Текст книги "Postsingular"

Автор книги: Rudy Rucker

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Fighting off malware was a continual activity, but usually the beezies would automatically give the patches to your filter dogs. Why had the beetles been so tough to kill? And why were Nek-tar's beetles in this particular car? Jayjay set some beezies to searching through possible causes for the unfolding scenario. Inside the house old Dot and Red were dressed again; the rain was letting up.

"Lureen Morales is an idiot," Thuy said to Kittie, dipping backward into the conversation the way she liked to do. "She's got a pushed-in Pomeranian face. I'm much more attractive than her. Don't be a brainwashed starfucker, Kittie. You sound like a frat boy. You should be listening to Tawny Krush instead."

Jayjay grinned to hear Thuy harsh on Kittie.

"You're channeling Tawny?" said Kittie, taken aback.

"She's rehearsing a heavy-metal symphony with the Kazakhstan guitar corps," said Thuy loftily, her high pigtails swaying. "I'm going to sample it for my metanovel. That's what I'm all about. Postsingular literature." She stuck out her tongue at Kit-tie and waggled it. "Am I 'hot' yet?"

"Come here, ban gБi, " said Kittie, fumbling at Thuy's miniskirt. "Heath's going waay down on Lureen."

Jayjay returned his attention to Prav Plato's rap, not wanting to witness Kittie pawing his lost love. Sonic remained obsessively focused on his game. A moment of silence, and then old Red stumped out of the house and pulled open the car door. The two women drew apart.

"Wassup, Red," said Jayjay.

To switch from Prof Prav's fraught, exquisite communication to Red's rudimentary vocalizations was, for Jayjay, like dropping out of a beautiful sunset-clouded sky into a crude, flat cartoon. For the first second or two, the old man's words seemed like the yipping of a dog. Jayjay felt guilty about the involuntary comparison. Red wasn't all that different from Papa, dead three years now from a gang fight in the penitentiary.

"Log into the Department of Motor Vehicles with me and I'll give you the title," repeated the old man, holding out the car keys.

"I want to own the car," put in Kittie. "Me! I'll retrofit it and trick it out."

Red craned his neck, peering avidly at the women in the backseat.

"Your orphids are blushing, Thuy," said Kittie. "Red's peeping you. Dig it, realman, we're watching you right back, you and your breeder in the house. I'm seeing hella many coats in your hall closet. Can I have the leopard-patterned Burberry knockoff with the dog-fur collar?"

Jayjay laughed; he admired the way that Kittie always pushed things too far, even though that made her expensive to carry as a friend.

"Take the damn car and get out of here," said Red.

With quick mental gestures, Kittie and Red completed the registration steps. But then the car wouldn't start, of course, having sat there for about a year. Fortunately it had a manual transmission; Red told Jayjay he could start it by putting it in second gear and popping the clutch while Sonic and Kittie rolled it down the driveway into the street. So Jayjay tried that, with Thuy sitting in the backseat fixing her lipstick, Thuy watching her face in the orphidnet instead of in a mirror.

"I miss you, Thuy," said Jayjay into their moment alone. "When are you coming back to me?"

"When you get yourself straight," said Thuy. "Maybe. I'm changing, Jayjay. My Hibraner friend Azaroth is helping me write my metanovel. I'm really done with the Pig."

"But you love the Pig," protested Jayjay. "When we got high this morning, we were channeling together, and I said wheenk, and uh-" He paused, trying to bring back all those great thoughts they'd shared.

"And uh," mimicked Thuy. "That's how everyone's Big Pig stories end. We might as well be sudocokers. It's sad, Jayjay. You know I still like you a lot; Kittie's like a cellmate helping me break out of jail, not like the love of my life. And yes, of course, I remember our wheenk moment this morning, it was funny. Know what? I'm gonna use that for the title of my metanovel. Wheenk. It's all in there, isn't it?"

"I'm tender," said Jayjay. "And I'm not like a sudocoker at all. I'm much smarter than I used to be. Hold tight." He popped the clutch; the car lurched; the motor caught and died.

