“Marîd!” the woman screamed. “Please!” Nothing happened. The giant’s fist began to close around her.

The woman tried to reach up and unplug the moddy link, but her arms were frozen. She wouldn’t escape that easily. The woman shrieked as she realized she couldn’t even jack out.

The disfigured giant lifted her off the ground and drew her close to his single eye. His horrid grin spread and he laughed at her terror. His stinking breath sickened the woman. She struggled again to lift her hands, to pull the moddy link free. Her arms were held fast. She screamed and screamed, and then at last she fainted.

My eyes were bleary for a moment, and I could hear Chiri panting for breath beside me. I didn’t think she’d be so upset. After all, it was only a Transpex game, and it wasn’t the first time she’d ever played. She knew what to expect.

“You’re a sick motherfucker, Marîd,” she said at last.

“Listen, Chiri, I was just — “

She waved a hand at me. “I know, I know. You won the game and the bet. I’m still just a little shook, that’s all. I’ll have your money for you tonight.”

“Forget the money, Chiri, I — “

I shouldn’t have said that. “Hey, you son of a bitch, when I lose a bet I pay up. You’re gonna take the money or I’m gonna cram it down your throat. But, God, you’ve got some kind of twisted imagination.”

“That last part,” said Courane, “where she couldn’t raise her hands to pop the moddy link, that was real cold.” He said it approvingly.

“Hell of a sadistic thing to do,” said Chiri, shivering. “Last time I ever touch a Transpex with you.”

“A few extra points, that’s all, Chiri. I didn’t know what my score was. I might have needed a couple more points.”

“You finished with 941,” said Shaknahyi. He was looking at me oddly, as if he were impressed by my score and repelled at the same time. “We got to go.” He stood up and tossed down the last slug of his soft drink.

I stood up, too. “You all right now, Chiri?” I put my hand on her shoulder.

“I’m fine. I’m still shaking off the game. It was like a nightmare.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I got to get back to the club so Indihar can go home.”

“Give you a ride?” asked Shaknahyi.

“Thanks,” said Chiri, “but I got my own transportation.”

“See you later then,” I said.

“Kwa heri, you bastard.” At least she was smiling when she called me that. I thought maybe things were okay between us again. I was real glad about that.

Outside, Shaknahyi shook his head and grinned. “She was right, you know. That was a hell of a sadistic thing. Like unnecessary torture. You are a sick son of a bitch.”

Maybe, I thought as we headed back to the station house. But if ever I decided that I no longer liked my true personality, there was an almost unlimited supply of artificial ones I could chip in.

I leaned back in my seat and stared out the window. I’d managed to heal the bad feelings between Chiri and me, and I was getting a handle on this cop business. All that remained was Angel Monroe, and a solution to that problem would occur to me soon. I was sure that Laila had a Perfect Mother moddy in her shop. Of course, my mom’s skull wasn’t amped like mine, but I could take care of that for her, even if I had to wire her brain myself with a jackknife and a coat hanger.

See? Life is hard, all right, so you’ve got to take help wherever you can find it. I thought about that as I scratched my scalp around my corymbic implant. As Shaknahyi swung the patrol car into the garage, I thought, what’s the point of sexy new technology if you can’t find some way to pervert it?

One of George’s best stories, it was one of a number that he sold to Playboy magazine over the years. The version printed here, from his own file copy of the story, differs slightly from the way it originally appeared in Playboy, and is his preferred version.

In a way the whole story is a logical extrapolation of Georges theory about the relationship of technology and pornography: If sex moddies do exist, there has to be someone who makes the best — and what does the use of sex moddies do and mean to the consumer, the producer, and the artist. And at the back of all the technology there’s still someone, some single human being, whom everyone in the world now fantasizes about.

From start to finish of the story, Honey Pilar remains as opaque as the image in the moddy. look at me, touch me, have sex with me, BE ME WHILE I’M HAVING SEX…marry me…But you still don’t know one single solitary thing about me.

A capsule version of how women appear to men?

And the beauty of the story is that by its end, we know that Honey Pilar is more than a match for any of the men who think they know who she is and what she’s about. Did she get rid of Husband #4 because of the quarrel, or because after five years’ trial she decided his control of her career is what’s causing her sales to decline? Is it Kit (as in, “put together from a — “) who’s having the slow, slow burn, or is it Honey, the real woman observing from behind that sweet and stupid facade?

George both loved women and liked them, and was, I think, fascinated by them: Honey is a marvelous creation.

— Barbara Hambly

ALL RIGHT, THIS IS THE WAY I PICTURE IT: WE’RE IN a busy midtown brass and fern bar, okay? Maybe at a table on the sidewalk, under an umbrella says Cinzano on it, we’ll see. Two women poking at salads, glasses of white wine. They’re dressed very nice, expensive but not flashy, they pay attention to details, they accessorize, you know what I mean? Maybe a bag or something in the shot with a very exclusive name on it, sets these women up as fashion-conscious, upscale, the best taste in everything. One’s older, see, she’s the younger woman’s mother, though there’s no real noticeable age difference. They could be sisters. Make ‘em both blondes. The older one’s got kind of a suit on, she’s the dynamic woman-on-the-go. The daughter sort of mirrors that, a subtle thing, she’s got a nice blouse or shirt on with a jacket that says she’s shopping the right stores and she’s never more than fifteen minutes out of style. Whatever these women talk about, the people at home are gonna know they could make their own croissants from scratch if they felt like it, and they don’t live in no trailer park, either. This is like ‘Beauty Hints of the Idle Rich’ or something. The older woman smiles and says something like, ‘I’m glad you enjoyed the villa. I knew you and Ramon would find it pleasant.’

“So the girl is toying with her radicchio, see, and she puts her fork down and goes, ‘Mother, may I ask you a personal question?’

“Mom says, ‘Of course, darling.’

“Daughter looks down at her plate, she’s just a little bit embarrassed. That’s good, that makes her human. Audience will relate to that. She looks back up and goes, ‘Mother, have you ever used — ‘pause for effect’ — modular marital aids?’

“Big smile from the understanding old bitch. Maybe she, you know, reaches out and pats the kid’s hand. Like: There, there. She says, ‘Let me tell you a secret, dear. Your father and I have the biggest collection of sex moddies in the diocese.’ She laughs. The daughter laughs. Then Mom reaches into her bag, see, and what do you think she takes out? Take a guess.”

Two account executives have flown all the way from America to talk with Honey Pilar, who everyone agrees is the most desirable woman in the world. Even account executives want her, though their motives are mixed, and that’s why these two anxious men have come from New York to Honey’s walled estate in the south of France. She is sitting at a long table made of polished limba, an exotic hardwood from the Congo Basin that not even the architectural magazines know about yet. Beside her is her husband, Kit, who likes to think of himself as her manager. One of the admen is speaking; his throat is very dry because he is desperate that Honey Pilar likes his proposal, yet he is too self-conscious to sip from the fluted glass of Perrier-Jouet in front of him. He glances quickly at his associate, but it is easy to see that he can expect no help from that quarter.