The air sparked around him…as though he had not quite decided to teleport himself…and in fact he had not been able to make the decision…and the air twinkled with infinitesimal scintillae…holes made in the fabric of normal space through which the displaced air was drawn, permitting the thief to teleport…the sparkling points of light actually the deaths of muons as they were sucked through into that not-space…and still he could not decide.

Then he vanished and reappeared beside the Catman.

“Can I help you?”

The Catman looked away quickly. But the thief saw the tears that had run down the Catman's black cheeks. “No, thank you, I'll be all right. I'm almost finished here.” He held a paw.

The thief drew in a deep breath, “Will you be home for dinner tonight?”

The Catman nodded. “Tell your mother I'll be along in a little while.”

The thief went away from there, in twenty level leaps, quickly, trying not to see a black hand holding an even blacker paw.

They sit silently at the dinner table. Neil Leipzig cannot look at his father. He sits cross-legged on the thin pneumatic cushion, the low teak table before him; the EstouDade de Boeuf on his plate vanishes and reappears. It is wallaby, smothered in wine sauce and “cellar vegetables” from sub-level sixteen-North. It continues to appear and disappear.

“Stop playing with your food,” Neil Leipzig's mother says, sharply.

“Leave me alone; I'm not hungry,” he says.

They sit silently. His father addresses his food, and eats quickly but neatly.

“How was your shiftday?” Neil Leipzig's mother says.

Neither of the men look up. She repeats the question, adding, “Lew.” His father looks up, nods abstractedly, does not answer, returns to his plate.

“Why is it impossible to get a civil word out of you in the evening,” she says. There is an emerging tone in her voice, a tone of whitewater rapids just beyond the bend. “I ask: why is it impossible for you to speak to your family?”

Keep eating, don't let her do it to you again, Neil Leipzig thinks. He moves the cubes of soybean curd around in the sauce madere until they are all on the right side of the plate. Keep silent, tough up, he thinks.

“Lewis!”

His father looks up. “I think I'll go downstairs and take a nap, after dinner.” His eyes seem very strange; there is a film over them; something gelatinous; as though he is looking out from behind a thick, semi-opaque membrane; neither Neil nor his mother can read the father's thoughts from those eyes.

She shakes her head and snorts softly, as though she is infinitely weary of dealing with those who persist in their arrogance and stupidity; there was none of that in what the father had said. Let him alone, can't you? Neil Leipzig thinks.

“We're out of deeps,” the mother says.

“I won't need them,” the father says.

“You know you can't sleep without a deep, don't try and tell me you can. We're out, someone will have to order more.”

Neil Leipzig stands up. “I'll order them; finish your dinner.”

He goes into the main room and punches out the order on the board. He codes it to his mother's personal account. Let her pay, he thinks. The confirmation tones sound, and he returns to the table. From the delivery chute comes the sound of the spansules arriving. He stands there staring down at his parents, at the top of his father's head, black and hairless, faintly mottled; at his mother's face, pale and pink, heavily freckled from the treatment machine she persists in using though the phymech advises her it is having a deleterious effect on her skin: she wants a tan for her own reasons but is too fair and redheaded for it to take, and she merely freckles. She has had plasticwork done on her eyes, they slant in a cartoon imitation of the lovely Oriental curve.

He is brown.

“I have to go out for a while.”

His father looks up. Their eyes meet.

“No. Nothing like that,” he lies. His father looks away.

His mother catches the exchange. “Is there something new between you two?”

Neil turns away. She follows him with her eyes as he starts for the tunnel to his own apartments. “Neil! What is all this? Your father acts like a burnout, you won't eat, I've had just about enough of this! Why do you two continue to torment me, haven't I had enough heartache from the both of you? Now you come back here, right here, right now, I want us to have this out.” He stops.

He turns around. His expression is a disguise.

“Mother, do us both a favor,” he says, quite clearly, “kindly shut your mouth and leave me alone.” He goes into the tunnel, is reduced to a beam of light, is fired through the tunnel to his apartments seven miles away across the arcology called London, is retranslated, vanishes.

His mother turns to her husband. Alone now, freed of even the minor restraints imposed on her by the presence of her son, she assumes a familiar emotional configuration. “Lewis.”

He wants to go lie down. He wants that very much.

“I want to know! “

He shakes his head gently. He merely wants to be left alone. There is very little of the Catman now; there is almost too much of Lewis Leipzig. “Please, Karin…it was a miserable shiftday.”

She slips her blouse down off one perfect breast. The fine powder-white lines of the plasticwork radiate out from the meaty nipple, sweep down and around and disappear under the lunar curve. He watches, the film over his eyes growing darker, more opaque. “Don't,” he says.

She touches a blue-enameled fingernail to the nipple, indenting it slightly. “There'll be bed tonight, Lewis.”

He starts to rise.

“There'll be bed, and sex, and other things if you don't tell me, Lewis.”

He slumps back into his round-shouldered dining position. He can hear the whine of generators far back in his memory. And the odor of dead years. And oil slicks across stainless steel. And the rough sensuality of burlap.

“He was out tonight. Robbery on the ninetieth level. He got away with three tubes of the Antarean soul-radiant.”

She covers her breast, having won her battle with nasty weaponry, rotted memories. “And you couldn't stop him.”

“No. I couldn't stop him.”

“And what else?”

“I lost the panther.”

Her expression is a combination of amazement and disgust. “He destroyed it?” Her husband nods; he cannot look at her. “And it'll be charged against your account.” He does not nod; she knows the answer.

“That's it for the promotion, and that's it for the permutations. Oh, God, you're such a burnout…I can't stand you!”

“I'm going to lie down.”

“You just sit there. Now listen to me, damn you, Lewis Leipzig. Listen! I will not go another year without being rejuvenated. You'll get that promotion and you'll get it bringing him in. Or I'll make you wish I'd never filed for you.” He looks at her sharply. She knows what he's thinking, knows the reply; but he doesn't say it; he never does.

He gets up and walks toward the dropshaft in the main room. Her voice stops him. “You'll make up your mind, Lewis.”

He turns on her. The film is gone from his eyes. “It's our son, Karin. Our son!”

“He's a thief,” she says. The edge in her voice is a special viciousness. “A thief in a time when theft is unnecessary. We have everything. Almost everything. You know what he does with what he steals. You know what he's become. That's no son of mine. Yours, if you want that kind of filth around you, but no son of mine. God knows I have little enough to live for, and I'm not going to allow your spinelessness to take that from me. I want my permutation. You’ll do it, Lewis, or so help me God-”

He turns away again. Hiding his face from her, he says, “I'm only permitted to stalk him during regulation hours, you know that.”

“Break the regs.”