"Pump the gas pedal!" shouted Red, watching from his front steps.

"One more try, loser," Kittie hollered to Jayjay. "Then I drive and you push." The car begin rolling forward again.

"Warn me earlier," said Thuy, wiping a lipstick smear off her nose. "Using the beezies to help you think is one thing, Jayjay, but getting high on the Pig is something else. Those physicists you admire, they're spending their spare time buffing up their theories. They're not getting wasted and sleeping on the floor. Kittie and I are gonna quit the Posse."

"Oh, come on, stick around," said Jayjay, not taking the threat all that seriously. "I'm good story material, no? Hold tight again." This time the engine caught. Jayjay paused, gunning the backfiring engine while Sonic and Kittie got in.

It was a short, exciting drive to Dolores Heights. Street kids ran along the sidewalk, cheering the roaring silver dinosaur. With the gasoline supply closed down, all you saw on the roads anymore were electric retrofits. Empowered by orphidic intelligence amplification, the automotive engineers had come up with cheap gas-to-electric conversion kits, not to mention lightweight batteries and nanotech solar cells that you brushed onto your car's roof like enamel paint.

The belching SUV wallowed across Dolores Street and up the steep little hill to Nektar's gingerbread mansion, the highest on the ridge, save for one.

"I can't believe we're going to Nektar Lundquist's," exulted Kittie. "And do you realize that's Lureen Morales's place at the very top of the hill? We're with the stars!"

The engine sputtered and missed; the gas was running out. Jayjay goosed the accelerator. With a peevish last roar, the behemoth waddled in through one of Nektar's open garage doors. CHAPTER 6

Nektar's Beetles

Lying on her bed on the second floor, Nektar heard the unaccustomed sound of a car engine. Night before last, the beetles had come in her sleep like a fever dream, and ever since then she couldn't fully wake up. The beetles kept wedging her orphidnet access open, kept getting into her head.

She was too weak to sit up, and there was no hope of using the orphidnet to examine her garage, what with the virtual beetles in the way, each of them a jagged oval core with faceted eyes, pinchy-feely mouths, and zigzag legs.

Although Nektar was a big celeb, nobody was here to help her-other than some little shoon robots she'd gotten from Jil Zonder.

Right now, so far as the public understood the situation, Nektar was on a weight-reducing sudocoke binge. But in reality she didn't use sudocoke; and that was talcum powder on the mirror by her bed. The beetles had made her lay out the lines; whenever she balked at their requests, they'd feed her images she could barely stand to see. At least so far she'd refused to cut an ad for Dick Too Dibbs. That's what they were after.

Nektar strained her ears to listen for more noises from the garage, but all she heard were the chirps and clicks from the beetle currently in her visual field.

"You say sorry about insulting Homesteadies," repeated the beetle. "Make Too Dibbs testimonial now."

Out of the question. The first Dick Dibbs had sent the nants to eat the Earth. Nektar would never ever forget that. Nor would she forget that her husband Ond had let the nants eat their son Chu in order to pass some viral code to the nants. Nektar had stopped loving Ond then and there-even though Ond's crazy plan had worked. The nants had reassembled everything they'd destroyed, including Chu.

President Dick Dibbs and his vice president had been impeached, convicted, and executed like the rabid dogs they were, but Jeff Luty had escaped. And Nantel had regrouped as ExaExa. According to Ond, Luty was safely hidden from the orphidnet within the quantum-mirror-shielded walls of the ExaExa labs. They'd had the mirroring in place even before they released the orphids. Taking care of the boss.

Nektar drifted back from her reverie. Probably the malware beetles were a Jeff Luty product. Ond said Jeff liked insects better than humans because they were closer to being machines. Not only ants, but beetles as well, especially the sacred scarab dung beetle of ancient Egypt. Back at Nantel, Jeff had given Ond a mounted giant beetle as an award; it was still kicking around the house somewhere.

