Helix leaned back on her upper hands. The ground beneath her palms was warm and springy. It was a nice feeling, being enclosed like this in a sea of green, cushioned in the quiet by the gentle humming of insects. About a foot from her knee lay a dead sparrow; feet curled delicately against the grey belly. A thin bodied bee hovered nearby, and flies took turns crawling into her body to lay their eggs. Chango was saying something about marking, or marks, but Helix wasn’t listening. She was thinking about what would be found in this garden in November, the bones...

“-And so I was thinking, you’d be an ace scanning once you got the hang of it, and in the meantime, you could be the stall.” Chango paused to see Helix looking at her blankly. “You know, distract them.”

“Distract who?”

“The mark. Are you all right? You feeling okay?”

“Yeah. It’s nice back here. No one can see us.”

“You’re right,” said Chango, leaning closer to her, and taking her lower right hand. She cradled it in her own small hand, splaying her fingertips across Helix’s broad digits. Chango’s hand looked very small indeed there, next to her own, and it was warm and light, like a little brown bird. “Do you know that you’re very beautiful?” she asked Helix.

Helix stared at her. Her face felt warm, and her hands tingled. A small smile crept across her lips of its own volition. “Beautiful...” she whispered, looking away.

"That's right," Chango said, gently turning Helix's chin so she was facing her again. Chango searched her face, her two color eyes bright with intent. "Your eyes, your face, your hair," she glanced down and then up again, and she smiled, "your body; it all goes together, and let me tell you," she said, locking her gaze to Helix's, her face dead serious except for her shining eyes, "it is one majestic fucking harmony." Helix blinked, and then Chango was leaning over, her face coming closer and closer to hers. Alarmed, Helix tried to back away, but there wasn’t much of anyplace for her to go. There was something crashingly immanent in the air around them but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what it was, or what Chango was trying to do, and then she felt her lips on hers, another mouth, speaking to her mouth in a moist, sweet language mouths know. She lifted her arms around Chango to hold her, to steady her, to feel with curious fingers the fabric of Chango’s t-shirt sliding against her skin underneath. They lay down on the ground together, there in the garden, and somehow they just lost track of whose body was whose. Chango’s tongue got into Helix’s mouth, a large, slippery serpent, flickering about, and Helix’s lower hands found some way under that t-shirt and she stroked her; smooth warm skin covered with fine, fine hairs, all but invisible to her fingertips. When Chango reached her hand up to cup one of Helix’s breasts, she jumped at the unexpected jolt which overrode all fear at being touched, being seen, being known — an electric bolt which ran lengthwise through her body, and threw her mind into some other place, where for once she was not at odds with herself, but was just what she wanted to be, and did just what she wanted to do.

Chapter 9 — Shivers of Glass

One afternoon when Chango had gone down to Greektown to scan codes, Helix went on her own to Hyper’s house. “Helix,” he said in surprise, pushing the screen door open to let her in. “Where’s Chango?”

“She went to Greektown,” Helix said, stepping through the doorway.

“Oh.” Hyper raised his eyebrows meaningfully. “Codes.” He turned to his workshop. “Come on in,” he said over his shoulder. “I was just rewiring a telephone.”

Helix sat on a stool across from him as he dismantled an ancient push button phone. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with this yet,” said, frowning down on it. When in doubt, take it apart.” His fingers jabbed the buttons idly, producing a ragged tune. “Hey.” He looked at her. “If I got three more of these, I could make you a musical instrument. A keyboard only you could play.”

Helix made a face. “I don’t think so.”

“No? Oh well,” he shrugged. “So what’s up?”

Helix lifted her shoulders to mimic his gesture and bit her upper lip. “If someone were to apply for a job, as a vatdiver, how would they go about it?”

“Someone wants a job as a vatdiver?” Hyper leaned forward, staring at her, grinning in amazement. “Are you sure?”

She nodded her head. Hyper’s eyebrows arched and he gazed at the ceiling with a long drawn out sigh. When he looked back at her it was with a quizzical expression. “Why do you want to dive?”

Helix opened her mouth, but she didn’t know what to say.

“You don’t know, do you? You just want to do it.”

She nodded and then shook her head. “It’s a job, that’s all. I need a job.”

“Uh-huh.” Hyper nodded faintly, and returned his attention to the telephone. “Well, if someone wanted to apply for a job in the vats, they’d have to place an application with personnel. Someone could do that either by going to the personnel office at GeneSys or by filing the application over the holonet.” His eyes slid across the table to his transceiver headset, and back to her. “You can use it, if you want.”

Helix sat in the bare, tiled examination room, clutching a flimsy paper gown about her. The air was chilly, and she shivered.

The door opened and a tall, white-coated figure entered. "Helix Martin?" he said, glancing at a mylar form on a clipboard.

"Yes," she shifted nervously on the examination table.

"Stand up please, and turn around."

Helix turned her back to him, and felt his hands exploring her shoulders, her back, her arms... "Candidate possesses obvious mutations; quadruple arms and overdevelopment of the canine molars," he murmured into his transceiver. "You can sit down again," he said to her. She climbed back onto the examination table, and he fastened a monitor to her naked back. "Heart-rate slightly elevated," he said, gazing at the readout. "Are you nervous?" he asked her, smiling. She nodded.

"There's no need to be, it's just a routine examination. I'm going to take some blood now, okay?" She shrugged. "Okay."

He pricked her finger with a sharp tube that drew her blood up into it, set the tube in a labelled capsule, and handed her an empty beaker. "All I need now is a urine sample. There's a rest room down the hall. You can get dressed first. Just leave the sample on the shelf in the bathroom. The personnel clerk will be getting in touch with you in a few days."

"That's it?"

"That's it. Fill this, and you can go. Not as bad as you expected, huh?" She shook her head, and after he left, scrambled gratefully into her clothes. oOo

Chango pushed mashed potatoes around on her plate and wondered what could be taking Helix so long. She said she had to run an errand for Hyper, but she didn’t say what it was, and when Chango offered to go with her, she refused. For that matter, she hadn’t been able to get much out of Hyper about this errand either. He only mumbled something about machine parts and went back to his welding. They were living with Hyper now. Mavi needed the pink room for Hugo. She and Helix made a bed for themselves among the cushions in the front room, and Chango made sure the door was locked.

“Hey,” said a voice beside her. Chango looked up from her demolished plate special to see Helix standing there, still wearing the raincoat, but unbuttoned now. It was a start.

“Hey, what took you so long? Have a seat.”

Helix sat down across from her, smiling widely, her fangs poking out from her lips.

“What’s got you so happy, huh?”

Helix shrugged, her eyes flickering uneasily over Chango’s face. “It’s a nice day out. And it’s good to see you.”