Saul nodded. “I guess I am lost, at that. I thought I was on M Level near Shaft Five, but.”

The other man laughed, showing open gaps amid rotting teeth. He leaped forward and landed closer to Saul, the movement exposing a large tattoo on his chest. It was a symbol Saul recognized, the Sigil of Simon Percell.

“What a savor, Hum? Free labor bum!” The man ginned, fingering the rope.

A second blue face emerged from the overhead shaft and grinned. “Green hydro labor, for a favor.”

Saul shook his head and smiled. Their glassy-eyed stress made him nervous. “I’m sorry, I’m fresh out of the slots, so I’m not up on the dialect yet.”

“Clack!” The first Percell rolled his eyes. “A virgin wool! Well, baby Earth blue, I remember how to talk land cant. Are you one of Simon’s diamonds? Or normal ape crape?”

Saul raised his hand, smiling ruefully. “Guilty as charged. I’m what I suppose you’d call an Ortho. Is that a problem? Have I wandered into territory that’s exclusively Perc.”

The fellow’s hands moved in a blur. A loop of rope snaked out abruptly over Saul’s shoulders and was pulled taut. “Hey!”

Another followed the first. Saul tugged back, but managed only to tighten the nooses. “I said I was just thawed! Just point me back toward Central and I won’t bother you.”

This time both men laughed. “It’s simple, pimple,” the first Percell began. Then the second broke in.

“Oh, give the ape a break, Stew. He lacks track.” There was a trace of sympathy in the second man’s eyes. Just a trace. He faced Saul.

“There’s rules fellow. Capture without harm or blood spilled isn’t vendetta, it’s fair coup. You work for us in Hydro for ten megaseconds—that’s about four months, old style—with maybe time off for good behavior.”

The first Percell laughed again, this time a high-pitched set of yelps that cut off in a fit of coughing. He spat a pink-stained gobbet onto the wall.

“That cough sounds pretty bad,” Saul said. How long have you been bringing up bloody phlegm?”

The blue-faced man shook his head angrily. None o’ your business! Come on an ’limp, chimp,” Stew said, and jerked Saul’s tether hard.

Until that moment Saul had felt almost detached, as if this were more comic than serious. But now he felt a part of himself getting very, very mad.

I should have just played along until I learned more, he thought. But the last time he had been jerked at the end of a rope like this it had been on a miserable day in Jerusalem, when he had been passed, handcuffed, from one newly installed theocracy bureaucrat to another—half of them misquoting Leviticus to his face and the rest reading apparently randomly chosen passages from Revelations and the Koran. It had been a blessed relief when the ferchochteh finally sentenced him to six months cutting timber on a labor gang, and then expelled him forever from his native land.

“I think not, yoksh,” he said evenly as the blue-faced man jugged again. Getting a grip on the wall growth with his toes and one hand, Saul yanked back hard with the other.

Maybe it was the unexpectedness—Saul’s eyelids were still slot-blue, after all—but the man on the ceiling yelped and tumbled from his high perch, past the floor, and on down into the shaft below. His cry diminished as he bounced softly against the walls, struggling for a hold as he fell. Saul transferred his grip to the other rope.

“Stew” wasn’t going to be surprised as easily. He grinned and pulled taut his own tether. Most of the fancy, rhythmic dialect was gone when he spoke.

“Poor Earth baby. Just unslotted and weak as an Ortho toddler. What do you know about tunnel fighting?”

“Don’t try to teach your grandma to suck eggs,” Saul told him, and kicked off from his anchoring point on the wall. He landed beside the surprised Percell, where the rope fell slack, and immediately started shrugging out of the loosened bonds.

“It sounds to me like you’ve got a tuberculinlike infection,” he said mildly, distracting his tormentor for a moment with his driest bedside manner. “Also, how long have you had that parech skin infection? Don’t the microwave treatments help anymore?”

Stew’s blank amazement lasted only a few seconds. “I—” He blinked, howled, and launched himself at Saul.

Saul’s knees carne up just in time, knocking the Percell’s toeclaws past him. A sharp pain lanced his left leg before he was able to lock into an embrace too close for the deadly implements to be used. Their hands met and gripped each other, fingers interlaced. Stew dug his toe-claws into the wall growth and started pressing Saul back.

Wind whistled between their teeth. The detached part of Saul clinically noted the particularly foul stench of the other man’s breath. It was automatically compiled with a list of his other symptoms to be used later—if there was a later—in studying the disease.

You’re too old for this, he told himself as they grunted, face to face. And it’s much too soon out of the slots!

Thinking that, he was nearly as surprised as the wiry Percell when the straining war of muscles began to break, away from him. His opponent’s arms began quivering, giving way. Saul pressed his advantage.

“I…get…it…” Saul gasped s he wrenched the fellow’s arms back, making him cry out. “You guys…must be what they…call Ubers.” He got the man turned around, arms twisted painfully behind him.

“Hoosh, some superman,” Saul commented. With a grunt he tossed his opponent down into the shaft, just in time to strike his returning partner as the other Percell’s head came over the top. Together they tumbled shouting, down the shaft again. Saul drifted against a wall and held on with one hand until the gentle gravity brought him to the floor again. His heart pounded and he saw spots. His scratched leg hurt like hell.

“Assholes,” he whispered, preferring the explicit Anglo-Saxonisms of his youth, in this case, over the more subtle Yiddish he had learned only later in life. He gathered his breath and braced himself as sounds told of their return.

This time they were more careful. The two sprang to opposite sides of the hall to face him, both clearly angry. In their hands shone bright metal knives.

So much for capture by the rules, Saul thought. Maybe I should have accepted ten megaseconds in Hydro after all.

And yet, somehow, he didn’t regret a thing. “Come on, twerps,” he said, waving them forward. They started to comply.

“Stop this!”

He and the Percells looked up as one. A third blue-tinted head emerged from the overhead shaft and Saul had to groan. Even on an adrenaline high, he wasn’t idiot enough to think he could take on three of the bastards.

But the newcomer didn’t direct his ire at Saul. He turned to the other Ubers.

“Why did you cut this man?” he shouted in a clear tone of command. To Saul the voice seemed familiar… a once-thick accent softened and covered over by years of dialect.

The first two Ubers looked away. “Clape. The mape fought us, Sergie—”

“Dap the crap!” The leader drifted down one green-lined wall. Truncated legs that were little more than nubs tipped with hooks turned him quickly as he pointed at Saul. “Do not you know who this is?”

They only blinked, and then stared blankly as the legless leader turned to face Saul for the first time, and bowed in an ornate gesture of respect. “I greet you, uncle of the new race.”

The shock of Slavic hair was nearly gone now, and the space-tanned skin had been converted into one big tattoo. But years were nothing to recognition. Saul laughed out loud.

“Oh. Hi, Otis. It’s good to see you, too. What have you been doing with yourself…besides turning blue, I mean?”

Inside, though, his heart still raced as he began to realize what a close call he’d had. Saul could only think, Oy.