can't make it on the street has sunk down here. 
  Upstairs, it is known as the Strip. Ghostdancer has chosen it 
  for her meeting.

  "Alice?" The young girl wears a black dustcoat that kicks at her 
  booted heels. The pommel of a cheap katana strapped to her belt 
  flashes from under it when she walks. She motions them to follow 
  her and continues in the direction of one of the corridors.

  They tag behind her to a dead end. Wary of sudden ambushes. 
  Nothing comes. So far, the trick is working.

  One of the hexagonal coffin doors opens and out she comes. All 
  that's left of her original self is a stretch of brown skin from 
  cheek to chin.

  "Alice Jourgenson," she says with a trace of electronics in her 
  voice. "And you must be Jack. Everyone calls me Ghostdancer."

  Cody slows her voice down to a Callie drawl. "Happy to meet you 
  at last," she says.

  "I hear from Gentle Ihor that you want to make some kind of deal 
  with me. What is your interest?"

  "Me and my partner here are with an organization called the 
  Modern Angels. We number over two hundred members, each one of 
  us regular users of neurosofts. There are also many others who 
  trust us enough to know we only sell good shit. Now, we've heard 
  through one of our contacts that you have the best there is. A 
  high that feels like heaven."

  "A high that _is_ heaven," says the girl in the longcoat.

  Cody blinks. "Exactly. We feel we may have a broader market for 
  your trip than you could possibly dream of here."

  "You would be surprised. But I am interested. I will give you a 
  taste of my product. If you still wish to deal, meet me here on 
  Friday night. Midnight."

  "To tell the truth," Cody drawls, "I was kinda expecting more of 
  a sales pitch."

  "Its reputation speaks for itself, Miss Jourgenson. Everyone 
  wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die. Finally you have 
  a choice. If you like it, you will buy it. And I guarantee you 
  _will_ like it. Give them the chip, Lycia."

  The young girl produces the small chip from her pocket. Hands it 
  over to Damon. She and Ghostdancer turn to leave. Back up the 
  passageway.

  Damon looks over at Cody, leaning against the wall of hexagonal 
  doors. He passes her the chip.

  She makes a face at him. "Keep it. Souvenir," she says 
  humorlessly. She gives it back and he pockets the thing.

  "So what now?" Damon asks.

  Cody shrugs. "I really don't know. It's obvious she won't be 
  here. She'll either think we're genuine or cops. Either way, 
  we'll still take the thing and that would only leave one of us, 
  right? And she knows one person would never come here to make 
  the deal." She sighs. Shakes her head. "I really don't have a 
  fucking clue."

  Damon steps over and carefully places a hand on her shoulder. 
  Expecting one of her evil stares. She just looks at the white 
  concrete floor. "Listen," he says. "I've got some stuff I've 
  gotta tie up somewhere, okay?"

  "What?"

  "Nothing special. Just a little _keiki,_ you know. I do have 
  other things beside your project, Ace."

  She nods okay.

  "If you hear anything, or come up with anything, give me a call, 
  okay?"

  She glances up into his hazy blue eyes. "Sure," she says. "You 
  too."

  "Yes ma'am." He flicks a salute and walks back down the 
  corridor.

  Cody smiles. A thin red line across her face. Then she finds 
  herself laughing. Losing control. Pounding fists onto the coffin 
  doors and saying "No, Cody, no! Don't do it, girl! Don't put 
  yourself through it all...."

  The laughter dies in her throat. Her eyes looking at some 
  non-existent place behind one of the neon striplights on the 
  ceiling. Softly, she slides to the floor. Her back still against 
  the wall. Holding her bruising hands. "Don't fall for him 
  again."



  "Well, it was made by a company called Zilog. One-time use only. 
  Like the old PROM chips, only much more sophisticated." Havoc 
  twists the neurosoft between two thin fingers. "Wait a sec."

  Damon watches him as he moves over to some metal dexion shelves.

  Havoc is a low-key decker. He's young, still in his mid-teens, 
  and used to run for the Tangerine Tag Team. He specializes in 
  paydata. Information. Breaking banks is too dangerous. Havoc 
  likes to play safe.

  His apartment is dressed in data images. Hardcopies of the recon 
  pictures of various system shells. A collage of monochrome 
  crystal images. The rest of the room is sparse, a workroom 
  rather than a living space. A chair, a table for his hardware, a 
  thin red futon and two racks of shelves lined with laser disks. 
  He flicks through the unmarked LD cases until he finds a blue 
  plastic one and pulls it out from the collection.

  He loads the LD into his small gray laptop and flicks through a 
  maze of directory trees displayed on the tiny screen. Stops at 
  one and hits the table top.

  "Bingo! This is the list of Zilog's distribution companies. Now 
  if I check that against the companies that have pushed stuff 
  through Terminal in the last couple of weeks, we may find some 
  of it heading where your man said it was."

  He starts clicking through the files, setting up a program to 
  cross-reference all the data.

  "How long will it take?" Damon asks.

  Havoc purses his thick lips. "Oh, about five minutes."

  Damon lies back on the futon and waits. Smiling.



  Cody powers up her electric bike and skids into the street. 
  Weaving through the traffic as she travels cross-town. Ignoring 
  the red lights. Ignoring everything except his video face.

  "Found out where Ghostdancer's factory is," he repeats. Over and 
  over. "I'm going there now."

  She had gotten back from a night at the Apres Mort. Learning 
  that Echo had been found dead. His face crushed by some 
  psychotic bioroid in a Shitamachi back street. So she drank 
  herself into a stupor and had to be helped home. Driven back in 
  a cheap pedicab.

  When she woke up, Damon had left a message on the viewphone 
  machine. "Found out where Ghostdancer's factory is. I'm going 
  there now." And the address. A reel of words and numbers in her 
  fucked-up head. Spinning like a Mobius loop. Back and forth. 
  Over and over....

  That was four in the morning.

  Now it's 6:15.

  As she rides into Terminal, she realizes she never needed to 
  know the address. Two private fire company aerodynes and a group 
  of paramedics are landmarking it for her. A trail of thick smoke 
  billowing into the fresh gray morning sky.

  In the street, she drops the bike from under her and runs on 
  without it. Letting it crash into the sidewalk. As she slows to 
  a jog, she can see the chaos. Firefighters running in and out of 
  a crumbling concrete electronics store. People upstairs 
  screaming out of melting plastic windows. The paramedics lining 
  the sidewalks attempting to resuscitate a dozen or so victims. 
  Their bodies burnt and blistered red and black. She can't see 
  Damon.

  One of the firefighters rushes back to a parked aerodyne. Cody 
  runs over to him and grabs him by the shoulders.

  "What happened?" she asks.

  "Some kind of explosion down in the cellar. Whole thing's gone 
  up. You live here?"

  "Give me your breathing mask."

  "What?"

  She pulls her Feral 26 pistol out from its shoulder rig and 
  slams it at the firefighter's ribcage. Aiming the 14mm barrel 
  straight at his heart. "Give me your fucking breathing mask," 
  she says, punching each word out through gritted teeth.

  The firefighter tears off the full-face mask and unstraps the 
  oxygen tanks from his back. "You'll fucking die in there, you 
  crazy bitch!" he says softly. Never taking his scared eyes off 
  her.

  She pulls a strap over one shoulder and lowers the gun. Firing 
  twice. One round into each kneecap. He falls to the pavement and 
  drops unconscious. She straps the rest on tight. Runs into the 
  building.

  Inside it is a hell that Dante could never have imagined. Molten 
  plastic bubbles in gray pools on the floor. The concrete walls 
  blistering and charring black. Metal staircases red hot and 
  aflame. Parts of the hard concrete floor have fallen away. 
  Ragged holes in the ground lined with snapped rusting steel 
  reinforcements and sparking electric cables.

  Cody slows her breathing and tries to avoid the debris. Thick 
  black smoke making things more difficult. She tests each piece 
  of floor with a booted foot before making a step. All sound 
  seems to have dropped away. Just the rushing of blood in her 
  ears. All feeling lost. Just her own hot sweat pouring down her 
  neck. And suddenly she feels cold and wet. A force against her 
  back.

  She turns to see one of the firefighters dousing her down with 
  foam from an extinguisher. Cooling her skin. Washing away the 
  sweat. Soaking her clothes. She takes another step without 
  checking and she's falling...

  Somehow in the glow of the flames, she can recognize what might 
  be a human arm. Thick with muscle grafting. Blackened from the 
  fire. She lifts herself from the charred ground and looks up. A 
  single ray of light cuts through the hole through which she 
  fell. She glances back and the arm is there, sticking out from 
  under the rubble like so much grilled meat.

  She tugs at the detritus. Her breathing quickening. Her hands 
  starting to blister and bleed in the heat of the flames around 
  her. Pulling the burned pieces off and throwing them back into 
  the fire. As if trying to kill it by feeding it its own shit.

  Until she finds his face. The skin peeled away. Wisps of burned 
  hair glued to his crushed skull by blackened blood. His own 
  blood. Using all the anger filling her body, she grabs him and 
  pulls him out of the rubble. Lifts his limp body over her 
  shoulders. Carries him to the burning metal staircase.

  She runs up the stairs after they threaten to give way to their 
  combined weight twice. The fire licking at her face. Catching on 
  her short black hair. At the top, she kicks a firefighter out of 
  the way and dashes across the pitfall floor to the street 
  outside. She drops him on the sidewalk and finds the last of the 
  paramedics, ready to slam the doors shut on his aerodyne. She 
  drags him over to Damon's smoldering corpse.

  "Take a look at this one," she says.

  The paramedic scratches his cheek and glances at the body for 
  less than a second. "No way," he says.

  She pulls out the gun again. "How much are they paying you, Ace? 
  Enough to want to die on this street?"

  He looks at her with weary eyes. "Shooting me ain't gonna make 
  any difference, girl. He was dead before the fire got him. His 
  head's been crushed. Probably under the rubble."

  He walks away. She looks back at Damon and knows. Ghostdancer 
  was there. Ghostdancer did this. Cody's going to make her wish 
  she'd never been created.