If Luty had made these software beetles, then no wonder they'd come to attack Nektar. Jeff had always had it in for her. Back in the Nantel days, Luty had tried to take over Ond's life, keeping him at the lab till late, seven days a week. Maybe he had some sick crush on Ond. It had taken some severe tantrums on Nektar's part to get Ond a more reasonable schedule, and Luty had never forgiven Nektar.

Ond always said Luty was like a child, forgetful of the niceties, a genius in the rough, but Nektar had never liked the guy, not his chewed-down fingernails, not his weird vocabulary of made-up words, not his lip balm, not his greasy ponytail. Why couldn't Luty take ten minutes off and cut his hair? Of course, the worst was that he'd enlisted Ond into his nant project of destroying the natural world. Yes, Ond had backed off in the end, but by then it had been too late for Nektar. If Luty hadn't warped Ond, then Nektar and Ond might still have been together.

Gathering her strength, Nektar executed a savage mental lunge that closed down the image of the beetle currently threatening her. She glanced over at her bedside clock. Ten fifteen in the morning. And now the minute hand bent up and out toward her, articulating itself like a beetle leg. Nektar willed the leg back into a minute hand. The clock face dropped off, and a fresh beetle crawled out.

"You must record ad," it insisted. "We exhaust time and patience. More punish." Day before yesterday, Nektar had ranted against Too Dibbs and the Homesteadies, putting the truth out there for her Founders audience. That's what had set this off.

"You know I won't help you," said Nektar flatly. "I'd rather die. I meant what I said and I'll say it again." She threw her remembered words in the beetle's face. "The Homesteady Party wants people to be like sheep, easy to fleece. That's why they're against personal freedom, against quirky culture, against self-expression, against education, against art. They want a mass mind they can mass-process like synthoid tomatoes. Is anyone in the orphidnet channeling me? Listen to Chef Nektar. Too Dibbs will make you sicker than the Banana Surprise at MouthPlus-Plus."

In response, the beetle's chirping grew guttural, sinister. Nektar braced herself. An image of her son Chu appeared. A long, solemn knife hovered beside him like the bow of a violin.

Trying to draw back from the coming torment, Nektar groped for a memory, any memory, and came up with a clip of her and rival chef Jose having their final fight in the Puff kitchen: Jose holding that same kind of long knife to his own throat, making the tiniest of cuts and lifting a drop of his blood to Nektar's lips, all the while glaring into her eyes. "Taste that, " he'd hissed. "You bitch." A pair of beetle legs unfurled from Jose's belly, taking hold of the knife. Jose's face became Chu's. The knife sawed into Chu's neck; the boy's head flopped back and all the blood of his body gushed out.

Nektar moaned and rocked, drawing deeper into herself. As if from somewhere very far away, she felt water on her lips. Those good little shoons were taking care of her. Maybe the beezies would find a way to save her soon. Maybe there were people in the garage. Hang on, Nektar. A beetle leg rummaged down through her veils of thought, its spiny foot trying to snag her attention. Nektar burrowed deeper, replaying triumphal memories of her rise to the head chef 's post at Puff.

Restaurant traffic had ramped up heavily after the coming of the orphids; with people able to see and hear everything online, the nonvirtual experience of dining was becoming the centerpiece of most evenings out. Nektar liked to present a meal as table theater. And why limit the entertainment to chewing things up? She'd added foamy, soft food to the Puff menu, and pastes for people to rub onto their bodies: peppery curries, soothing mints, moistening emulsions. Jose had been against all of Nektar's ideas; turned out he was a depressive jerk, always acting like a martyr. After he'd done that weird number with the knife on his neck, Nektar had gone straight upstairs to the restaurant's owners, Xandro and Beatriz.

But now Nektar's memory citadel was broached again; the two owners resembled beetles, their legs linked like axons and dendrites. "Make ad for Dick Too Dibbs," said the beetles. "Do very now."

"Fire Jose," Nektar told them, desperately hanging onto her narrative. "Make me the head chef. Look how many hits my orphids are getting. I'm a star. It's me that brings the customers in."

