Outside, as the splices gathered 'round him, looking nervously at the world that awaited them, Peter removed a letterbomb from his coat.

He threw the capsule at the barn.

Shattering and splattering the wall, the intelligent silicrobe paint formed a departing message from the CLF.

We have a little garden, A garden of our own, And every day we water there The seeds that we have sown.

Dear Host Mother,

The invasion is over, and I'm fine. Safe as a blastula in a bioreactor, in fact, here inside our risk bubble.

Which is more than I can say for the enemy, Mom. We pretty much turned them into sodai gomi in less time than it takes to flip a SQUID.

I'm really sorry I can't raster you face-to-face or virt you in Candyland and see you smile at the good news. I can almost picture you nictitating that way you do when you're happy. But for reasons of security, us zygotes (that's just a friendly term the officers have for noncoms) don't have full access to the metamedium. We've been stripped of all our telltags and poqetpals, most of us for the first time in our lives. I feel plumb naked! We're limited to this retro-jethro Teleport

bonovox line, I guess so no live Si-viruses or GaAs-worms can slip in or out. And in fact, all these sending units have a TL1 AI chip in them that will automatically erase any critical information from the transmission. Like for instance, if I were to try to tell you that we're stationed just north of CENSORED, or that our KIA's amounted to CENSORED, the machine would simply blip that part right out.

Works out just as well as the metamedium, I guess, what with CENSORED time zones between us and all.

Anyway, the important thing is that our mission seems to be a big success. Once again, the IMF has managed to intervene just in time to stop a potential catastrophe.

I'll tell you more in a while. But right now my main proxy, Penguin, is calling me. Seems we have to use the simorg colony to evolve some new expert modules they need by yesterday!

Your loving guest-son, CENSORED

Dear Host Mother,

What a jangle-tangle! The brass-skulls and swellheads stopped by with a crew of noahs from the GEF wanting to evaluate the oceanic/atmospheric contamination produced by this latest Short War, and Penguin and I were kept busy bending molecules during what should have been our downtime. (At least one of the noahs, a Xuly Beth Vollbracht, was nice enough to bring along a dose of recreational tropes to share with us.) Anyhow, they finally finished with us, and since Penguin wanted to go offline for a while, I thought I'd pick up my transmission to you where I left off.

Now, I know you and I have had our disagreements about the IMF's policies. Why, sometimes you actually sounded like a rifkin or greenpeacer! I can remember you saying, ''I never got to vote for the World Bank board." But we all got to vote for the politicians who voted for them, whether we hailed from a big polypax like the NU or the EC, or a little one like our own McMurdo, so we can't really blame anyone else when the IMF does something we don't particularly like. I'm thinking of the mess they made in what used to be Yongbyon-the "Pyongyang Gang Bang" I remember you called it-and the way they handled (or mishandled) those renegade cricks and transgenics hiding out in the Azores. The Atlantic will recover faster from that one than the IMF's reputation will!

But those incidents took place before I joined, which you'll recall was right after the big command shakeup. My own unit was purged of all its officers, and Oberjefe Ozal received a field promotion, which he still holds. I think you'd like Ozal, he's a smart, goodlooking probe-the NYC gals in our pod all call him a "streetbeat gamete," which I guess is some kind of compliment-but he's not conceited. His main philofix is music. He plays his qawwali tabs whenever he has a spare moment-mostly thru earwigs, since no one else really enjoys the holy Slammer wailing.

Anyhow, I can't say I feel any personal responsibility for any of the IMF's previous goo-screwing cockups (pardon the language), and nothing I've taken part in since I signed up has led me to regret my decision.

I've got to cut this short now, since one of my proxies is waiting to use the 'vox unit. I'll be right back.

Your loving guest-son, CENSORED

Dear Host Mother,

Sorry about the delay. My buddy got an incoming 'vox right after he sent his. It was a "Dear Juan," wishing him a nasty hasta luego. Seems his target had joined the antiwar movement since he shipped out and now wants nothing to do with "bloody imperialist murderers" like us. It took some major tropes and a lot of talk to calm him down.

I just can't understand these protestors, Mom. It must be that they don't know what's really going on here. If they did, they'd realize we're just doing what has to be done.

I'm real proud of this operation, my first major action. We made the enemy "cry onco!" faster than ribozymes. I wish

I could tell you all about it, since I understand the meta-medium coverage was somewhat limited. I'll try, and see what the chip lets thru.

The IMF issued its unconditional surrender ultimatum at 2300 hours on the second of this month. By 2400 hours, when the enemy had still not replied, the operation commenced. First in were the smartskin bombers, scramjets mostly under AI control, but a few being gloved by pilots offshore in MHD subs. These planes released burrowers, antipersonnel midges, thermites, core-borers, glass masters, virtual ghosts, and CENSORED. The enemy responded with Raid-Plus, bouncing buckyballs, fractal shrubs, moletraps, CENSORED, and kaleidoscopes, but were mucho out-classed. There was never really any contest.

Hot on the first wave's heels, the APV's loaded with transgenic troops moved in for whatever close fighting might arise. The Fourth Wolverines really distinguished themselves, as did the CENSORED. Once I-Cubed reported that things were pretty much under control, approximately CENSORED of us fifty-oners went in, the only humans involved in the whole shootup.

When the enemy's AI's committed silicide, we knew the latest Short War was history.

Mom, I'll tell you now that what we found once we occupied the enemy's territory-in confirmation of the rumors that prompted the assault-is enough to make your cells metastasize. These guys had developed a whole armory of aerosol-borne neurotropic weapons which they planned to use shortly on their immediate neighbors, and afterwards on

whoever got in their way. Of course this is entirely against the Minsk Conventions, which they are a signatory to, and these gnomic jokers had to be stopped.

I don't imagine the next few days will see much excitement. We're just riding herd on the civilian populace while the experts from the essays, peltsies, beeves, and gembaitches-Textron, Rhone-Daewoo, Toyobo, Ciba-Kobe, EMBRAPA-dismantle the armament autofacs.