"My poohs may be retro-jethro KISS-asses," I said, "but at least they're not black science boryokudans like yours!"

Everyone got silent as cell-death. My reference to the illegal underworld origin of the wealth of Honeysuckle's surface-respectable poohs was ultra loosh and faroosh. But I couldn't just sit there batting off phagocytes and let her run my dads down. I mean, it was all right for me to do it, but not her!

Honeysuckle's cartoon gaze grew as slitted and mean as that of a Secret Service pantherine confronted with a suspicious character feinting at the World Bank Managing Director. I knew I was truly on her shit list now and wondered how wise it had been to sass such a nasty girl.

"Well," she said, her voice dripping lysozymes, "the duck can quack! I suppose you think it's all spidersilk and hormone sodas, having poohs like mine. You don't know what it's like, every night half-expecting the crick-cops or Protein Police or the IMF to bust down the door and boot us all!"

It was hard to feel sorry for Honeysuckle as she sat there on a spongy mass of lymph, flicking her flippers and flaunting her chest, so I didn't even try. "You can have anything you want-"

"What does that have to do with being happy! Suppose you could have anything you wanted? Would you always be happy?"

"Why, sure… "

Honeysuckle assumed a venomous smile. "All right, then. What do you want most? C'mon, tell us, and I'll give it to you. I'll see to it that your wildest dreams come true."

Somehow the grounds of this battle had shifted under me. How we had gotten from the respective merits of our parents to who had the happier life eluded me, and I didn't like the change. Somehow, I found myself on the defensive and was really uneasy.

What could I say, in front of Honeysuckle and all my friends? All I really wanted was a pair of nice unassuming moderate-sized boobs and maybe some basal whychrome genitals for Jinx. But I was too embarrassed to say so. So instead, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

"I'd like, um-a spike!"

Honeysuckle laughed. "That's all? Out of anything you could have, you choose a crummy, soilin' spike?"

Jinx intervened then, and I sent a silent thanks his way.

"What's the matter with a spike? They're really peppy! Plus they're so new, hardly anybody's got one!"

Honeysuckle huffed. "Oh, I suppose you'd like one too?… "

"I wouldn't mind one. But they cost more than a bucket of brains. And besides, you need your pooh's chop to get one planted… "

Now Honeysuckle adopted that I've-swallowed-every-trope-ever-made tone she frequently used, which always got under my skin like a stitchbug.

"Well, I think they're simply as tawdry as sparkleskin, and frankly I'd rather wear chitin! But if you two larvae want spikes, I suppose I'll just have to get them for you."

Before Honeysuckle or Jinx or I could say any more, the tutor-turtle informed us that recess was over, and we had to get back to work.

I couldn't really concentrate on the rest of the lesson. All my bulbs were firing doubletime, trying to imagine what Honeysuckle intended to do for-or to-Jinx and me.

Finally, the tutor-turtle told us to get ready for the phase-change out of virtuality, and the next thing I knew, I was back in my Sack, which was already withdrawing its squelchy threads and tendrils.

I tickled it open and emerged into the classroom.

All the other kids were climbing out of their Sacks too, their familiar faces and forms a welcome sight after so much microdiz nutrasweet. Most of them-all of them except poor old me, in fact-sported various kiddie-moddies: tails, scales, and pointy nails, manes, veins, and extra brains. I was the only one whose poohs wouldn't let her have even the simplest little gill-slit or sixth finger-never mind tits-all because they believed in some weird principle of "somatic integrity."

Honeysuckle was brushing her perfect calico hair and eyeing me from her perch on the corner of a smartdesk with the raptorial look of an execucondo's security bird. I wanted Jinx beside me before she could say anything, but he was still struggling to get out of his sack, last one as usual. I went over to help him.

Jinx's sack was undergoing some bizarro kind of peristaltic reaction, and I had to pet its control ganglia till it calmed down. Jinx always had some kind of trouble with his interface bag, because its parms weren't set up for his peculiarities.

At last, though, the two of us got it open, and Jinx emerged.

There was nothing to Jinx below his abdomen. His body simply ended a few centimeters below his navel. He looked just like he had been sliced in half by some mad magician.

His bottom-or ventral side or whatever you want to call it-was capped with a tough protective Immunologic membrane like sharkskin that was integral with his regular epidermis. This membrane handled all his metabolic wastes, so that Jinx never had to pee or shit.

The way Jinx got around was on his knuckles. His hands and supermyofibril biceps were massive, and his knuckles well calloused. Suspended from these pylons, he could either swing his torso forward, rest on it, then shift both supports, or he could sort of fall forward from left to right hand.

Jinx had been born this way. His poohs were third-generation spacelings whose ancestors hadn't seen much need for deadmeat legs in zero-gee, and so they had bid the chromosartors snip and transcribe until the result was my proxy, Jinx.

His folks-nomenklatura of Asgard-had sent Jinx to Gaia-to our school-for what they insisted was a superior educational experience. (Although, what with tropes and the digiverse being equally accessible and high-quality practically anywhere, I failed to see exactly what benefits they were conferring on him, unless it was the dubious Gaian social life or high-status eft expenditure.)

When I first got friendly with Jinx, I asked him two questions.

"How come you don't ride, um, a prosthocart, maybe like the dolphinboys use?"

"Because I'm not a cripple. I'm completely normal, for a spaceling."

I didn't argue the point, even though only baseline scantlings like me rate the semiderogatory word "normal." Maybe the word meant something different on Asgard. Instead, I asked the second question.

"I imagine your colony cooks new members in some fancy ductwork."

"Yeah. Repligen wombs with i-Stat endometriums and Ares-Serono placentas."

"But how do you-I mean, what do you do when-"

"How do we get wiggly?"

"Well, yeah!"

"It's all virtual. That's the one thing I don't like about home. I keep wishing I had-had legs and a cock! I even dream I'm walking sometimes… "

"It's probably feedback from Gaia's morphic fields, the human subset. You felt it out in space, but it's even stronger here. Like they say, 'Ain't no shield against the field, cuz it dwells in the cells.'"

"I guess."

Now, as I helped Jinx to a "sitting" position, my reverie was brought to a harsh end by Honeysuckle's sashaying, tit-quaking approach. She stopped a meter or so away and addressed me while ignoring Jinx-except to insult him.

"If you're done helping that knucklebuster, I'd like to finish up our little business matter."

Honeysuckle ran a flicker-screen thumbnail across a seam bisecting her bare midriff, opening up a possum-pouch. From within, she deftly filched a flashcard and handed it to me.

I noticed that Honeysuckle's nailscreen was running the Mandelbrot set, and everything suddenly felt as strange as one of the set's remoter precincts.

With nervous fingers I flexed the still-warm card, and its silicrobe message blinked at me.

THE G– GNOME'S CAVE 1040 BUGHOUSE SQUARE (RIDE THE RED ARTERY TO NODE TEN, OR TAKE SLIDEWALK SEVEN)Somatic and gnomic alterations of all types. Deletions, insertions, and inversions. Coleopterics a specialty. Fully bonded and licensed by the BDC.