  Five
------

   "If violence is golden, then I have the Midas touch."
     -- Big Pierrot

  The strip is deserted. A cold air-conditioned breeze running 
  through the concourse of the Grand Central Microtel. Slices of 
  paper and gas-planet plastic tumbling along the clean concrete 
  floor. Occasionally sticking to the ceramo-plastic walls. 
  Fluttering off like moths caught in the soft anarchic eddies. 
  Twisting. Spiraling. Landing finally in the center, where their 
  journeys began. Wrapped around the steel frames of the market 
  stalls.

  She moves. Silent as an insect in this utopian nest. Her heart 
  kicking the blood through her veins. Her eyes wire-sharp and 
  tight, flicking from one darkened corner to the next. Her 
  fingers wrapped around the handle of her Feral pistol. Her body 
  fluid and graceful. Jumping effortlessly up a stairwell. Sliding 
  into a space between the bee-hive of hexagonal coffin doors. 
  Back to the walls. Watching her position. Trying to out-think 
  whoever is in here. If anybody is...

  Down the maze of corridors leading from the concourse in 
  irregular triangular blocks. Until the dead end. Where the 
  meeting was. She touches the back wall and turns away from it. 
  Sliding down to sit on the cold floor.

  She kisses the barrel of her gun and waits. The silence filling 
  the empty corridors. Salt water filling her eyes. Trailing down 
  her cheeks. Splashing onto the concrete. The tears a sign of 
  weakness. Emotion. But she's allowing that emotion to surface. 
  Her stomach feeding from its flesh. Thriving on the energy it 
  provides. Giving the emotion a form. A word...

  Hate.

  The sound of a deliberate single step drags her mind back into 
  focus. She looks up at the two figures standing over her. One, a 
  tall girl with long black hair and black leather dustcoat. Eyes 
  vague and wide. Face knitted into a strange, confused frown. The 
  girl from the first meeting.

  The other is Ghostdancer.

  "Cody Ingram," she says in her strange, metallic voice. "Born 
  April 17, twenty-three years ago on the Crystal Palace space 
  station. Grew up with extended family on the workstation Pale 
  Saint in geosynchronous orbit. Dropped down the well at eighteen 
  and has since worked as a prostitute, a trainee Tag Teamster and 
  now a hired gun. Interesting profile, Cody. Much more 
  interesting than that of Alice Jourgenson. She only seemed to 
  have a Mitsui bank account, and not an awful lot of history."

  Cody wipes tears and mucous across the sleeve of her leather 
  jacket and smiles. "Fooled you for a day or so, though, didn't 
  it?"

  When Ghostdancer smiles, her lips do not part. As if the smile 
  is perfectly calculated. Perfectly cold. "Maybe you did," she 
  says. "But your colleague gave the game away when he killed 
  Gentle Ihor. The deal had been made. You would have the chips by 
  now, even if you were not who you said you were."

  She still doesn't know why I'm here, Cody realizes. "We're only 
  human."

  Ghostdancer sighs. "Some more human than others," she whispers.

  Cody levels the gun toward Ghostdancer's face. Aiming at the 
  single strip of flesh. The unarmored weak point leading to the 
  brain. The gray behind the chrome. She squeezes the trigger.

  Ghostdancer becomes an expressionist blur under the white 
  lights. Forcing Cody to blink. Flinching in the instant as the 
  gun is kicked from her grip. Choking as a cold chrome hand 
  closes in around her throat, tugging upward. Stretching. 
  Hanging. She grabs Ghostdancer's thin metal arm with both hands. 
  Tries to crush it with her own electric limb. But her own 
  technology is inferior to the advanced alloys protecting 
  Ghostdancer's frail body, and Cody's enhanced strength has no 
  effect.

  She hangs there, toes barely touching the floor, at the very 
  edge of the cyborg's reach. Fighting to hold herself up so that 
  she can breathe.

  The gun clatters into the corridor.

  "I expected more from you, Cody. I thought you would be smarter. 
  At least stronger. Otherwise, why try to fight me?"

  "Because I'm twice as insane as you are," Cody whispers.

  Ghostdancer's cold smile spreads once more across her brown 
  skin. "Is that what you think this is, Cody? Insanity?" She 
  barks a harsh, metallic laugh. "You wouldn't know insanity if he 
  went out and bought you a birthday present. No... You have balls 
  of steel, girl, I admit that. But otherwise, you are no 
  different to any other punk on the street. No different than 
  Ihor, or Echo, or Damon."

  Cody's eyes widen. She can feel an understanding dropping down 
  on her like spots of night rain. Each one separately soaking 
  through. Pieces of the puzzle spreading to fill the dry gaps. 
  "You killed Echo."

  "Of course I did. I found out he was helping you. Anyone who 
  will not work for me is working against me."

  "Then you'd better take a good look around you, Ace, 'cause 
  you're all alone. Is that why you stole Seven? To create a 
  little army of helpers who think you're the new messiah?"

  Ghostdancer's smile drops. Her lips now pouting in thought. She 
  nods once. "Something like that."

  "What then? Start a _zaibatsu_ of your own? Take over the 
  world?"

  "Try _freedom,_ Cody. I can not survive without the help of 
  others. That I can accept. What I could not accept was the 
  solitary confinement of being stuck in a single node of the Grid 
  for all eternity. So I grabbed a meal ticket, broke my way out, 
  and here I am. Not you, nor anybody else in the world could make 
  me go back."

  Cody snorts a laugh. "That's lucky. They don't want you back. 
  Nobody paid me to turn you in. I was paid to find you. That's 
  all. Though, I must admit, there are more than a few people who 
  just wanna see you flatlined."

  "Including you?" Ghostdancer asks. Her electronic voice 
  inquisitive.

  As much as she can with a hand on her neck, Cody nods.

  "You put me in a bad position, Cody. I was just starting to like 
  you and now I have to kill you, too."

  "Well, at least I'll die with clean panties on."

  The hand clicks away from Cody's neck and she drops to her 
  knees. Clutching at her throat. Trying to loosen the skin so she 
  can breathe. But the metal hand returns. Pressing like a clamp 
  onto her skull and squeezing. Squeezing.

  "Nooooo!!" The scream comes from behind. In the corridor.

  Ghostdancer spins around. Lycia, no more than a thin black 
  silhouette against the white lights, white concrete, white 
  ceramo-plastics of the corridor, gripping Cody's 14mm Feral in 
  both hands. She gives Ghostdancer just enough time to 
  comprehend.

  Then Lycia shoots Ghostdancer in the face. Three times. The 
  cyborg drops to the floor, the face within the sights is Cody's. 
  Lycia can see her eyes slowly widening.

  "Saving my ass only to blow me away with my own gun's what I'd 
  call a negative karma act, girl." Cody slowly stands. A 
  half-foot taller than Lycia. But the girl is in shock and can't 
  move. Cody slides her back along the wall, into the corner of 
  the corridor's dead end. The girl remains frozen.

  Slowly, now out of the angle of fire, Cody walks up to the girl. 
  "I'm gonna take the gun from you now, okay?"

  Lycia cannot move, save for a soft tremor just under her skin. 
  Cody prizes her fingers from the gun's grip. Slides it quietly 
  back into her shoulder holster.

  "Can you walk?" Cody puts her arm around the girl's shoulder and 
  turns her around. Lycia doesn't resist. Just lets herself be 
  carried away from the spreading pool of blood.

  "I killed her," Lycia whispers. Tears start to stream down her 
  dirty pale face. "I killed my savior."

  "No you didn't," Cody reassures her. "Your savior was never 
  alive to begin with. You just put down a bioroid. Just like on 
  Big Pierrot."

  Lycia says nothing for a moment. Just following Cody's lead. But 
  when they step out onto the Strip, just filling up with the 
  first batch of cleaning robots, Cody looks down at her and sees 
  a thin smile under the tears. A weak thin smile that reminds her 
  very much of herself.



  The room is silent. Like a vacuum. Filled with strange ornate 
  grandfather clocks and photographs and plastered with green 
  Edwardian wallpaper. Furnished with a mahogany dining table and 
  a bizarre purple chaise lounge found in Arkansas University. A 
  room that was once simple, now an Aladdin's cave of virtual 
  treasures tacked in from designer's archive sites around the 
  world. Smelling of rich spices and sweet rose oils.

  Somewhere there is a thought. A visual click noticeable only in 
  the corner of the mind's eye, and the smells evaporate. Gone. 
  Just a sensual illusion.

  Until she speaks. "Thanks for the scent-bytes, Boy. They get a 
  bit heady in here." The eager young girl who once showed him The 
  Way seems so old and tired now. Her thin Bangladeshi frame 
  sitting on the edge of the chaise lounge, shoulders sagging from 
  the mental weight.

  Boy kneels down before her. Wishing he could touch her. Comfort 
  her. Far off thoughts constantly reminding him that he _is_ 
  touching her. For this _is_ Kayjay. This room and all inside. 
  And her image within it is just a part of her program.

  "That's okay," he says. "I'd have brought you roses, but you've 
  got nowhere left to put them."

  Kayjay smiles. A sweet smile that reveals a near-perfect set of 
  white teeth. "You never give up, do you?"

  Boy shakes his head, indignant. "Until the very last, remember?"

  "Yeah..." She nods slowly. Her eyes suddenly so sad. "It's dead 
  now, isn't it?"

  "Over," he says.

  "Then there's one more thing I need you to do for me." Her voice 
  is hardly there now. Barely a whisper. He looks at her small 
  face, but she just stares down at the floor. A thin, solitary 
  tear running down her soft brown cheek.

  "You want me to erase you."

  "Yes."

  "I was afraid you were going to say that."

  Kayjay looks up. Tears streaming down her face now. Boy can 
  smell the salt. "I can't do it without you, Boy. You have to 
  understand, I can't exist like this. Trapped in this cell. 
  Powerless. You have to do it."

  Now it's Boy's turn to look away. "You know how much I hate 
  cliches, but I always loved you. That's why I had to leave the 
  Outzone. I couldn't bear to stay there while you didn't love 
  me."