Beetle Xandro lifted the shiny cover off a silver salver, his chitinous leg hooking the metal handle. Beetle Beatriz leaned over the naked boy on the platter and fired up a blowtorch. "I cook tableside," she twittered, blistering Chu's face. "Else make Too Dibbs ad now."

Groaning, Nektar twisted away and found herself in last week's bed with Craigor. He was handsome and well-endowed, but not Nektar's idea of a great lover. She'd only continued sleeping with him because the affair had given such a nice boost to the hitcounts of her Founders show. Acting out the bedroom memory, Nektar ran a flirtatious finger down Craigor's bare chest. He split open like a pupa and Craigor's wife Jil crawled out: moist, throbbing, luminous, in tears. "I was your best friend, Nektar. How could you? Craigor was my man. I'm scared I'm going to relapse."

"I'm sorry," said Nektar. "I'm so sorry."

"Make the ad," said the beetle shaped like Jil. "Then I forgive. Vote for Dick Too Dibbs. You say just once."

"Hey, Nektar!" A fresh voice, a real voice in her bedroom.

She fluttered her eyes open. Two men and two women were here, colorful, street-hardened kids in their early twenties, ten years younger than Nektar. One of them leaned close. His eyes were soft and intelligent beneath his green cap; he wore a T-shirt and a suit jacket with a wild hand-drawn skull on the jacket's back. An iridescent shoon was perched on his shoulder. The rain had stopped; the sun was breaking through.

"I'm Jayjay," the boy told Nektar. "Aka Jorge Jimenez. We're the Big Pig Posse. Let me into your head, Nektar. Give me full access. I can kill those beetles by fixing your filter dogs." He flexed his fingers in intricate gamer moves.

"Yes," said Nektar with a weak smile, and opened a mental door for him. In the orphidnet, Jayjay got busy. The other Posse members were in the orphidnet watching, as well: a stocky girl with a blue tattoo, a boy with spiky hair, a Vietnamese girl with high pigtails.

"Yeek yeek," murmured the first boy-Jayjay-swinging from bough to vine in the jungle of Nektar's mind, landing beside her filter dog kennel, and scattering luminous blue fleas. Instants later, Nektar's flea-bitten dogs had trashed the beetles.

"All good now, Nektar," said Jayjay, pulling back into his real body.

Nektar sat up, holding her sheet to her breasts, free at last.

The boy with his hair in shiny spikes-Sonic-stretched out in a patch of sun on the big Oriental rug on Nektar's floor, the shoons yipping and cavorting with him. He wore black wool tights, a red T-shirt, and a lightweight leather jacket with tailored shirring.

As usual, the shoons' appearances changed according to the whims of the beezies currently controlling them; right now a couple resembled monkeys, another pair was playing beetle and beetle-flea, another was a classic Happy Shoon like a bucktoothed Korean baby with a thick rubber bottom, and two had tweaked themselves to resemble Jayjay and the pigtailed girl in striped leggings.

Jayjay forced open the bedroom's sticky window. Sitting in the easy chair right by Nektar's bed was the plain-faced woman with the blue tattoo.

"I'm Kittie," she said pleasantly. "It's great to meet you. I watch Founders all the time. And I've seen you around the Mission, of course." Fresh air drifted into the room.

"I'll treat your little group to a big dinner," said Nektar. "Have you ever been to Puff?"

"Mostly we eat garbage," said Kittie. "We're rough and tough."

"Hmm," said Nektar, thinking that over, her beetle-free mind feeling giddy and agile. Kittie reminded Nektar of the girlfriend she'd had in college before she'd met Ond; Kittie had that same quality of inner refinement beneath a streetwise demeanor. "You just gave me an idea for a new restaurant presentation," Nektar told her. "We lead the customers into a dim room with food hidden in miniature garbage cans along the wall. They root out their entrees; it's a walk on the wild side." Just to see if she still had it, Nektar gave Kittie a come-hither look.

"I want white tablecloths for our meal at Puff," said Kittie, radiating back. "Clean and calm."

