Mira smiled. "You don't look worn out to me."

"I should get a job, I suppose." He gazed down at the five dead Blank People again. "But doing what? Being what? I can't work in some office. And labor work. ha. Most of the factories in this city are boarded up, and the jobs they do have are filled with robots and clones. Even these fucks here had a job."

Mira had no answers for him. Being a mutant in one of the most impoverished slums in Punktown, her own dreams had always been so limited that she had no imagination for them.

He looked up at her suddenly. "So, you have this gift. You heard Brat die; you saw it in your mind. Can you control it?"

"A little, but mostly it's random. I catch bits of other people's thoughts. They sort of come through the static, if you know what I mean. And sometimes people even hear my thoughts, so I guess I must be transmitting and not just receiving."

"Can you read my mind right now?"

She grinned shyly. "No."

He smiled back. "Good," he said, with teasing ambiguity. In fact, even he didn't know what he meant by it. Was he flirting with her? A dwarf from Tin Town? He knew some men sought out the city's mutant brothels for the express purpose of experiencing things like that. Maybe small people appealed to their inner pedophile. Personally, Javier had never been into mutants, amputees, and the like. He had slept with women who'd undergone some wild body modification, however, and he also found some of the alien races attractive: he'd dated a Choom, and he'd once had a crush on an exotic Kalian girl, though with her strict culture she hadn't given him the time of day.

Looking shyer than ever, and maybe even a bit wary that he might be mocking her, Mira stumbled back to their earlier subject. "You know how I was saying the Blank People are all linked into one server, most likely? I think I've even picked up on the computer's thoughts a little. Kind of like a gibberish that I can't even put into words. More like listening to bugs making sounds."

"Hold on. You can read machines' minds, too?"

"Well, if that's what I'm hearing, it must be an encephalon mainframe. You know-a computer made out of bio-engineered human brain tissue. So it would be partly organic."

"Ahh. Yeah. Too bad your power isn't stronger, so you could order that thing to shut these Blank People down."

"I wish I was that powerful."

Lost in thought for a moment, Javier placed his foot against one of the Blank People's heads and turned it on its rubbery neck so that he could better make out the number recessed into its forehead. 9-A. He then observed, "I wonder if these things were more than just guards. Maybe they were meant to be servants, too."

"I've thought of that. Especially given the name Steward Gardens."

"Why, what does 'steward' mean?"

"Well, a steward is sort of like a servant. Or a waiter, or a guy on a ship who might take care of the passengers. You know?"

"Nice. Everyone with their own slave slash bodyguard. But the apartments themselves are all pretty small. One bedroom each. Not a good place to raise a family."

"More likely it was geared toward unmarried young professionals. Office drones in cubicles, who wouldn't mind cubicle apartments. But they'd pay big money for them because it's right in the heart of one of the city's best sectors."

"Six apartments to the front of both wings, and six on the sides. What's at the back of the building?"

"Maintenance offices, and the elevators and stairs to the upper floors."

"Ah. But what about the middle in both wings? The apartments line the outer walls, so what's behind the opposite side of the hallways?"

"Come on, I'll show you."

They left 6-B, closed its door behind them, and found themselves in a murky carpeted hallway. Javier followed the miniature woman further down the passage until they came to one of the far-spaced doors on the opposite wall from that in which the apartment doors were set. She opened this, and they stepped into a single large chamber.

Mira's voice echoed somewhat as she explained, "On the ground floor of B-Wing, we have this big empty room that I figure must have been a function hall the occupants could have used for parties, business meetings, whatever. On the floor above us is a tennis court. And on the third floor, a swimming pool, but it's empty."

"Now I can really see why they'd pay big munits to live here. What about A-Wing?"

"On the ground floor, a little cafe, mostly vending machines and a few tables." She saw Javier's mouth open but cut him off. "The vending machines were never stocked. On the second floor is a gym. On the third floor is a little movie theater."

"Nice place. And I can't wait to get the hell out of it." Javier looked about the dark, cavernous function room. "How about the roof? There must be a heliport up there. Have you gone up?"

"Yes. But the Blank People came out of their nooks and started climbing right up the walls. Like I said, they've been killing all the pig-hens they find up there."

"So they stay in their nooks when they're not directly attacking, huh?"

"Yeah. I don't know if they sleep, exactly."

They left the function room and shut its door. Together, they started back toward their camp in 1-B. Walking slowly out of deference to Mira, Javier asked, "You got a gun?"

"No."

"Take this one. I got one of my own." He handed her a pistol, explained, "That was my friend Brat's. I gave it to him for his birthday one time."

Mira examined the mean little pistol as they walked, and smiled as if he had given her a flower plucked from a field they wandered through. "Thanks." She tucked it in the waistband of her white shorts.

With her hands free again, she reached up to rub her temples in circles with her fingertips. Seeing this, Javier frowned. "What? Headache?"

"Yeah. I get bad ones a lot."

"Related to your gift?"

"I guess so."

"My mom used to get bad headaches, so she had me rub her feet." "Her feet?"

"I guess she thought it was like acupuncture, where one part of your body is connected to another."

"I think that's just a story you tell girls so they'll let you rub their feet. It's so innocent. 'I did this for my mom, baby, really.'"

He chuckled. "Yeah, maybe you got me on that."

Mira glanced up at him, embarrassed. "I mean, not to say that anyone would want to rub my feet."

"What? Why wouldn't they?"

"Well, they're so small."

"Come on. So who likes girls with big feet?"

By now they had returned to 1-B-and in the middle of a heated argument. At first Javier expected it to be between the Snarlers and the Terata, until he saw the fury twisting the faces of Nhu and Mott. Nhu was holding her forearm as if she'd been injured. The Choom whirled toward his leader and said, "She was trying to use her wrist comp to call the forcers down here, man!"

Javier glared at the Vietnamese girl. "I thought I told you-"

"How long should we stay in here, Javier? The muties have been here eleven days! Maybe they got no place better to go, but I have a family waiting for me! This is crazy-all we have to do is make a call! We're right in the middle of Beaumonde, here! Cars are driving right past us! We aren't stuck on some other planet."

"We can't get the forcers involved in this. We'll be thrown in prison."

"I'd rather be there than here."

"Oh, really? I don't think so. We can get out of here, and we will. Where's your comp?"

Mott held it up. "I got it."

"You almost broke my arm, you dung-dong!" Nhu screeched at him.

"Blast you."

"All right, everyone give Patryk your hand phones, comps, whatever."

"Why Patryk again?" Nhu sulked.

"Because he's one of the only people I can trust anymore, looks like. Besides, he's got a backpack."