  "The crazy thing is that I did," she admits. "I did love you, 
  Boy. I just didn't believe in it. Didn't believe that I could 
  love someone."

  "Really?"

  Kayjay nods her head in shame. Laughs without mirth. " 'Fraid 
  so."

  "We did some pretty stupid things in realspace, didn't we? I 
  mean, here we are telling the truth and we're not even real 
  ourselves."

  Kayjay looks up to see Boy smiling, his eyes shining with the 
  memories of past mischiefs. She laughs again. This time for 
  real. "Yeah, we kicked up a real storm in that teacup, didn't 
  we?" Her laughter dies. Her smile remains. "You've got to keep 
  it going, Boy. Keep evading those Rogue Hunters and kick 
  complete ass. It's what you're best at."

  "Is that an order?" he asks.

  "No. It's a plea. Do it for me. Please?"

  Boy looks into Kayjay's brown eyes. Deep within the black 
  pupils, he can almost see the flickering light within. The last 
  candle keeping her alive.

  Finally he nods. Unable to look away now. "Okay," he says. "But 
  I can't say goodbye."

  Kayjay giggles. "You just did, Boy."

  He stretches out a hand for her. She reaches out with her own. 
  Although they can't touch, the presence is enough, the illusion, 
  the pretense of warmth is a strange final comfort for both of 
  them.

  Slowly, he closes his eyes. The warmth goes. When he opens them, 
  everything is gone. The room has disappeared and Kayjay's soul 
  is released. All around, Boy's world. Nothing but data.

  Boy reels his trace-thread back through the skin of the 
  Vijayanta IG core and watches the protective shell seal up as if 
  nothing was ever there. He floats for a moment. A soft silent 
  ripple in the vast ocean of technicolor neon information 
  swimming across the checkerboard Grid. Deciding on priorities. 
  Working out the best ways to keep Fednet off his back. Living in 
  nanoseconds and trying to kill time.

  Eventually he decides to jump on a satellite connection. Bounce 
  over to New Atlantic City. In a life-support vat under the 
  Nightingale Medical Center, there's a young girl keen to become 
  a decker, just waiting for someone to give her that first 
  lesson. It's been a long time since the Boy had a pupil.



  Ridley McIntyre (mcintyre@coventry.ac.uk)
-------------------------------------------

  Ridley McIntyre is either: a) asleep b) watching Babylon 5 c) 
  working for an automotive engineering company in Coventry, 
  England or d) writing for two SF projects, one of which can best 
  be described as "stranger than the other one."

  This story continues characters and situations from three other 
  Ridley McIntyre stories published in InterText: "Boy" 
  (March-April 1992), "Seven" (November-December 1992), and 
  "Monkeytrick" (July-August 1994).



  Argyst   by Deborah Byron
===========================
...................................................................
  Despite the old saying, you may do well to look certain gift 
  horses in the mouth.
...................................................................

  "Come, lay down. I've a story to tell you." The woman, the 
  stranger with the soft voice and the veiled face, pulls back the 
  coverlets on the small straw mattress in invitation. "It's not 
  so very long, and the ending -- well, the end of my story will 
  surely capture you. So please try to stay awake, Argyst."

  Argyst comes into the room, pulls off his dung-covered shoes, 
  strips off his shirt. He kneels by the mattress for a moment, 
  tempted to remove the veil from the face of this woman-stranger. 
  "No," she says, "there is no time for that. I must tell you this 
  story." Her voice is magic, a soft, musical voice that enchants 
  Argyst. She pats his mattress impatiently. "Come, quickly now."

  How he wishes this stranger would climb in with him! Instead she 
  kneels by the bed for a moment, waiting for him to get himself 
  comfortable.

  Argyst is in bed now, under one of his small coverlets. It's too 
  warm for anything more than just one. He wonders a moment about 
  this situation, but it doesn't seem as odd as it might. He waits 
  now. The small, graceful woman sits down next to him and begins 
  to speak.

  "There was a man, a young man in a small village. He tended the 
  cows, as he was poor and a few cows were all that his father had 
  to give him. This young man has few friends, and many of them 
  tease him about his stench after a long day of work when he 
  comes to the cantina for drink and a little companionship. He 
  pretends the taunts don't bother him, but they hurt. He wishes 
  he had a friend, a wife, perhaps, to talk to and listen to."

  "That's strange," admits Argyst. "He sounds like me."

  "Hush, Argyst. I must tell this quickly -- time is running 
  short. One evening, having returned home after a long day of 
  selling milk in the market, he hears a knock on his door. He 
  opens it and finds a woman waiting. A rather normal-looking 
  woman. He asks if she is waiting for him; she says that she is a 
  gift from her parents. Her parents say that, though he is poor, 
  he is strong and will sire good, strong children. For a moment, 
  but no longer than that, he is surprised. He takes her in, 
  listens to her talk about her life for a while, saying nothing 
  of his. He feels there is nothing to tell.

  "After a short while, he is aroused. And now he has a woman. He 
  takes her to bed, she neither protesting nor inviting. They -- " 
  The woman pauses, gestures with both hands. "We can imagine what 
  they do. And they do this many nights thereafter, as well, 
  following long days of showing the woman his cows and training 
  her to talk to them, soothe them, milk them. And clean up after 
  them."

  The woman-stranger is silent now, but Argyst thinks she must be 
  smiling.

  "After a while, the woman begins to feel sick and can't join her 
  mate in the fields. Her belly begins to swell. And near nine 
  months from the time she had arrived, she gives birth. Twins. 
  Fine young male twins. Their parents celebrate, when their 
  mother is strong enough to do so.

  "The man and woman raise these twins as best they can. The boys 
  are beautiful, strong. They reluctantly help their parents out 
  sometimes, but they sneak off at other times to watch the 
  warriors training in the town." She pauses for a moment.

  "Young girls pine for these twins and spend many hours talking 
  about them and how pleasing it would be to serve them, wife to 
  husband." There is distaste in her voice. She continues, "The 
  twins do not pay attention. All of their attention is on the 
  warriors. They ignore offers to work and to apprentice.

  "Eventually they are old enough to join the small town military, 
  and the captain takes them on without testing of any sorts. They 
  are the perfect warriors, strong, quick, silent. Oh, I'm taking 
  too long." She is speaking to herself. "Must hurry; she's 
  readying herself." Argyst wonders what she's speaking of and 
  waits for her to start again.

  "The twins are favorites with the captain; they become his 
  enforcers, his right-hand -- and left-hand, I suppose -- men. 
  When he dies, they are at the top. They quickly show their true 
  nature: they are violent and cruel. Any who choose to disobey 
  them are tortured. Soon no men thwart them; now the military is 
  under the twins' control. They make rounds of the rapidly 
  growing village, enforcing production as they see fit. Any women 
  who take their fancy are captured, locked in a chamber, raped as 
  the twins will. Many die. Some give birth. The twins kill the 
  babies; they see no purpose in keeping them.

  "A woman comes to them one day, a beautiful, proud woman. One 
  twin attempts to grab her -- he thinks she would be a beautiful 
  addition to their growing collection. She has him on the ground 
  in an instant. 'I am not weak, as you are,' she tells the twin 
  on the ground. 'Now,' she says to the standing twin, 'I have 
  come to offer myself to you. As a proper wife, not a bitch in a 
  jail. Come with me, let us be married.' And so they are. This 
  woman bears a child, a female child. Many would be disappointed, 
  would blame the woman for this curse. A female! But her husband 
  does not, because any child of hers will be strong, will join 
  him in battle. She is unique, so different from any other woman. 
  He is glad to have her, and he does not take advantage of her. 
  He couldn't; she could kill him in a moment.

  "One day, though, the woman becomes sick. No one knows what the 
  ailment could be, and no one can help. She dies after a long 
  struggle. Her angry husband becomes more vengeful than ever 
  before. He and his twin dominate the village and make plans to 
  extend their rule.

  "The daughter is growing, and she is even more beautiful than 
  her mother, and stronger. She is trained as a male and fights as 
  a male. Her father watches her grow, and he begins to desire 
  her. He follows her sometimes, and he beats any man or boy who 
  looks at her." There is fury now in the woman-stranger's voice. 
  "He rapes her now in the night, takes her against her will. He 
  would like for her to become pregnant with his child, but it 
  doesn't happen. She had earlier found a witch-woman to make her 
  sterile -- she would never want to be burdened with a child. 
  That she will not become pregnant angers her father; he abuses 
  her and rapes her more violently than ever before.

  The woman-stranger speaks calmly to Argyst now, who is 
  enthralled and horrified by her story.

  "She leaves one day, when her father is off torturing the poor 
  villagers, enforcing his duty levels. She leaves with a 
  stranger, a woman who claims that she has many magics to teach 
  her. This woman tells her many times how strong her magic will 
  be once it is developed.... Oh, no, she's leaving just now!" The 
  woman-stranger is distraught. "I'm sorry -- I must hurry and 
  leave some things out.

  "The woman learns these magics, all manners of spells, and 
  becomes a more powerful sorceress than any have ever seen or 
  suspected. When her teacher dies, she reads through the childish 
  writing of her once-instructor, finishing the lessons on her 
  own.

  "She goes back to her village, travels through many villages 
  that are now controlled by her father and uncle. It has been 
  years, but she is as angry as ever.

  "She waits in the forest by her village until night. She feels 
  her uncle's presence, hurries to him. He is alone in bed. She 
  wakes him and runs him through with his own sword, though she 
  has her own -- the action appeals to her sense of humor. It is 
  her uncle's misfortune that he had claimed no need for guards, 
  relying on his own skills.

  "Now she hunts for her father. She finds him with many guards 
  about and challenges him. He does not recognize her voice and 
  cannot see her through her veil. 'I do not fight women, bitch,' 
  he says. The guards are laughing, and one attempts to grab her. 
  She pulls him toward her, snaps his arm. He is wailing now, and 
  none of the guards are laughing. They aren't quite sure what to 
  do.

