Jube plucked at a tusk thoughtfully. "Yeah. What's to stop ime from hiring him directly?"

"Nothing," Chrysalis said. A tall waiter with impressive ivory horns entered, carrying an amaretto and a Singapore sling on an antique silver tray. When he departed, she continued. "If you'd rather have him getting curious about you than about me, that is."

That gave him pause. "Perhaps it would be better if I stayed in the background."

"My thought exactly," Chrysalis said, sipping her amaretto. "Jay won't even know you're the client."

Jube glanced out the window. It was a dark, cloudless night. He could see the stars, and somewhere out there he knew the Mother still waited. He needed help, and cast caution aside. "Do you know a good thief?" he asked her bluntly.

That surprised her. "I might," she said.

"I need," he began awkwardly, "uh, parts. Scientific instruments, and, uh, electronics, microchips, things like that. I could write you a list. It involves breaking into some corporate labs, maybe some federal installations."

"I stay clear of anything that illegal," Chrysalis said. "What do you need with electronics?"

"Building me a ham radio set," Jube said. "Would you do it to save the world?" She didn't answer. "Would you do it for six perfectly matched emeralds the size of pigeon's eggs?"

Chrysalis smiled slowly, and proposed a toast. "To a long, and profitable, association."

She could almost be a Master Trader, Jube thought with a certain admiration. Grinning tuskily, he raised the Singapore sling, and brought the straw to his mouth.

It had been easy. While Flush and Sweat pretended to have a fight on the pavement in front of the moving van, Ricky and Loco had simply walked up to the van, liberated a pair of boxes apiece, and walked off into the street. The tall geezer who was moving hadn't even noticed that some boxes were missing. Ricky patted himself on the back for the idea.

They didn't get opportunities like this very often anymore. Nat turf was getting smaller. Joker gangs like the Demon Princes were swallowing more territory. How the hell could you fight something that looked like squid?

Ricky Santillanes dug into his jeans, produced his keys, and let himself into the clubhouse. Flush went to the icebox for some beers and the rest put the boxes on the battered sofa and opened them.

"Wow. A VCR."

"What kinda tapes?"

"Japanese monster movies, looks like. And something here called

"Hey! Set it up, man!"

Beers popped open. "Loco! A computer."

"That's not a computer. That's a graphic equalizer."

"Fuck it ain't. I seen a computer before. In school before I quit.

"

Ricky looked at it. "Wang don't make no stereo components, bro."

"Fuck you know."

Sweat held up a ROM burner. "What the hell is this, man?"

"Expensive, I bet."

"How we gonna fence it if we don't know how much to ask?"

"Hey! I got the tape player set up!"

Sweat held up a featureless black sphere. "What's this, man?"

"Bowling ball."

"Fuck it is. Too light." Ricky snatched it. "Hey. That blond chick's hot."

"What's she doing? Screwing the camera? Where's the guy?"

"I seen her somewhere."

"Where's the guy, man? This is weird. That's like a closeup of her ear."

Ricky watched while he juggled the black orb. It was warm to the touch.

"Hey! The chick's like flying or something!"

"Bullshit. "

"No. Look. The background's moving."

The blond woman seemed to be airborne, speeding around the room backward while engaged in vaguely-perceived sex acts. It was as if her invisible partner could fly. "This is deeply weird."

Loco looked at the black sphere. "Gimme that," he said. "Watch the damn movie, man."

"Bullshit. Just give it to me." He reached for it. "Fuck off, asshole!"

Weird lights played over Ricky's hands. Something dark reached for Loco, and suddenly Loco wasn't there.

Ricky stood in shocked silence while the others stood and shouted. It was as if there was something brushing against his mind.

The black sphere was talking to him. It seemed lost, and somehow broken.

It could make things disappear. Ricky thought about the Demon Princes and about what you could do about someone who looked like a squid. A smile began to spread across his face.

"Hey, guys," he said. "I think I- got an idea."

By George R.R. Martin

The day arrived at last, as he had known it would. It was a Saturday, cold and gray, with a brisk wind blowing off the Kill. Mister Coffee had a pot ready when he woke at half past ten; on weekends Tom liked to sleep in. He laced his first cup liberally with milk and sugar, and took it into his living room.

Old mail was strewn across his coffee table: a stack of bills, supermarket flyers announcing long-departed sales, a postcard mailed by his'sister when she'd gone to England the summer before, a long brown envelope that said Mr. Thomas Tudbury might already have won three million dollars, and lots of other junk that he needed to deal with real soon now. Underneath it all was the invitation.

He sipped his coffee and stared at the mail. How many months had it been sitting there? Three? Four? Too late to do anything about it now. Even an RSVP would be woefully inappropriate at this date. He remembered the way The Graduate had ended, and savored the fantasy. But he was no Dustin Hoffman.

Like a man picking at an old scab, Tom rummaged through the mail until he found that small square envelope once again. The card within was crisp and white.

Mr. amp; Mrs. Stanley Casko request the honor of your presence at the wedding of their daughter, Barbara, to Mr. Stephen Bruder, of Weehawken. St. Henry's Church 2:00 p.m., March 8

Reception to follow at the Top Hat Lounge

Tom fingered the embossed paper for a long time, then carefully set it back on the coffee table, dumped the junk mail into the wicker trash basket by the end of his couch, and went to stare out the window.

Across First Street, piles of black snow were heaped along the footpaths of the narrow little waterfront park. A freighter flying the Norwegian flag was making its way down the Kill van Kull toward the Bayonne Bridge and Port Newark, pushed along by a squat blue tugboat. Tom stood by his living-room window, one hand on the sill, the other shoved deep in his pocket, watching the kids in the park, watching the freighter's stately progress, watching the cold green water of the Kill and the wharves and hills of Staten island beyond.

A long long time ago, his family had lived in the federal housing projects down at the end of First Street, and their living-room window had looked out over the park and the Kill.

Sometimes at night when his parents were asleep, he would get up and make himself a chocolate milk and stare out the window at the lights of Staten Island, which seemed so impossibly far away and full of promise. What did he know? He was a project kid who'd never left Bayonne.

The big ships passed even in the night, and in the night you couldn't see the rust streaks on their sides or the oil they vented into the water; in the night the ships were magic, bound for high adventure and romance, for fabled cities where the streets shone dark with danger. In real live, even Jersey City was the land unknown as far as he was concerned, but in his dreams he knew the moors of Scotland, the alleys of Shanghai, the dust of Marrakesh. By the time he turned ten, Tom had learned to recognize the flags of more than thirty different nations.