"Did this start out as a sudocoke run?" interrupted the girl in the striped leggings, wandering over. "I'm Thuy."

"That's baby powder on the mirror," said Nektar, glad to be getting this information out to her audience. "A hoax. I was under the control of those beetles. They wanted to set the scene so it looked as if I had a reason to stay in bed. For the last two days, they've been tormenting me, wanting me to make an ad for that silly Dick Too Dibbs. I've heard him come out strong against the nants, but who owns him, really? Since when did any Homesteady politician care about anyone who's not filthy stinking rich?"

"Tell the world, Nektar," said Jayjay. "Listen up, Founders fans! My homie Sonic designed these six-dimensional Calabi-Yau beetle-fleas. They'll gnaw beetle malware out of your orphids." He gestured with both arms, tossing a complete image of a beetle-flea into the orphidnet for Nektar's viewers to grab. Then he flopped down on the floor to join Sonic in playing with the shoons.

"I need a shower," said Nektar, getting out of her bed. She was naked, but being naked didn't matter anymore, what with your body visible on the orphidnet all the time.

"Need some help?" said Kittie.

"Don't be dogging her," said Thuy. Evidently Thuy was Kittie's girlfriend.

Nektar could visualize making love to Kittie. Having an affair with needy, unstable Craigor Connor was enough to put a woman off hetero sex for months. Maybe it was because he was anxious about cheating on Jil, but Craigor had stinted on foreplay-like he was in a rush to notch up his score for the main event. Kittie, on the other hand, looked tender and competent, like a butch, sexy nurse. Nektar smiled at her and said, "I am a little wobbly, matter of fact. If you could walk me in there and maybe help me when I dry off?"

"You got it, babe," said Kittie.

"I'm coming, too," said Thuy.

"Fine," said Nektar, relishing the attention.

The girls helped Nektar into the shower, Kittie making sure to accidentally touch Nektar's breasts and bottom, with Thuy watching: annoyed, aroused, amused. After the shower, the two converged on Nektar, each of them holding a big thick towel. Much better to be pursued by women than by beetles. This was catnip for the Founders viewers. Nektar's orphids glowed with hitcounts.

Back in the bedroom, Sonic and Jayjay were still fooling around with the shoons. Happy Shoon was pacing around to mime deep thought, but the other shoons were rolling around like puppies.

"One of my beezies traced back the beetles' history for us," announced Jayjay. For a homeless kiqqie, he had a very crisp and precise way of speaking. "They originated from some malware that you caught from Craigor Connor, Nektar. And Craigor caught the beetle infection when he delivered a walking-chair to Andrew Topping, director of the Natural Mind center in the Mission Street Armory. We don't know how the infection reached Topping's office. They've got the whole Armory shielded by quantum-mirror varnish to protect their recovering orphidnet addicts. The same kind of shielding that's used in the ExaExa labs; ExaExa gave them the varnish. ExaExa is one of Natural Mind's main financial backers, matter of fact. They say it's charity. For the public good."

"You know-" said Nektar, regally nude, pausing to enjoy the eyes upon her. "I kept trying to think what those beetles reminded me of, and now I realize they're like nants. That blind, pushy quality. The Jeff Luty connection fits. That man isn't comfortable in a human body. He truly thinks we'd be happier if we were software. Ond always said Jeff wasn't really evil-it's just that Jeff had this big tragedy when he was younger." Nektar shook out her hair, proud of herself for sounding so calm on the subject of Luty. "What it is, Jeff is making those beetles as a way to help get Dick Too Dibbs into office. And that'll give Jeff an in. And down the road, I bet Jeff will manipulate Too Dibbs into launching some improved, unstoppable nants and they'll kill Gaia for good. Someone has to get to Luty."

"Right on, Nektar," said Kittie.

"Go to the Armory," urged Nektar. "Go to the Armory and check yourselves into the Natural Mind center. Talk sense to Andrew Topping."

"Natural Mind," mused Jayjay. "A janitor told us to go there this morning. Coincidence or trap?"