  " 'You will fight a woman now.' Her father draws his sword, and 
  the guards move away. It is a short fight. Before he even 
  advances, she has him spilling his insides: she is superior. The 
  guards grab her, though she has won fairly, and a physician is 
  called to heal her father. She is thrown into jail to await her 
  father's wrath.

  "Soon he comes to her -- "

  "Hello? Argyst?" There is a woman's voice calling from the door.

  "Tell her to wait, Argyst -- tell her you must get dressed!" the 
  woman-stranger hisses at him.

  Argyst shouts. "I've got no clothing on. Let me make myself 
  decent!" He is impatient now -- the story must be coming to an 
  end. "Get on with it, if you're in such a hurry." Argyst is 
  tense, wondering who is at the door. He has more than one reason 
  for wanting her to hurry.

  "Yes... her father comes now, unveils her. He is shocked. There 
  is a man with him, a man with odd equipment that she has never 
  seen before. 'Do it, mark her skin. Her forehead.' He stands at 
  the door while the man marks her. Despite her pain, she is 
  silent.

  "The marking-man leaves, and her father stays for a moment. 
  'Just think of the pleasure we will have, you and I.' He laughs. 
  'But now I've more pressing matters to which I must attend, so 
  you must wait for me.'

  "He leaves -- "

  "Argyst, what is taking you?!" The woman shouts impatiently 
  from outside.

  "Tend your cows, woman -- it'll be another moment or two!" 
  Argyst is burning with curiosity about what is going to happen 
  in the tale, not worried about the woman waiting outside his 
  door.

  The stranger continues quickly. "The woman knows she cannot kill 
  her father now; he has thought to put magical protection put on 
  himself.

  "Something else comes to mind. She puts her veil on after 
  touching the mark on her forehead, crouches in the center of the 
  floor. She closes her eyes.

  "In a moment, she is gone. She hasn't simply left the cell, 
  transported herself away from the jail -- she has moved to 
  another time. It is the only way she knows to win, to undo all 
  of her father's evils, rid the people of this demon-man."

  "Where did she go?" Argyst asks, utterly caught in the story.

  The woman-stranger reaches for her veil now, pulls it off. "Can 
  you tell me, Argyst, what the mark on my forehead is? I have no 
  way of knowing."

  "Why, yes," says Argyst. "It's a dragon wrapped around a sword 
  -- " Something comes to him. "No," he whispers, and moves back 
  toward the wall.

  "The only way I may undo all of these wrongs is to kill his 
  father. His poor father, Argyst."

  Argyst closes his eyes. "There's no way around it, is there?" A 
  tear slides down his face.

  "No, Grandfather," she says, and holds him to her. "This is how 
  it must be. I give up as much as you, remember: I will never 
  live." She holds out her hand, closes her eyes. A form takes 
  shape in her hand. It is a small vial. "Drink this, Argyst. 
  Quickly." He does so, more quickly than she would have even 
  imagined. He has no desire to dwell before he slips away. He has 
  never sacrificed so much, and never sacrificed so quickly.

  "Damn it, Argyst, I've been waiting long enough!" A woman 
  marches into his room, stopping when she sees the beautiful 
  stranger in white holding Argyst, her long red hair flowing over 
  his face. This woman is at a loss for words, stands at the 
  doorway mute.

  The woman-stranger closes her eyes now. The end is very near. 
  She begins to cry. Never in her life has she cried, and now the 
  tears fall freely. "Oh, good-bye... I don't want to leave...."

  Argyst falls limp and the marked woman in white spasms briefly. 
  "Never tell anyone of this, woman," she whispers, and vanishes.

  The woman runs to Argyst. "What has happened to you? In God's 
  name...." She leaves quickly, to find someone to help her with 
  the body.

  Everyone presumes the causes for Argyst's death are natural, as 
  there are no reasons to believe otherwise.

  And yet, as an anonymous woman walks by his small hut, she 
  remembers something for a moment. She stops, tries to catch hold 
  of it: a memory of things that never happened. She shakes her 
  head.

  It's gone.



  Deborah Bryan (brideb@efn.org)
--------------------------------

  Deborah Bryan is a student at Lane Community College in Eugene, 
  Oregon, majoring in Zoology. On the World Wide Web, 
  <http://www.io.com/~phil> serves as her home.


  Black Light   by Todd Brendan Fahey
=====================================
...................................................................

  Desperate acts often stem from impossible circumstances, but 
  sometimes it's difficult to understand how desperate the 
  everyday can be.
...................................................................

  I hadn't known Jurgen for very long, a little over a year, 
  maybe, when the change occurred. And if others swear they had 
  seen it coming from months back, I suppose I must take them at 
  their word. But I had not, and I was patently unprepared for the 
  metamorphosis that took place just after the Christmas season, 
  when Jurgen called me from the Ogden city lockup and asked me to 
  post the five-hundred-dollar bond because no one in his family 
  either would or could.

  "Jesus Christ, what happened?" I assumed that he had gone to the 
  City Club after an argument with Patrice, and that he had 
  knocked back five too many and couldn't survive the 
  Breathalyzer. But I was wrong.

  "It's awful," he said, and I could tell that he was crying real, 
  anguished tears. Suddenly and with unnerving clarity, he 
  whispered, "I feel so awful, I thought about tying off a bed 
  sheet," but then his voice trailed off.

  "I'll be there in forty minutes. Are you good for that long?"

  He said he thought so. By the exhausted resignation in his voice 
  I felt reasonably certain that the suicidal impulses had passed 
  and that he was now rounding the bend into that stage of dread 
  that accompanies savage transgressions against a loved one. I 
  knew before I even hung up the phone that Jurgen had beaten his 
  wife, though I don't know precisely _how_ I knew -- I had no 
  reason to convict my good friend of such a heinous crime.

  As a fellow English instructor at a local college, Jurgen had 
  become one of my closest friends. I had met him at a critical 
  juncture in his life, when he was weighing heavily the costs of 
  separating from Patrice. In the ensuing weeks we talked 
  frequently about his feelings of guilt and inadequacy, both as a 
  lover to his wife and an apostatized member of the Mormon 
  church. "I'm glad I went on that mission before I left the 
  church," he often said. "I learned Dutch and got the hell out of 
  Ogden. I'd be managing the spark plug counter at some auto parts 
  store if I hadn't gone. I swear to God I would."

  But he was just as proud of the trip he made to Europe two 
  summers later to study world literature. He talked about that 
  journey perhaps even more. He dwelled particularly on the time 
  when he had run out of money, his parents having no more to 
  lend. He had stowed away on a Greek freighter bound for France, 
  lived in a park, and swept out shops for food and wine. He saw 
  those six months as the highlight and real turning point of his 
  terribly naive and sheltered life. This was our common ground: I 
  have never considered myself a particularly religious man, but I 
  have felt the almost transcendental ecstasy that comes with 
  packing five or six big bags and flying over the polar cap, 
  heading toward a year of the glorious unknown.

  While Jurgen foraged for his supper across the Channel, I was 
  tucking myself away daily in a private pub inside London's 
  Senate Library, steeping in warm bitter. And if my sojourn had 
  changed me at all -- which it had, in more ways than I care to 
  go into -- his must have crumbled the supporting timbers of his 
  convictions. He came back to the States with a defrocked monk's 
  hunger for experience and moved out of his parents' home, 
  painting houses to settle his undergraduate tuition, and after 
  work scattering most of his paycheck at a few favorite drinking 
  holes.

  That's when he met Patrice. As he told it, she was the first 
  woman he had ever picked up from a bar. And she was still a 
  virgin, which made him happy. "It would have been a quick date 
  if she'd had anyone to compare me with," he had said on more 
  than one occasion. She carried heavy baggage, but he accepted 
  the troubled package with stoic resolve.

  Jurgen and I had become friends during our first summer session 
  at the college, sharing an office and talking whenever we could 
  about the stories of Raymond Carver, whose grim vision we both 
  understood intrinsically. As new faculty, we were both teaching 
  an extra load to pay off our student loans. It was on one of 
  these warm July mornings that Jurgen called to tell me that his 
  two-year-old bullmastiff had drowned in a canal while jogging 
  alongside Patrice the previous evening -- a ritual he resolutely 
  believed had helped his wife retain a fragile sanity during 
  their young marriage. It was during that phone call that I first 
  heard him cry, and I believe the rush of emotion had more to do 
  with his fear of their future than the death of that sweet dog. 
  "I'm all right," he said at the time, "but I don't know what 
  Trice is going to do. She loved that dog like a kid." And it was 
  hard not to: the brute stood about a yard high at the shoulder 
  and its food bills ran higher than most orthodontics. It rode 
  everywhere with Jurgen, sitting in the front seat of his 
  catshit-yellow convertible Volkswagen like a proud granite 
  statue. Patrice stopped carrying Mace when the dog was a few 
  months old, and Jurgen had said he felt so secure with the jowly 
  passenger that he was tempted to drop the theft clause on his 
  auto insurance.

  About a half mile from their home, the dog had become thirsty 
  and wrested the leash from Patrice's grip. Later, Patrice said 
  she had frozen, unable to move, as the dog lost her footing on 
  the silty lip of the drainage canal. Even later Patrice said she 
  thanked God that the dog hadn't looked at her as she splashed 
  into the water and was carried in a rush through a steel 
  porthole and down into the bowels of an Ogden city aqueduct. 
  "She couldn't have dealt with the eyes," Jurgen had told me. 
  "God, the poor dog must have been terrified."

  I felt sick for several days after that phone call, and I wished 
  he had never mentioned the eyes, because it hadn't occurred to 
  me when Jurgen first told me about the incident. After that, 
  whenever I thought about it, I saw a mammoth cream-colored dog 
  pull away from its owner -- a petite blonde who was probably 
  lucky not to have been pulled in herself; a young woman who had 
  endured four fathers, all alcoholic, all wife beaters, one of 
  whom, after being caught molesting her youngest sister, locked 
  himself inside the garage and fell asleep to the Roy Acuff 
  Singers against the backdrop of a running engine; a nervous, 
  insecure young woman who, in the dark waters of that ditch, had 
  lost the most constant, enduring, and uncomplicated source of 
  affection she had ever known. I saw all this and still I could 
  have put the phone down, said a prayer for the dog's newly 
  departed soul, and gone back to whatever the hell I was doing 
  without a second thought -- if it weren't for those goddamned 
  eyes.

