“Can’t you see the city?”

“You can make out some other towers in this plex. But you can’t see down or any farther. How could you? It’s thick. It’s air. How could you see through air?”

“Where’s your kitchen?”

“Huh?”

“Where you cook food?”

“Cook it?” Gildina led her to a corner by the outside door, which looked like a bank vault’s. There was nothing in the corner she could identify as a refrigerator or a stove. A drawer opened automatically when a button was pressed, to dispense transparent packets Gildina demonstrated for her. She opened one with a hiss of inrushing air that seemed slowly to soak through the mass inside. She was surprised to see it begin steaming.

At Gildina’s invitation she tasted the food on a thin shiny plate. The food was heavily spiced but ultimately tasteless and gummy. “What is it?”

“Vito‑goodies ham dinner.”

“This is supposed to be ham?”

“What’s ham? That’s the name of the flavor.”

“But it doesn’t taste anything like ham.”

“Ham?” Gildina made a face of incomprehension. “Everything comes in packets. It’s made from coal and algae and wood by‑products.”

“You’re vegetarians?”

“What’s that?”

“You eat only vegetables?”

“Who’s a vegables?” Gildina swished out of the corner in annoyance. “You’re only a dud slot, so don’t high‑top me.”

“Things that grow in plants. You know. Like carrots and peas. Beans. Corn.”

Gildina shrugged, waving her hand with its inch‑long mauve‑and‑yellow nails. “I know the richies eat queer things, sort of … raw. Stuff from, you know, live things. They practically eat them alive. I can’t suppose that’s good for you, our stomachs aren’t made of Cybernall. I never had any of that … strange stuff. You trying to tell me you had that richie food? That live stuff?”

“Sure. Poor people couldn’t buy a lot of it, but everybody had it sometimes.”

“We got enough troubles. I got chronic colonic malachosis myself and Cash has ulceric tumors. I can’t imagine how the richies survive. I heard they eat animal tissue even. The idea makes me dizzy. I mean except as a sexy idea. I mean I seen it on the Sense‑all, but it doesn’t float me.”

“Well, where does your food come from?”

Gildina shrugged. “Out in the Roughlands, big corporate factory‑farms. They mine it, you subscribe, and it gets delivered every week.” Gildina took the plate and plasticware from her and put them into a box in the wall, where they promptly disappeared.

“Where did they go?”

“How would I suppose on that?” Gildina looked shocked. “It’s a service. All middle‑flack plexes have platos. You take the clean stuff out and you put the dirty stuff in. Look, I’ll show you.” She opened another sliding door. But nothing happened. She pressed a button on the wall again. “Double stymie. It’s broke again. I hope they get it fixed by the time Cash comes home, that’s all I can say. Oh, well, I’ll get him to take me to the mutual on the floor. Or even upstairs, maybe, if he’s in the spending slot.”

“A restaurant? Like a place everybody eats?”

Gildina nodded. “But if I decide to do that I got to start prepping.”

“What time does he get home?”

“Not for two hours, but it takes that long, for display. The painting is what counts.”

“You mean making up your face?”

“No, leg painting. It costs a heart and a kidney, but if you try to do it yourself, you look like a joke. You have to go to a real artiste. There’s a fem on this floor who’ll do me even at the last minute. I’ll flash her a transie.”

“How come she’ll do you?”

“She owes me … . I know a few things about her. She skipped on a contract. She’s in the crazy slot, she even paints her walls, but she does a good job cheapo with no appoint. So I should turn her in to the organ banks? It’s no silc off my ass! They say the richies take the ones who are real good for the platforms.”

“Gildina, the richies–who are they, really?”

“The same as in your time–the Rockemellons, the Morganfords, the Duke‑Ponts. They’re ancient. I mean some of them were alive in your time, I suppose, if you’re for real. Wait till Cash gapes you. He’ll figure it out.” Gildina paraded past, smirking. “He’s had SC, did you suppose on that?”

“What’s escee?”

“Sharpened control, reallike. He’s been through mind control. He turns off fear and pain and fatigue and sleep, like he’s got a switch. He’s like a Cybo, almost! He can control the fibers in his spinal cord, control his body temperature. He’s a fighting machine, like they say. I mean not really like a Cybo, but as good as you can get without genetic engineering or organ replacement. He’s still a woolie–that’s what the richies and the Cybos call us, who are still animal tissue. But he’s real improved. He has those superneurotransmitters ready to be released in his brain that turn him into just about an Assassin. I mean not really, he’s fourth level, but he’s in that direction, if you gape.”

“Remember, I’m just a dud from the past. They haven’t told me a lot of this stuff yet.”

“Yeah, the Age of Uprisings and all that stuff. Before they automated the boondocks–the old UD countries, when they had all those useless animals and wild plants and dumb people and stuff.”

“But who are Assassins?”

“Sha! You don’t talk about them.” Gildina looked around. “Of course we’re monitored like everybody else, so SG knows I’m talking to you. So like if I’m doing anything wrong, they’ll stop us.”

“Monitored?”

“From the Securcenter here, what else? For versive acts and talks. They pull you in and put a scanner on you so they can tell what you’re thinking to the questions, even if you don’t talk. From the electrical impulses in your brain. You can’t lie to them, unless you’re a trained SD man or an Assassin. Assassins work for the richies. That’s how they deal with each other when they’re at odds. Every richie clan and all the multies have armies of genetically engineered fighters. Instead of sex drive, they have a basic killer drive and obey center. You can’t tell exactly what they are–some are woolies genetically specialized. Some are real Cybos. No animal issue. Entirely improved.”

The door opened suddenly with a swoosh, and a man barged in. He was close to seven feet tall, completely hairless as far as she could see. He wore a shiny gray‑blue uniform and his voice as he barked at her was extremely deep, beyond the ordinary human range, with strange overtones in it that made her stomach clutch. Fear gripped her through the belly. She had to do the easercises Luciente had taught her, she had to become conscious of her breathing and relax. “Who are you? Remain still. Answer correctly.”

“My name is Connie and I’m time traveling. I guess you were listening to us?”

“There is no such thing as time travel. You will be scanned. And youwill be sealed in here again,” the man said to Gildina. “We’ll deal with you later. She’s a dud, but you talked with her for one hour.”

Gildina began to blubber. “Well, how could she get in here if you didn’t let her? I thought it was a special project. Everybody before the great split, they were all duds and woolies. Everybody knows that! How could she get in if you didn’t let her in?”

“That’s not your problem. You’re for the organ bank now,” he said with savage glee in his strange, artificially deep voice. “You, come.” His hand bruised Connie’s arm, biting in.

“I can only stay here through her. Gildina has a special mental power, even if she doesn’t know it.”

“Incorrect. She was born a dud. She’s just a built‑up contracty. All duds have brain deficiencies from protein scarcity in fetus and early childhood. Their IRP’s are negative forty to negative fifteen. Her psych scan tests show negative twenty‑five. She has no more mental capacity than a genetically improved ape.”

“She’s still receptive. I guess you don’t measure that! I homed in on her. Break my contact with her and I disappear.” It was wonderful to feel so confident facing a sort of cop. That’s what he was, supercop, with a weapons belt on his waist and one hand modified into a weapon‑tool itself.