Well, the day was pretty shot by then, but we still had time for a tour of the Slikslak itself, to get acquainted with the place we were gonna be demolishin'.

Everyone was kinda disappointed when we arrived at the old Superconductin' Supercollider, which had had such a checkered, on-again, off-again history. Wasn't much of the SCSC aboveground. It was all buried beneath the prairie, a ring of deep-cooled magnets and beam-bouncers and particle-chambers some fifty miles in diameter, all contaminated by decades of experimentation in a nice mild way that promised low rems. (I understand the lunar facility that replaced the Slikslak is twice as big, and cost half as much to build, what with the free vacuum and new superwire.)

When we got down below, though, everyone's enthusiasm picked up. This job was gonna be easy-hardly any exotics aside from liquid hydrogen-and the sheer size of the place meant it would take practically forever. What a sugartit assignment!

Back at the motel, with dusk comin' down like silk sheets in a Paris helmsley, we found that DDI had laid on a humongous Tex-Mex barbecue for our first night. As I've said a hundred times-and not just when Stack was around to overhear-they are swell employers with a lot of class. Smellin' the beefaloes and leanpigs turnin' on their spits, holding a cold cheer-beer in my hand, watchin' the stars poppin' out one by one like random pixels on God's antique monochrome display, listenin' to the joyful chatter of my

fellow gips, contemplatin' the easy job ahead of me, I was as near to heaven as I have ever been on this mostly sad ol' earth.

And that peaceful feelin', so pure and unnatural, I reckon now, is what should have alerted me to my comin' troubles.

It was the first weekend after we had started the Slikslak job, and we gips were ready to party. Several days of bone-breakin' labor, with nothin' to do after hours except raster whatever gaudy gore'n'garters plasma-com the flatscreen was offerin' or play a hand of flashcards or metabolize some samogon at the dingy Waxahachie roadhouse known as Mustang Sally's (the lady owner wore a palomino's tail), had left us achin' for some release.

So a bunch of us-me, Geraldine, Tam, Tino, Spud, Geneva, IgE, even Benzene Bill and some others-signed out a van and made the trip into Dallas, lookin' for some Big Fun.

I was drivin' and all my actions felt effortless. We had all had a thorough tonin'-up performed on us by the company cell-scrubber, so all my workweek aches and pains were gone. My skin was as tingly as that of a playpet from Hedonics Plus. Beyond the ultrapure single-crystal windshield, the speedy nighttime scenery looked particularly hi-rez, with all the shadows dithered to fractal depths. I was confident tonight would rack up some megadigits on the Fun Readouts.

Once in Dallas, we headed straight for Deep Ellum, the prime pleasure district of the city. Parking the van and setting its defenses, we hit the crowded sidewalks, walkin' with our

kickass gipsy style, guys as if we had a barrel between our legs, gals like they were slidin' along on a greased pole right at crotch height.

I tell you, it made me proud as the ten-year-old who knocked up the neighborhood widow to be stridin' through the city with my fellow gips, confident in our solidarity and fully aware of our so-ci-et-al importance.

Deep Ellum was thronged with folks of every stripe and pedigree enjoyin' the false halogen day. There were splices runnin' errands for their owners. There were preteeny peptide-poppers four or five cohorts down the genetic line from my own, streamin' free 'n' wild with the members of their sets and posses, sportin' their fancy Action Potential clothes. There were gerrys and gullas. There were NU cops carryin' flashlights and shockers to keep the peace amongst the various factions, not to mention the local dirty-harrys. All in all, it was a highly stochastic and organic scene.

Well, we began hittin' the bars around eight, exposin' our receptors to various bands rangin' across the noise spectrum, from multipolar music to old-fashioned country-western picked out on a lone synthesizer, and meanwhile not neglectin' to ingest all manner of delightful deliriants and insidious intoxicants.

Around midnight I seemed to come back to myself as if my consciousness was a balloon on a tether light-years-long, which I had to oh-so-slowly reel in.

"Where are we?" I said to Tino.

"In Parts Unknown."

I gathered that was the name of the bar where we sat. It was a smoky, noisy, jam-packed troglo kind of place. On its raw stone walls hung neo-neon signs that said stuff like REDRAW YOUR MAP2 and WHAT'S YOUR AMPERAGE? The bartender was a simian splice which hung by its tail from an aerial rail and mixed drinks with four human hands.

All of a sudden, like storm waters through an arroyo, or the opening of petcocks on the feedline of a breeder-tank, I remembered my urges of a few days ago, to bury my face in some down-home Texas target. In an instant I was hornier'n a kid's pet unicorn. I scoped out the dance floor, spottin' Geraldine shakin' her skinny little butt with some local dude. Then my eyes passed over her to alight on my dream girl.

She stood a good six feet tall, thanks to her hi-heels. Five-inch ivory spikes that grew out of the calcaneum of her tarsus bones, they were tipped with gold caps. The rest of her feet were bare, with special hi-impact soles that I could see when she kicked toward the ceiling. She wore some Wind Skin neoprene tights, but nothin' above the waist. Her tits were enormous, and thanks to the implanted cantilever lifts, projected out as firm and confident as a CEO's handshake. She had had the refractive index of her aureoles altered so that they were mirrors. On her cheeks were little patches of iridescent fish-scales. I was willin' to bet a week's eft that her tongue was cat-raspy. In short, she was just what the cellscrubber ordered.

I pranced out onto the dance floor, cocky as a dirty-harry carrying heavy metal and a journal full of wires.

Her partner was a little south-of-the-border dude that I pegged right from the start as a Brazilian. The Brazzes was heavy into Texas lately, ever since The Doctor's Plot to assassinate the PM had caused such chaos in the upper echelons of the NU.

I tapped the Brazz on the shoulder. "Hey, meninio, how's about lettin' me cut in?"

The little sludgehead just ignored me. His sleeve, though, seemed to like the idea. She stropped her lower lip with her tongue, and I swore I could hear the sandpaper sound of it above the music. The Brazz's cockiness and his sleeve's allure got me so damn inflamed that I did something rash. I spun the Brazz around and coldcocked him with a right to the jaw. Then I grabbed his sleeve and tugged her toward the door. She didn't resist for more'n a milli.

Outside in some shadows I backed her up against a wall and stuck my tongue halfway down her throat. Then I took a handful of her crotch.

I was like to die when I encountered a basket full of male equipment. I disengaged quickly from the kiss, but was too shocked to withdraw my hand.

"What's the matter, honey?" she said. "Looking for this?"

I felt everything squirm and writhe beneath my palm like a hooked crawfish, resultin' in a slow and stealthy envagination and labiation.

Holy radwaste! I'd picked up a maff!

Last time I was stateside, maffs had hung out in their own clubs, and a feller was mostly safe from accidentally hittin' on one. I guessed things had changed since then.

I backed off and trod on someone's foot.

It was the little Brazz. I fell into an offensive posture, then stopped.

He was holding something out to me. His card. I felt sorta dumb, still makin' deadly-like with my hands, so I relaxed and took it.