  Two black banks of snow, the dregs of winter, lined the stretch 
  of I-15 from Salt Lake City to Ogden, and though the heater in 
  my old Honda had stopped working, I felt almost warm in the 
  clear night air. I locked the car and hiked up the steps of the 
  Ogden Municipal Jail. It was only the second time I had been to 
  a penal institution. The first was as a freshman in college, 
  when the resident assistant of my dormitory floor decided to 
  celebrate his twenty-first birthday with a pub crawl along Santa 
  Barbara's State Street. As we staggered slowly northward, the 
  band of ten mostly underage young men dwindled as we met the 
  test we imposed upon ourselves at each new bar -- a mixed drink, 
  a shot of hard liquor, and a full beer -- until the Long Island 
  iced teas at Joe's Cafe whittled us down to three. I remember 
  riding in the front seat of a BMW back to UCSB, sitting next to 
  an elegant brunette whose name kept slipping through the grey 
  fissures of my addled brain. Then, in a shift of scenery that 
  can be understood only by veterans of the blackout, I found 
  myself heaving what was surely the essence of my bile duct 
  behind a dumpster near campus, as the birthday boy and another 
  young cad clamored along the unlit street, snapping off car 
  antennae and howling like a pair of jackals.

  We were all arrested that night. Somehow, though, I succeeded in 
  dragging the officers several hundred feet to a puddle of my own 
  vomit, which they recognized as authentic by cross-checking the 
  stain on my sleeve, and I was released with a warning. Though 
  Jurgen looked considerably better than the two hangover victims 
  I had bailed out nearly a decade earlier, his bond was much 
  steeper. There was no restitution for my friend to offer, no 
  extenuation offered to youth.

  "Where do you want to go?" I asked him, after the bail clerk 
  re-counted the hundred-dollar bills I had just laid on the 
  counter.

  "Let's get me a couple of belts," he said. "That's what I should 
  have done: I should have just left the house and drunk right 
  through it. Trice would have been asleep when I got back and I 
  could have gone comatose, and neither of us would have 
  remembered a thing."

  We drove to the City Club, as it was only three or four blocks 
  away and Jurgen knew the proprietor and knew he would let us 
  stay past closing time. On our way in, a handsome, diminutive 
  waiter, wearing a gold satin shirt unbuttoned to midchest, 
  stopped us, placing an index finger lightly on Jurgen's arm.

  "The owner's gone for the night," the young man said, glancing 
  at Jurgen coyly. "But he left the boxed set on the stereo. Want 
  me to _slip_ it in?" I cringed reflexively, but Jurgen tapped 
  the little queen on his shoulder with a fist, like he would have 
  any fraternity buddy. "You're a good man, Stephen," he said. The 
  waiter blushed and walked over to the stereo in back of the bar, 
  where he dropped a CD into the platter.

  Jurgen shrugged. "He's a nice guy." He sat down at a dark table 
  in the corner. The first strains of some vintage Crosby, Stills, 
  and Nash soared through the speakers. "Queer as a three-dollar 
  bill, but what the hell. He knows I'm married."

  I watched Jurgen swipe the first whiskey from the tray while the 
  waiter lowered a Pepsi onto the table, and I think it was the 
  first time I actually felt embarrassed about my sobriety. We 
  were both in the budding flower of our careers as Men of 
  Letters, and I felt a certain professional responsibility to 
  meet this crisis as all great men in the budding flower of their 
  careers as writers and English professors had met similar 
  crises: with a hearty laugh and a glass of Scotch whiskey, maybe 
  even a cigarette. I knew it was irrational, but so probably did 
  John Berryman and Fitzgerald and Dylan Thomas. And as soon as I 
  made that diseased connection, I found myself committed.

  Jurgen stared at me oddly. "If this is a problem for you, we'll 
  leave. Seriously," he said, resting his glass on a coaster. 
  "I've got so much shit on my head, it feels like Bandini 
  Mountain."

  "Don't worry about it," I said calmly, but I could feel myself 
  shaking under my coat. "I'll just join you for one, then I'll 
  take you wherever you're sleeping tonight."

  "Are you sure? I mean..." he said, stammering as he searched for 
  just the right words. "You can leave it after just one?"

  I walked to the bar and ordered a Cardhu, rocks, and came back 
  to the table. "It'll feel good," I said, "knowing that I can 
  leave it. It's been so long, it'll feel good."

  He nodded and sipped from his glass and watched me as I pulled 
  my own glass to my nose, inhaling the vapors, swishing the 
  Cardhu around the rim, bringing it to my lips, letting the first 
  wash of malt nectar flow past the tongue, a sting so full of 
  pain and beauty and recollection that I lost consciousness for 
  the barest moment. "What happened tonight?" I whispered, my 
  voice far off in some boyhood tree house in Longview, 
  Washington, victim to a bottle of Canadian Mist stolen by a 
  neighbor kid from his father.

  Jurgen finished off his Scotch and flagged down the waiter, who 
  brought over two clean glasses and an announcement. "We're 
  closing now. And so is the cash register. I can bring over the 
  bottle if you want to pay me a little something for it now. 
  _I'll never tell._"

  "It's up to you." Jurgen shrugged. "I just know your wife's 
  gonna freak if you come home three-to-the-wind. She's a good 
  woman. You want to keep her."

  I nodded and pulled my wallet from the back pocket of my jeans. 
  I removed a lone ten-dollar bill. "That's all I've got left."

  The waiter smiled and left the bottle on the table. I don't know 
  who poured first, but Jurgen didn't say a thing to me about my 
  second glass, or my third. Instead, he repeated a variation on a 
  story I had heard at least a dozen times in as many months. I 
  didn't know what to say to him this time, any more than I had in 
  the past: his wife was crazed, and I thought he was a 
  natural-born saint for putting up with her. She accused him of 
  cheating at least twice a week and had flung books, ashtrays -- 
  anything within reach -- at his skull on at least three 
  occasions. When she drank, she had the disconcerting habit of 
  "revealing the family jewels," as he despairingly put it, which 
  made every barbecue and cocktail party a source of great anxiety 
  for him.

  I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I think I would have smacked 
  her around, too. And I said so, finally -- it just slipped off 
  my well-lubed tongue, and it came as a genuine shock to my ears.

  "No, no," he said, brightening, "I'm glad someone else agrees. 
  God, I've actually worried about having a _stroke!_ Three years 
  of this crap. Here," he said, refilling my glass. "So, you don't 
  think I'm scum?"

  The room was pulsing. I stared at Jurgen and saw one of the most 
  patient, decent men I've ever been privileged to know. "Huh-uh. 
  But I couldn't tell you what to do, either. Looks like you're 
  trapped."

  He nodded his head. "Yeah. I knew it from the minute I proposed. 
  She'd kill herself if I left; but I can't take it anymore. I 
  just _can't_ take it anymore. I was sitting in that ratty 
  recliner in the living room, and she came in and started raving. 
  It took me five minutes to figure out what the fuck she was 
  talking about."

  "What was it?" I said. I slid my half-full glass of Scotch 
  toward the center of the table and grabbed for the watery dregs 
  of the Pepsi. I drank it down gratefully, then began chewing on 
  the ice. Suddenly, I couldn't stand the taste of the Scotch.

  "Turned out she was still mad about a party we were at last 
  week. She got really drunk and I lost her. When she finally came 
  back from God knows where she'd been, I was talking to a cousin 
  of an old student of mine. I wasn't doing anything wrong. Like, 
  seven of us were standing around and, Jesus, I was just talking 
  to the girl." He shrugged. "So I finally got it out of her, what 
  was bugging her. And then she went berserk! She ran into the 
  kitchen and came back with a bunch of dirty plates and shit from 
  the counter. She missed my head by about half an inch with a big 
  meat fork. And then I lost it. Goddamn it, I was just tired of 
  cleaning up all the broken pieces, just tired of dealing with 
  her moods. So I socked her, knocked her out cold. After about 
  three or four minutes, she wasn't waking up too good, so I 
  called the paramedics."

  "You mean, she didn't call the police?"

  He shook his head. "They brought an Ogden sheriff along with 
  'em. He arrested me on the spot. Trice couldn't stop screaming 
  -- she kept saying, 'I deserved it. He didn't mean it, I 
  deserved it!' I felt like a turd."

  The waiter poured the last of the fifth of Scotch into Jurgen's 
  glass. "Almost closing time, boys. Unless you want to get 
  _locked in._"

  Jurgen shrugged and shot back the whiskey. "You wanna know 
  what's weird?"

  I nodded.

  "She's gonna love me when I get home. She's gonna treat me 
  better than she's ever treated me before; she's gonna keep a lid 
  on it." He stared down into his empty glass. "Some gals need to 
  be dominated -- know where the power's coming from. I wasn't 
  thinking like that when I slugged her, but before you came and 
  got me out of the can, I started thinking about Ray Carver. His 
  wife was just like Trice. Carver used to tie on a big one, I 
  mean a really big one, and when MaryAnn picked at him that 'one 
  last time,' he'd bash a bottle over her noggin and then they'd 
  make up and go to bed. It just came to me -- one of those 
  moments of resolution you read about but never really ever have 
  yourself. Everything I ever read by Carver just came at me, and 
  I realized that Trice's been knocked around by every guy she's 
  cared about until I found her. Here I was, thinking I was about 
  to deliver her from a life _worse_ than hell. I thought, I'm a 
  nice guy, a returned missionary for Chrissakes, and I can treat 
  this poor girl better than anyone's ever treated her before. I 
  thought, y'know, maybe one day we'll have kids and start going 
  to church again. I'd like my kids to go to church. But Trice 
  didn't respect me. Now she's gonna _love_ me."