"Aw, people always mention Natural Mind if you're sleeping in the street," said Sonic. "I'm down with going there. Put some heat on Topping's ass. He's a megaspammer, man. Of course, duh, thanks to the orphidnet, he'll know we're coming, assuming his beezies data-mine this conversation. Maybe the Natural Minders won't let us in."

Jayjay made a dismissive gesture. His attention had wandered to Thuy. "You done watching Nektar take her shower?" he demanded. "Leave that for Kittie. Come sit with me. I'm the one who loves you."

Thuy strode over, gave Jayjay such a hard shove with her gold-clad foot that he fell over on his side, then perched herself on him as if she were sitting on a log. He lay there, looking happy to be in physical contact. Poor men, thought Nektar, they're dogs. Jayjay was cute, too. If Thuy didn't want him, maybe Jil Zonder would. Jil deserved a fling. It might shake her out of her doldrums.

"Why didn't you and the beezies fix Nektar yourselves instead of calling in a strung-out pighead derelict like Jayjay?" Thuy asked the shoons, wagging her finger at them. "You there-the shoon that looks like me-squeak up! You can talk, can't you?"

The tiny Thuy-shaped shoon bobbled her little pigtails and spoke in a surprisingly rich alto voice: "We can talk. We can sing." Capering expressively, the shoon now performed a bit of Papageno's aria from The Magic Flute, vibrating her whole body like a loudspeaker.

The Big Pig Posse kids laughed.

And then the shoon laid her little finger against her lips to mime secretiveness. "Let's switch to quantum-encrypted instant messages," she said. With everything visible and audible via the quantum-entangled surface-mesh-monitoring orphidnet, the one way to have a private conversation was via dynamically encoded messaging.

"I'm not a derelict, I'm important," said Jayjay, rolling out from under Thuy and catching his arms around her waist. "See-the shoon-beezies want to make plans with us! I'll set up a secure channel for us, okay?"

Nektar ignored the planning session. She'd spoken her piece; let the little kiqqies work out the details. It was time to put her look together. Her blond hair had dark roots, but that was okay. She dried her hair, combed it out, and pinned it into an upside-down bed-head ponytail. For Kittie's benefit, she donned sexy black underwear with red stitching, making sure the girl watched. Then came black tights and a black slip, mascara and lipstick, a cream-colored silk blouse, high black boots, and her casual red twill skirt and jacket.

The sheets on the bed were disgraceful. Nektar stripped them off and threw them into the hamper, with Kittie right there at her side pitching in. Nektar needed breakfast: a quart of Lapsang Souchong tea and a bowl of granola with apricots and yogurt. She called over Happy Shoon and sent him downstairs to make the tea. He was the most trustworthy of the lot, Jil's original model.

"Would you four like to come downstairs with me?" Nektar asked the Big Pig Posse. Kittie nodded, but the others didn't. They were so into their private conference that they didn't hear her.

"Time to eat!" Nektar messaged into the Posse's quantum-encrypted channel.

"We had some food already," said Jayjay out loud. "Maybe we should-"

"It's been a couple of hours," said Kittie quickly. "You should be glad to eat with Chef Nektar. Are you kidding? What an honor. You guys can talk later."

As they headed down the stairs someone knocked on the front door. Looking through the orphidnet, Nektar saw Jil Zonder and Craigor Connor out there, the pair in a state of uneasy truce.

"Wow," said Kittie. "We're smack in the middle of the Founders show."

"Maybe I'll make a special episode with just you," Nektar purred to Kittie. "Can you be a dear and let them in? I feel like I'll go crazy if I don't get my tea this minute."

Nektar hurried into the kitchen and poured herself a mug of smoky black tea with two spoons of sugar and enough whole milk to cool it down-ahh. The caffeine molecules ran up and down the corridors of her brain turning on the lights. She fixed herself a bowl of cereal, then sat down at the kitchen table as the crowd appeared.

"Poor Nektar," said Craigor, pushing forward. "You had, like, mind parasites? I would have come earlier, but I thought, you know, she's losing weight with sudocoke."

