Hyper looked up at her, his face grimy with oil and fatigue. “Trying to even the odds a bit,” he said. Chango stared at him a moment, realizing what he meant, and then she reached forward and plucked the transceiver from where it rested forgotten on his head. “Then I’m keeping this. Lets not just increase those odds, lets spread ‘em around.”

Hyper started forward, in reflex it seemed, and stopped. “Fine, whatever,” he said. He was sick of her, she could see. Everyone was sick of her, including Chango herself. All she seemed to do these days was argue with people. And she’d always been such a carefree person, or thought she was. “Don’t worry,“ she said, “I’ll leave it here when I’m done.”

She sat and watched holo dramas until they left; Helix empty handed, Hyper accompanied by the rattle and lurch of his robots. When they were gone, she called the police. oOo

Helix’s heart pounded in time with her steps. All was silent under the sun except for the faint cries of a few birds wheeling high in the sky above. On some nearby rooftop, Hyper waited with the radio controls for his robots. He and the birds were her only witnesses as she walked down the middle of the street towards the quiet throng of vatdivers gathered at the gate to the vat yard. The vatdivers, to a one, were suited. Some even wore their harnesses with breathing tanks in them. They were massed in front of the main gate, five rows thick. As she drew near their collective stare bored into her, pushing back against the hand that pushed her forward.

She came to a stop roughly ten feet in front of them, and directly across from Vonda, who stood in the middle of the throng.

Helix stared at her because it was easier than staring at all of them. Vonda stared back. Presumably they all did, though she was beginning to wonder how the ones in the back row were getting their view. Probably risers. Finally she got tired of waiting for somebody to blink. “Last one in’s a rotten egg,” she said, and dodged forward, aiming her shoulder between Vonda’s and the diver next to her. Vonda caught her neatly, and shoved her back into the street. Behind her and to the side stood April, her arms folded across her broad chest. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll get the hell out of town, and stay there,” she said, almost gently.

Helix shook her head. “Nope,” she nodded at the vat houses beyond the gate, “this is what I call home.”

The crowd was grumbling now. “Why don’t you go jerk off? You got plenty of hands for it!” somebody shouted to general laughter.

“What are you so afraid of?” she cried out, “I’m not going to hurt anybody.”

“No shit you’re not. You’re not getting in there, that’s why,” said Val, “We can’t let GeneSys make all our decisions for us. We’ve made our own decision about you.”

“Yeah, you’re fired, freak, so fuck off!” screamed someone in the back.

“You just don’t want me here because you’re afraid of me. You don’t know what I am!” Helix shouted.

“What are you?” answered several people at once, and then the words were taken up by the rest of the crowd. “What are you? What are you? What are you?” they chanted as they advanced on her, circling around until she was surrounded by them; their faces, their taunting voices.

“I don’t know!” she screamed back at them, raising her arms around her to ward them off, “I don’t know!” Her mouth open wide, she flashed her teeth, and her fingers stiffened to claws. “You want a freak? You’ve got a freak!”

Someone darted in to make a grab at one of her arms and she leapt on him, wrapping her arms around him and biting him on the shoulder. Her teeth slid against the rubber of his vat suit and he shoved her into the arms of three vatdivers. They grabbed her arms and she kicked wildly, twisting around until she could reach somebody’s hand, and she sank her teeth into it, feeling the flesh break. She tasted blood and heard a scream above the general clamoring. There were still five hands on her. “Fucking bitch,”

someone said, and slugged her in the side of the head. Her head snapped to the side and the scene swam before her eyes. People were advancing, closing the very small gap that had existed in the center of the crowd. Someone kicked her in the stomach and she would have fallen forward except for the hands, eight of them now, holding her by her arms. She got her feet under her again and kicked backwards indiscriminately. Her captors retaliated by pulling her arms back farther against the joints and kicking the backs of her knees until she sank to the ground. She looked up, blinking. In the distance she could hear the clank and roar of Hyper’s machines moving down the street. The cavalry was coming, but not soon enough. Someone loomed in front of her, a tall, heavyset man with a round face and hard eyes. She didn’t know him; she’d never even met him. He held an air tank cradled in his arms, “You’re going to wish you’d left while you still could,” he said, and he lifted the air tank up above his head. She saw it silhouetted against the sun, and then there was a sudden blur of motion from her right, and Vonda was there, somehow, with the tank in her hands. “That’s enough!” she screamed,

“This is a strike, not a lynching!”

“Says who?” The man advanced on her. Vonda twisted the nozzle on the tank and released a blast of frozen air in his face. He backed up, his hands over his eyes, and she turned around and threw the heavy tank directly over Helix’s head. The people holding her had to make a decision, let go or get hit with it. They let go. Helix dove forward and Vonda grabbed her hand, using the momentary confusion to plunge through the crowd.

By now Hyper’s machines had made it to the gate. The Augmented Hoomdorm jumped spasmodically on its pneumatic legs, scattering vatdivers in its path. As Vonda dragged her through the confused mob, Helix caught a glimpse of Robo-Mime, tenaciously circling a vatdiver wielding an air tank, confronting him with his own angry image. He swung the tank, and the video tube exploded, showering glass on himself and surrounding vatdivers.

Helix and Vonda dodged around a group of divers busy battling with Close Enough for Jazz. One of them had wrested the saxophone from its grip and was jamming it in the tractor treads. “Hey, there they are!” someone shouted, and the group abandoned the robot to head off Helix and Vonda just as they were about to break free from the rioting mob. “Traitor!” screamed a woman, rushing towards them with a decanting pole in her hands. But before she could reach them she was intercepted by Attack of the Sneetches. She tripped on the round little automatons, her pole clattering to the ground as she fell.

“This way,” hissed Vonda, veering around the stumbling divers and away from the thick of the mob. They ran full tilt down the street as police sirens wailed and three squad cars swerved around the corner ahead of them. Vonda ducked down an alley between a row of storage tanks and a warehouse, and Helix followed her. Behind her she heard the popping of gas grenade launchers, and up ahead there was a car horn honking. It was Chango in her beat-up Chevy. They put on an extra burst of speed and leapt into the car, Helix in front, Vonda in the back seat.

Vonda slapped the front seat with her hand. “Let’s get the hell out of Vattown for now, okay?”

Chango looked at Helix, “What’s she doing here? Why isn’t she back with her mob?”

Helix shook her head. “She saved my life for some reason, and she’s right, we have to get out of here.”

Chango frowned and pulled away down the street. As they drove, the sounds of the rioting died down behind them.

“Where will we go?” asked Helix.

“To Orielle’s,” said Vonda.

“What? Are you crazy?” said Chango.

“No. She likes Helix, she’ll protect her, and she’s got the firepower to do it should that mob back there reassemble itself and come looking for her.”