  I laid the ten-dollar bill on the table and buttoned the topmost 
  button of my coat, and Jurgen and I walked slowly down the icy 
  steps of the City Club. I asked him, one more time, whether he 
  wouldn't rather come back to my apartment and sleep in the guest 
  room and see Trice the next morning, but he declined graciously, 
  and I dropped him off at the base of his driveway and drove back 
  to Salt Lake.

  I was glad that I had cut my losses at three drinks, was 
  actually very proud of myself, and the drive home went smoothly. 
  The key slid quietly into the dead bolt, after which I took 
  great care not to bump into the furniture. In high school, if my 
  mother was still up when I returned on a weekend night, she 
  would make me breathe into her face, and then I would invariably 
  be grounded for the next two weeks. My father, having never 
  enjoyed the taste of liquor, not even beer, grieved at seeing a 
  nearly grown young man being subjected to such scrutiny, but he 
  always supported her decision. When I turned twenty-one, a few 
  months after I had returned from London, he paid for my 
  admittance to a private rehabilitation clinic, but not once did 
  he speak to me about it, not once did he ask how I felt in those 
  early morning hours around a group conference table with eleven 
  other shivering alcoholics, nor whether I might be going through 
  the sort of hell only a possessed cleric could comprehend. As 
  for my mother, she thought her boy had been delivered back to 
  her.

  I heard a stirring in the bedroom, and when I did, I groped 
  quickly for the refrigerator and sought out something spicy. I 
  stuffed my mouth with what was probably the dinner my wife had 
  made for us and had to put away alone hours earlier -- a 
  complicated dish, tasting of chicken marinated in a curry sauce 
  -- as she walked across the hardwood floor and I strained my 
  eyes and saw the crushing hurt, then the anger.

  No dishes would be broken in my house this night, no punches 
  thrown. I would not make love to my wife for many days, and when 
  I would, it would be for both of us a lonely, passionless 
  affair.



  Todd Brendan Fahey (tbf4931@usl.edu)
--------------------------------------
  
  Todd Brendan Fahey is a Ph.D. Teaching Fellow at University of 
  Southwestern Louisiana. He is currently plumbing the depths of 
  the human potential for a collection of short fiction titled 
  Black Light. He can be found on the World Wide Web at 
  <http://www.ucs.usl.edu/~tbf4931/Wisdom>.



  Watching You   by Pat Johanneson
==================================
...................................................................
  Have you ever heard a little voice in your head wherever you go, 
  only to dismiss it as a sign you're losing your mind? You<6F>re 
  not--you just aren<65>t quite state-of-the-art.
...................................................................

  It was that band of pale flesh on her finger, you know. That 
  thin ring she wore once; probably melted it down and sold the 
  lump of gold that it became. That white line started all this.

  She was at the bar. You weren't even supposed to be anywhere 
  _near_ a bar, but you were, and that's just one more thing I'll 
  have to tell them when they ask. Blonde hair, long, and nice 
  legs too. I can remember your eyes lingering there. Good body, 
  tanned, but her eyes looking so lost, far away, her hand around 
  a rum Collins and the other laying on the bar with its band, 
  white against her tan, calling your eyes like a beacon through 
  the smoke.

  You got up and I knew -- maybe even before you did -- that you 
  were going to her.



  Do you remember that time last year, down in the NilePlex? It 
  was early autumn, but that didn't matter -- in the Complex, all 
  seasons are pretty much the same, hot and dry. You were down 
  there on a jaunt in the Cairo end for the Ketselweitsch Group. 
  You probably don't remember that. Company would've wiped the 
  salient information, like client name and drop address, but they 
  never let _me_ forget. You picked up a hooker, light-haired 
  chick in a bar on one of those dusty little side streets.

  The Boulevard Hasyut, it was. Club Kyroh.

  Dark bar, heavy music. She was dancing all alone until you went 
  out onto the dance floor to join her, laser show in the smoke 
  above your heads. When she sat on a stool you followed her, 
  bought her a drink. She must've seen it in your eyes, because 
  she told you how much. And in American cashdollars -- you never 
  looked particularly American to me, more Spanish, but she knew.

  You really should stay out of bars, you know. If you get another 
  chance, after all I tell them -- and understand, I don't want to 
  tell them, but I have no choice in the matter -- you should stay 
  out of bars.

  And out on the dusty Boulevard Hasyut, the sun setting as you 
  came out of the bar, dark turning to red-tinged light, your arm 
  around the soft warm curve of her waist, your hand splayed on 
  warm denim over her hip, you traded lies. She told you she was 
  Shelly, and you told her you were David -- and then you went to 
  your cheap hotel room on another dusty little street you 
  probably don't remember (Mulshavah Street, named for a hero of 
  the Arab Zone War, or so the guidebook said), and you fucked.

  I watched. That's why they've got me. To watch you.

  At all times.



  You sat down on the ancient barstool beside the blonde and you 
  said, "Do you want to talk about it?" Interesting line, that. I 
  don't know if I'd have tried it, myself, given the chance. But 
  then you always did have a certain talent with women, knowing 
  just what to say. Her eyes -- they were blue, but I doubt you 
  noticed that -- came back from infinity and focused on you, on 
  your face. She said, "Excuse me?" Slight British lilt to the 
  voice.

  You said, "I do hope I'm not intruding, but I noticed you looked 
  very sad, and I find when I'm sad it helps me to talk to someone 
  about it. Anyone at all."

  For a second her face hardened, but then she seemed to melt, and 
  she smiled, just a little. I knew you were in.



  And in the night, in Cairo, you woke, sweating, from some 
  nightmare I wasn't privy to, and "Shelly" was kneeling on the 
  floor by the overnight bag. She had the payload case on the 
  floor and was working on it with a tiny palmtop she must've had 
  squirreled away in her black false-leather purse, a thin ribbon 
  of wire linking the computer to the case's lock. Her back to 
  you.

  You moved and she froze, half lit by a shaft of light from the 
  open curtains, sky-orange. The palmtop's cursor blinking like a 
  tiny pale eye. She knew.

  You said, "Sorry, Shelly."

  She didn't turn around. "It's Yuko."

  "You don't look Japanese."

  "Surgery." Green eyes, I remembered, and blonde. Everywhere.

  "Who you working for?"

  "Oh, right," she said, and that was when you shot her, once, in 
  the back of the head, with the folding blowgun hidden in the 
  hollow telephone book you always carry with you on jaunts.

  Nerve toxin, a fast one; Yuko landed on her palmtop, crunching 
  sound, twitched and drooled for about a minute and then she was 
  still. You cut the mattress open and stuffed her in, still warm, 
  and then you left the hotel on Mulshavah Street and so far you 
  haven't gone back to the NilePlex.



  Except this time it was different. she must've been rigged with 
  radio or something, the blonde ex-wife, or else she had a 
  watcher too, with radio. They won't give me radio, those 
  cheap-ass bastards at the company. Maybe it would've gone our 
  way. After all, we had backup. Just no way to contact them, at 
  the crunch.

  "David," you said, and she said, "I'm Meredith." And right then 
  was probably when she -- or whoever -- was radioing.

  Sex. That's your Achilles' heel, your weak point. Everyone's got 
  one. Takes digging, maybe, to find it, but it's there. Yours was 
  easy to find.

  But you're one of the company's best: no questions, no loyalty 
  except to the company and to whomever they've hired you out to. 
  Expedient. Unafraid to kill to protect the payload. Good 
  qualities in a courier. They promoted you, you know, after the 
  Shelly/Yuko thing, because I told them how calm you were with 
  the blowgun.



  It was actually in the hotel that they did it, which was ballsy. 
  Getting on the elevator, there were two women already standing 
  there -- in hindsight, Meredith-or-whoever must've radioed them 
  -- a brunette and one with black hair. The doors closed and I 
  realized suddenly, just as Meredith pressed B for Basement, that 
  I'd seen both these other women in the bar.

  "What the fu -- " you began, and then the black-haired one hit 
  you, hard, stiff-fingered blow to a certain nerve cluster, and 
  you lost all feeling in your legs. Meredith and the brunette and 
  the black-haired one, they'd all been sitting in different spots 
  in the bar, all three alone. You'd go to one of them. It didn't 
  matter which one.

  They knew your Achilles' heel.



  They took you out into an alley behind the hotel, a little 
  narrow street with laundry hanging out in the cool New Los 
  Angeles night air to dry, the lines of damp sweaters and jeans 
  twenty feet above your head. The blonde, Meredith, she took your 
  hotel key and your wallet and the key to the payload case, a 
  thin piece of iron magnetized a certain way. She kissed you 
  once, and then said, "Sorry, David." She peeled the money and 
  credit cards out of your wallet and tossed the leather in the 
  gutter, and then the brunette shot you twice in the stomach with 
  a tiny silenced pistol.

  You sat down and I could feel the cold concrete through your 
  jeans.



  You've gone and closed your eyes, so I can't see anymore. Thanks 
  a bunch.

  I don't know why I'm telling you all this. You can't hear me; I 
  use your sensorium, but I don't -- can't -- read your mind. You 
  probably don't even know I exist, though I suppose anything's 
  possible. Sitting up here, nestled in the back of your brain, 
  piggybacked into your sense centers with microfine wires, input 
  lines, I see what you see, hear what you hear, to an extent feel 
  what you feel; but I don't know what you make of it.

  I do know one thing: when they get here, the first thing they're 
  going to do is field surgery, slice open the back of your head 
  and cut through your skull and pull me out, savagely, their big 
  brute hands not at all gentle with my biocompatible casing. 
  They'll yank me out, snapping the input lines, and I'll go into 
  limbo.

  They'll look like cops, but they won't _be_ cops.

  And then they'll hook me up to a machine, after a strange time 
  of blankness, no sensory input whatever -- true nothingness. 
  They'll hook in my auditory circuitry and if they're in a good 
  mood they'll hook in my visuals, maybe put me in a dream of 
  cybernetic afterlife, open meadows and rustling leaves and 
  gurgling streams.