"You would think that," said Nektar, crabbily. "Sit down; don't hover. Help yourself to some food. Scavenge. My four young friends here, the Big Pig Posse, they're used to finding their meals in garbage cans. But try my fridge first. Thanks for coming, Jil."

Jil looked good today; her bobbed dark hair lustrous, her figure sweet in jeans and a pullover. Instead of answering Nektar out loud, she sent a quantum-encrypted message. "You can have Craigor for good. It'll never be the same between us again. You've ruined our marriage." Stone-faced, she turned away and opened Nektar's fridge.

"Really he loves you," messaged back Nektar. "I'm sorry I did it. The last few times were just for the Founders ratings. And I was drunk the first time. You don't know what hell I've been through. In my head I keep begging you to be my friend again. Please, Jil."

"Funny kind of friend." Jil took a pitcher of juice from the fridge and poured herself a glass, her back still turned to Nektar. "There's a hole where my heart used to be."

"I know I'm horrible," messaged Nektar. "And you're wonderful and noble and brave. Forgive me. You mean so much more to me than Craigor ever could." Craigor, now sitting right across the table from Nektar, didn't even know that Jil and Nektar were channeling each other.

"Hands off him from now on?" messaged Jil, sliding a glance over toward Nektar. "Maybe I could still love Craigor a little bit. For the kids' sake, anyway. And maybe I need this marriage. Do you promise not to reel him back in the next time your ratings are low?"

"Don't worry about the ratings. I'm planning to start up with this blue-tattoo girl. Why don't you give yourself a treat and pay Craigor back." Nektar's eye fell on Jayjay in his skull-painted jacket. "How about that one right behind you," she messaged Jil. "He's young and hot; he chased the beetles out of my skull. Talk to him."

"You're terrible, Nektar. What an idea."

"Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander," messaged Nektar. "You deserve that boy. Look how cute he is. He can't take his eyes off you." CHAPTER 7

The Grill in the Wall

Would you like some juice?" said Jil, turning toward Jayjay with a pitcher in her hand. "It's mango."

In person, Jil's face had more nuances and complexities than the orphidnet meshes revealed. One orphid per square millimeter of skin wasn't nearly enough to capture the lively high-res play of a woman's eyes and mouth. Particularly Jil's.

"Wonderful," said Jayjay, taking the plastic pitcher from her, or meaning to, but somehow he and Jil bobbled the handoff, and the pitcher fell, bouncing out a floppy yellow-orange tongue that puddled sticky on the floor.

"Oops!" called Craigor from the kitchen table. Kittie, Thuy, and Sonic had already sat down as well, Thuy holding a cantaloupe and Sonic bearing cups and Nektar's big pot of tea.

"The shoons will mop that," Jil reassured Jayjay. Her dark eyebrows were arch-formed, always giving her an optimistic, playful appearance despite any inner pain. "The shoons can open up pores and make themselves into sponges. They clean up after my kids all the time. And my husband." She gave a sharp whistle; Happy Shoon and a doughboy trotted over to roll in the juice, chirruping as their bodies dampened and swelled. Jil gave Jayjay a really nice smile. She had faint freckles across the bridge of her perfect nose.

Usually Jayjay was tentative with women, but, faced with the alluring Jil, he found the courage to go for it. "When I first saw you on the orphidnet and heard your name, I thought you were this beautiful girl Jilena who was a year ahead of me in high school," he said softly. "I worshipped Jilena from afar."

"I was done with high school a looong time before you," said Jil, looking Jayjay up and down. "Flatterer." Jayjay felt the orphids on his body registering major hitcounts-he was live on Founders. And maybe Jil was checking out his physique too. He tingled at the thought.

"I'd love to talk to you about the Hibrane," said Jayjay, his pulse pounding in his ears. "I hear you've been there. I'm a budding physicist. We should get together alone sometime." He glanced over at the others, wondering if they were noticing him flirting with Jil. It would be good for Thuy to realize that Jayjay had other options.