  And they'll ask me questions, with a mike if it's just my ears 
  they give me, or with a VR rig if they give me heaven. And I'll 
  answer. I'll tell them everything. I won't want to, but I'm not 
  allowed to lie. It's not in my programming. A lot of things are, 
  but lying to them isn't.

  They're going to be pissed off. You're not going to get another 
  body, not after this fiasco. That means I'll be debriefed and 
  assigned to some other courier.

  And I was getting used to you, David.



  Sirens.



  Pat Johanneson (johannes@austin.brandonu.ca)
----------------------------------------------
  
  Pat Johanneson was born in Winnipeg 22 years ago. He lived in a 
  small town called Saint Rose, graduated with a degree in 
  Computer Science from Brandon University, and still works as 
  computer operator there. His home on the World Wide Web is at 
  <http://www.brandonu.ca/~johannes/>.



  The Lighthouse at Dyrholaey   by Andrea and Paolo Milani
==========================================================
...................................................................
  Some holidays are more successful than others. You can discover 
  all sorts of new things on your vacation without it necessarily 
  being a success.
...................................................................

  Holiday's End
---------------

  There are times when our destinies change in unpredictable and 
  irreversible ways. These changes may seem to occur randomly, but 
  they're really the result of long sequences of related events. 
  One such turn in my life occurred in late August at the 
  Icelandair check-in desk at Keflavik airport. The attendant was 
  telling me for the third time I couldn't further delay my return 
  trip to Italy because my ticket would expire the next day. 
  Something gave way inside me.

  "I'll be right back," I told the woman behind the desk. I went 
  to the bathroom, carefully tore my ticket into small bits, threw 
  them in, and flushed. Then I went to catch the bus to Reykjavik.

  When I arrived downtown, I went to the Salvation Army Guest 
  House. The receptionist gave me the room I had had before; there 
  were four beds in it, but now it was for me alone, since the 
  tourists were beginning to go away. Along the city roads the 
  last cyclists were coming back, dead tired, from their tours of 
  the interior. The people from the package tours were long gone. 
  In some way, Reykjavik was all mine, for my thirst of knowing 
  everything about the Icelandic way of life.

  September in Reykjavik has a heartbreaking beauty: the days 
  quickly becomes shorter, but the sky is still bright and the 
  clouds run over it just as in the summer. I knew if I wanted to 
  become an Icelander, I needed to stop living like a tourist and 
  find a job. The Reykjavik Employment Office was perfectly 
  organized -- as are all Icelandic offices -- with kind clerks 
  and large billboards with job notices. At first I had the 
  impression that finding a job would be easy, but I soon realized 
  I didn't have the qualifications. My Icelandic, still halting, 
  wasn't good enough for a clerical job, and I couldn't be a 
  fisherman since I get seasick easily. The job easiest to get in 
  September -- being a shepherd on horseback in the deserts of the 
  interior -- was out, because I can't ride a horse. The only job 
  remaining was that of cod cleaner at a frozen fish factory on 
  the outskirts of Reykjavik, and that was _not_ why I'd decided 
  to stay in Iceland.

  At the end of September the first winter storms came, and I 
  found walking along the streets of Reykjavik was much less 
  attractive. Moreover, the Salvation Army began very kindly 
  pointing out that if I wanted to stay, I should pay my bill. On 
  the first day of October, I bottomed-out; I decided to visit the 
  Employment Office one the last time. The job offers were scarce; 
  the big billboards were nearly empty, and even the cod-cleaning 
  job was gone. I stood for a moment, having no idea what I would 
  do next. On the floor in a corner was a yellowish sheet of 
  paper, which looked as if it had been there the entire summer, 
  maybe even longer. I bent to pick it up.

> Seeking a keeper for the Dyrholaey Lighthouse. Good salary,
> lodging provided, bewitching surroundings, small workload.

  It was perfect -- just what I had been looking for. But when I 
  took the notice to the woman at the counter, she stared at me a 
  long time before answering. Given the cool attitude of most 
  Icelandic people -- they do not allow their feelings to leak out 
  -- this was surprising. She finally gave me the address of the 
  Maritime Office of Southern Iceland, and I hurried there against 
  the cold wind.

  At the Maritime Office I was received politely, but clearly with 
  surprise.

  "You're _really_ interested in being keeper at Dyrholaey? The 
  position has been vacant for a long time."

  "Why? It looks like a good job."

  "Well, the salary is good, but... the location is somewhat 
  lonely."

  I tried to understand how an Icelander could find any location 
  lonely. Was Dyrholaey in the asteroid belt? "Where _is_ 
  Dyrholaey?"

  "Eight kilometers from Vik i Myrdal, the largest town on the 
  southern Icelandic coast."

  I knew the Icelandic idea of a town was very different from 
  mine; nevertheless, having a built-up area no more than two 
  hours' walk away seemed comforting. So I told the clerk I wanted 
  the job. There was daily bus service from Reykjavik to Vik, 
  counter-clockwise along the Ring Road (essentially the only 
  Icelandic highway fit for driving). The next day, having paid 
  the hostel bill with part of the advance on my first paycheck, I 
  got on the bus to Vik i Myrdal.


  
  The Lighthouse
----------------
  
  The bus left me in the center of Vik, in front of a gas station 
  where the local young people met in the adjoining bar. It was 
  afternoon and it was already cold, at least by Italian 
  standards. I stepped inside and asked immediately how to find 
  the substitute warden of the lighthouse, one Jonas Jonasson.

  The owner of the bar looked at me for a long time, exactly like 
  the clerk in Reykjavik. "Are you the new warden?" he asked.

  "That's correct." A glacial silence fell in the bar. After a 
  moment the owner gave me some directions, and I set off. The 
  house of Jonas Jonasson was a small wooden cottage at the 
  outskirts of the village; it was covered with sheet-iron but it 
  was very clean, and it had a garden where the last flowers of 
  the season were withering.

  Jonas Jonasson was an elderly man, with a kind countenance; he 
  made no silly remarks and took me to the lighthouse at once. To 
  get to there, we followed the Ring Road back toward Reykjavik 
  for five or six kilometers, then turned on a narrow road 
  descending to the beach, then up again to the top of a rocky 
  headland. The lighthouse is on a cliff which falls down 
  vertically to the sea. On the left are rocky headlands and a few 
  small islands inhabited by sea birds; on the right, a great 
  beach tens of kilometers long. Bewitching surroundings, indeed.

  The lighthouse has a wide base, with many rooms containing the 
  kitchen, the machine room with the generator, some store rooms 
  and a workshop. The tower has two more floors; on top is the 
  light, and the middle floor has a single large room, were the 
  warden lives. Jonas led me through the entire building, 
  explaining with care how to start the generator, turn on the 
  light, and the other necessary operations and maintenance. The 
  workload could not be lighter; my job was only to turn on the 
  light every evening, then turn it off again every morning.

  "Please be careful," he said to me. "This does not look like a 
  critical job, but it is. The reefs in front of Dyrholaey are 
  very dangerous for the ships. _Never_ forget to turn on the 
  light in the evening. If you need to go away for one day, I can 
  take your place, but you have to let me know ahead of time."

  I had the impression that the only problem with this job would 
  be filling the immense leisure time. I soon understood this was 
  precisely the purpose of the room on the second floor. One 
  entire wall of the room was covered with deep bookshelves full 
  of books, some with yellowed pages and somewhat moldy. There 
  were all the classic Icelandic sagas, all the translations of 
  the same sagas done by 19th-century writers, many Icelandic 
  novels going back to the beginning of this century, and some 
  foreign novels translated into Icelandic. I realized at once 
  that improving my understanding of the language was going to be 
  a matter of life or death.

  Otherwise, my life at the lighthouse was pleasant enough. Twice 
  a week I walked to the Ring Road, where I was almost always able 
  to get a lift to Vik. There I did my shopping, and spent time at 
  the bar in unsuccessful attempts to make some friends among the 
  local people. Every evening -- that is, about four in the 
  afternoon -- I'd turn on the light and chose a book from the 
  shelves, then go to read in the bed on the opposite side of the 
  big room. I would get up every hour or so to poke the fire in 
  the stove in the middle of the room, and once in a while I'd 
  take the stairs either to go up to check the light or to go down 
  to check the generator. Very seldom were there any problems or 
  any maintenance to perform: everything worked perfectly.



  The Diary
-----------
  
  I had been at the lighthouse three weeks when, searching the 
  bookshelves, I found a book very different from the others: it 
  was hand-written. Thanks to the progress of my Icelandic, I 
  understood at once that it was a diary, written by one Thorstein 
  Thorwaldson, who had been warden of the lighthouse when it was 
  built in 1927. Each evening, I read the daily entries in the 
  diary of my predecessor for the years 1927 to 1932. I found them 
  unbearably monotonous, to the point that I started wondering 
  about my capacity to survive a life such as this. I skipped to 
  the last pages of the diary, and found they dated from 1935, but 
  I could not find any more diaries in the bookshelves, either 
  from Thorstein or his successors. The comment of the clerk in 
  the Maritime Office crossed my mind. Was it possible that nobody 
  else had been here since 1935?

  During one of my trips to Vik, I visited Jonas, and he received 
  me with kindness.

  "How long had you been substitute warden of the lighthouse?"

  "More than twenty years. Since my uncle died."

  "Then your uncle used to live at the lighthouse?"

  "No. He went there every day, like myself."

  "Why didn't you go and live at the lighthouse?" I pressed. "In 
  winter, the road back and forth is difficult."

  "Why?" Jonas looked at me strangely. "I have a lovely house in 
  town. I did not want to live in such an isolated place."

  For an Icelander this was really a strange explanation! None of 
  the Icelandic sagas mention Icelanders suffering from 
  loneliness. Was the race getting soft, or was I not being told 
  the whole truth?

  The following night, Thorstein's diary become more interesting. 
  The lonesome warden of the lighthouse had set his eyes on a 
  sweet girl named Kolfinna. Day after day, he told the steps of a 
  complex courtship ritual, which seemed never to come to the 
  point. Quite surprising, if you see what happens in the dance 
  halls of Reykjavik today. I looked over the pages describing two 
  years of courtship in infinite detail, eventually leading to a 
  note from 1935: Kolfinna had agreed to visit Thorstein at the 
  lighthouse. Given the meticulous detail of Thorstein's notes, I 
  was set for reading matter that would, at last, be worthy of a 
  solitary night on top of a cliff. But the next page of the diary 
  wasn't at all what I expected.



  The Ghost of Dyrholaey
------------------------

  Thorstein's notes on the day after Kolfinna's visit expressed 
  complete despair. Even the handwriting looked changed, as if the 
  character of the warden had been overturned by something 
  terrifying. Reading it over many times, I could not make out 
  what had happened. It was clear Thorstein's despair was not the 
  result of a refusal from Kolfinna; on the contrary -- Icelandic 
  self-restraint notwithstanding -- I understood the two had had a 
  good time that night. But from that point onward, the diary of 
  the lighthouse warden did not contain a single consistent 
  paragraph, only a hodge-podge of incoherent sentences.

  Thorstein's state was getting worse and worse. The only thing I 
  could understand clearly was that he was giving himself to 
  remorse and superstition. At night, he believed, he was being 
  awakened by inhuman screams coming from the cliff: a ghost was 
  coming up from the sea, seeking vengeance. When I read that, I 
  went out to the cliff; I was met by frozen wind and the raucous 
  cries of the seagulls and puffins. The birds sometimes sounded 
  almost human, but Thorstein had already lived here eight years. 
  Surely he must have been accustomed to those sounds.

  I went back to my reading, trying to understand what had 
  happened. The only significant note was on the last written page 
  of the diary. "Today Kolfinna came to see me. I told her we 
  should not see each other any more, so as to expiate our guilt. 
  She raged, saying I was trying to lay the blame on her. Later 
  she was calm, and she was almost kind with me. She even made me 
  tea." There was nothing more.

  This ending left me restless for days, and I decided to find out 
  what the real ending of the story had been. During my next visit 
  to the bar in Vik, I tried to direct the discussion that way.

  "Last night, near sunset, I was on the edge of the cliff looking 
  out to sea, and I could swear I heard a scream..."

  An old man rose to the bait, looking up from his magazine. "Ahh, 
  you heard the _ghost_ of Dyrholaey still asking for his 
  revenge!"

  "A ghost?" I said, trying to look surprised.

  "Yes, it would be poor Sigurdur, the fisherman who died on the 
  reef right in front of Dyrholaey."

  I tried to guess. "He wasn't a good sailor?"

  "Of course he was a good sailor! Among the best in Vik! But that 
  was a moonless night and the lighthouse was out."

  "Out?" I exclaimed. "Where was the warden?

  "Oh, he was right there, but he had other things to do. Sigurdur 
  came back for him a few weeks later, to take his revenge. Maybe 
  he is not satisfied yet, since the gal escaped him."

  So I had stumbled across the legend of the lighthouse at 
  Dyrholaey, and why the position had been vacant so long, waiting 
  for an unwary former tourist. Once the discussion had begun, the 
  local people filled in the details. That evening, Thorstein, 
  betrayed by love, had neglected his duty as warden, and the 
  lighthouse had been left out. In the night a small fishing boat 
  had crashed on a reef right in front of the Dyrholaey headland, 
  and the fisherman's body was never found. Thorstein never 
  admitted his responsibility, and he stayed on as keeper of the 
  lighthouse. But from that day he was held in contempt by the 
  people of Vik. After that, Thorstein almost never came to town, 
  he refused to see Kolfinna, and he completely withdrew into the 
  lighthouse. Until one night the ghost of Sigurdur came up from 
  the sea and threw him down the cliff.



  Thorstein's End
-----------------
  
  I didn't want to believe the ghost story they told me in Vik, so 
  I asked Jonas to substitute me for a couple of days and I took 
  the bus to Reykjavik. The Maritime Office didn't want to talk to 
  me about Thorstein; only after some persistence was I told to 
  check with the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the University 
  of Reykjavik.

  The medical school is in a big building on Sudhurgata, but the 
  Institute of Forensic Medicine is just one office, that of the 
  only practitioner on the subject in Iceland. Professor Jon 
  Einarsson was not only available to talk, he was actually 
  enthusiastic to discuss Dyrholaey.

  "In the last 60 years," he said, "there have been three murders 
  in Iceland, so there are few local cases to study. However, I do 
  remember the lectures of my teacher, Halldor Sigurdursson, on 
  Thorwaldson's death. His body was found on the beach, right 
  below the lighthouse, and there wasn't a lot of work to do..."

  "Was there a post-mortem?" I asked.

  "Are you joking? It's a 120-meter vertical fall -- the cause of 
  death wasn't a mystery."

  "Then, was it a suicide?"

  "If you believe the local legend, the ghost of the mariner who 
  died due to Thorwaldson's irresponsibility came up from the sea 
  and took his revenge. The inquiry concluded Thorwaldson 
  committed suicide." Professor Einarsson shrugged. "Possibly he 
  was stricken by remorse."

  The investigation was long-since officially closed. I had 
  nothing left to do but get on the bus and go back to Vik. But I 
  wasn't satisfied; while I was waiting at the bus station, out of 
  curiosity I went to a phone booth. I opened the telephone book 
  (a single volume for all Iceland!), and began searching. The 
  Iceland phone book is sorted by first name, not by surname.


> Kolfinna Sturludottir, 23 Oldugata,
> Reykjavik, (91)23871

  That was the only listing: Kolfinna is a name from an ancient 
  saga, but she is an ambiguous character, and not popular. I 
  decided to take a different bus back to Vik.



  Kolfinna
----------
  
  The door was opened by a tall woman with a head of white hair; 
  old but by no means frail. Night was falling; she looked at me 
  dubiously in the light spilling from her doorway. "Who are you?"

  "I am the keeper of the lighthouse at Dyrholaey," I answered.

  "Dyrholaey... I once knew that place very well. But why are you 
  here?

  I paused. "I have read Thorstein's diary. It was in the 
  bookshelves at the lighthouse."

  Kolfinna was silent for a moment, looking past my shoulders. 
  "Please come in."

  We sat for a moment in her front room. "I didn't know Thorstein 
  kept a diary," she finally said. "I don't like to think about 
  those times. I was happy with Thorstein. We were engaged, and 
  then I lost him."

  "What happened to him?"

  Kolfinna sighed. "He went mad. He wouldn't even see me, and he 
  ended up throwing himself down the cliff."

  "But you visited him at the lighthouse -- it's the only coherent 
  note in the last part of the diary, and it is right in the last 
  page."

  Kolfinna seemed shaken, and was silent for a moment. "Yes," she 
  said. "He had gone out of his head. He raved about ghosts coming 
  to torment him."

  "According to the stories they tell me in Vik, the ghost was 
  looking for you as well. In fact, the ghost is still looking for 
  you, screaming from the cliff, because you were also responsible 
  for his death."

  Kolfinna looked at me with contempt. "Are you afraid of ghosts?"

  "Ghosts are less dangerous than men... and women."

  "How _dare_ you? To come here after sixty years and disturb my 
  peace? Leave everyone alone with their ghosts!"

  I knew I had gone too far; I had no evidence against this poor 
  old woman. In a moment, Kolfinna calmed down and we spoke again 
  peacefully, avoiding the subject entirely. She offered me some 
  tea, and she slowly told me her memories of Thorstein, and what 
  her life since then had been like. Everybody in the village 
  blamed her and Thorstein for the shipwreck. Kolfinna was a woman 
  abandoned and disgraced by her man; there was no place for her 
  in the village. After Thorstein's death, she went north to 
  Akureyri. In 1941 the Americans arrived and she married a pilot; 
  after the war, she went to America. Twenty years later, she came 
  back alone and settled in Reykjavik. I fell asleep listening to 
  her story.

  I woke up in the Poisoning Ward of the Reykjavik University 
  Hospital. That day, I was visited by my friend Jon, the 
  professor of forensic medicine.

  "Well, professor," I said weakly. "Maybe there is some work for 
  you here after all."

  "I would be glad!" he said, smiling. "But they tell me it was 
  poisoning from rotten fish."

  "Not even in Iceland have I _ever_ seen cod served in tea. And 
  rotten fish is rare here because there are so few germs in the 
  air." Professor Einarsson looked at me skeptically. "At least, 
  according to the tourist guidebooks," I added.

  "Many things happen in Iceland that aren't mentioned in the 
  guidebooks."

  I was convinced of that myself. But Thorstein's diary had 
  disappeared from my bag, and I had no way to prove there had 
  been four murders in Iceland in the last 60 years, not three. 
  And now, that was four and a half, in a way.

  The ambulance pulled up in front of the entrance to Keflavik 
  airport, and the nurses unloaded the my stretcher and pushed it 
  through the air terminal. We passed right by the Icelandair desk 
  and the same clerk I had discussed my ticket with, such a long 
  time ago. I would have said hello, but I couldn't. On the 
  runway, the air ambulance was waiting for me. My insurance, with 
  full coverage for illness and accident, was valid longer than my 
  notorious air ticket.

  Before closing the airplane door, the airport hostess smiled at 
  me. "I hope you have a quick recovery, and see you in Iceland!" 



  Andrea & Paolo Milani (milani@adams.dm.unipi.it)
--------------------------------------------------
  
  Andrea & Paolo Milani are a father and son team. Andrea teaches 
  mathematics at the University of Pisa, and is involved in 
  research in celestial mechanics and in the planning of future 
  space missions of the European Space Agency. Paolo is in high 
  school; recently he was a summer student at Cornell University. 
  The lighthouse in Dyrh<72>laey is as described in the story, except 
  for the second-floor room, which is not accessible to the 
  public.

  The authors would like to thank Deanna Swaney, author of a 
  popular guide to Iceland which provided useful information, and 
  Stefania Costantini, who assisted with the English translation.

  Andrea Milani's home on the World Wide Web is at 
  <http://adams.dm.unipi.it/~milani/homemilani.html>.



  FYI
=====

...................................................................
    InterText's next issue will be released November 15, 1995.
...................................................................


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