1

I fiddled with the cable jacked into the mastoid area below my left earlobe. Waves of horizontal lines floated upward and bruised my optic nerves. A tintinnabulum followed. Abruptly my head was filled with storms of static fractured by splinters of light. Shapeless forms floated out of the storm speckled maelstrom like taunting ghosts. The specters flared and died among striated clouds, and then, like the Phoenix, reappeared on the edges of my mind. Phantoms of illusion or reality? I couldn't tell. The storms battering my mind, however, were real. I adjusted the cable a second time, my head ready to implode when the buzzing interference dissipated. The ghost filled clouds of static disappeared. My body tingled with what felt like a rush of light through my veins and my mind expanded like Fat Man at Hiroshima as a new world came to life inside my skull. I had merged with part of the Cyberspace matrix called the Gamelan and was jacked into the Private Investigator's HoloNet. Virtually alive. I was no longer Willie Beeman, a waiter on L-1. I was Wil Drake, P. I.

(Rain splashed diamonds on the windshield of my flitter but the bead-X glass let it dribble harmlessly away. I looked around. A lone surfer on the strip, I had been driving for fifteen minutes and all I had to show for it was a low fuel cell and lint in my pocket. Somewhere in the dim night ahead, a curvy blonde named Marcia waited for me with a package for my client. I wasn't going to find her by driving, so I turned left into the parking lot of Microsoft's New York, Beau Monde Galleria. At the entrance I passed a pair of Grafs tagging their latest El Greco-- a giant cockroach, ala William Burroughs-- peering through Microsoft's corporate logo. There are only thirty-two bonafide Grafartists on the entire web. Not just anyone can set up shop as a Graf. It's an exclusive club that the masses choose, but there are never more than thirty-two Grafs at any one time. Most Graf art is solitary. Only a half dozen work together. Thousands of newbies try to become Grafs but they get thrown off the Holonets faster than a modem can hiccup. These guys were the real thing. Their 3D jumped through the window logo straight at me, all mottled brown carapace and hairy legs, the multifaceted eyes glittering in the soft light and a loud buzzing like a Yamaha cyclecab. I started, thinking the cockroach was going to devour my flitter; then I passed through its shadow, turned right onto a winding driveway through a bonsai garden, Lilliputian gardeners laboring like weevils trimming the diminutive trees, and finally pulled up in front of the Westin Hotel. A valet took my coupe. He blew off the tip, mumbling thanks for the score on the lotto. He had won, along with a thousand others who had used the 'Nets to generate the winning 15 number combination from a program I'd boosted off the Clans' orbiting relay station, ComSat-3.

The entrance to the Galleria was noise and neon and all kinds of newbies trying to crash the exclusive party inside. At the front were a group of a giggling high school girls-- wannabe Ravers-- wearing spangled bras and panties over see-through dresses and trying to look trendy enough to get in. They didn't stand a chance without the password. The word changes by the day. Finding it isn't difficult, if you know a Graf, or someone who knows a Graf. I know three and as quick as they change the password it's uploaded to me through the web. For the past six months the password had been an actress from the twentieth century. I pushed through the crowd and whispered, "Judy Garland." The opaque entrance irised open and I eased through, heading for the ramp of all worlds. Behind me, a hackermorph, synthesized as a small dog, tried to squeeze through, but the entrance closed abruptly, slicing him in half. "Nice try, Toto, but we're not in Kansas anymore," I told him, as his brown furry head sizzled. He disappeared in a puff of smoke, his front paw lifted up and the middle toenail extended, the universal salute to excellence. I didn't bother to return it and I moved on.

The Galleria had a new look--staggered balconies and nooks with an illusory rustic lifestyle created by a Tuscan Mosaic facade. I know this because the web site's promo said so. It was supposed to be a return to Neo-Italian construction. I wasn't impressed. It was chintzy as its advertizing and as far as I was concerned they could trade the architects in for a dog and then shoot the dog. I ignored the facade and headed toward the third level and a joint called the Zodiac Lounge where I just might find what I was looking for.

I passed a solid pyramid of obsidian overlaid with crystal, Grafart named the "Wail of Souls." The piece must be special because it had been in the Plaza almost a week. An eternity on the 'Nets. But if you looked closely you could see why. Etchings of naked people glimmered from the interior of the crystal. They moved with the shifting light and clawed at the surface, their mouths open in silent screams. I stopped and admired it. I could see myself clearly enough to brush back my blond hair and adjust the cut of my suit on my two meter frame. Double breasted coats are back. I'm not certain that I like them, but they do make me more intimidating. I shrugged and everything fell neatly into place-- I was the hottest fashion on the web. It used to be that they said hotter than a pistol. Now they say hotter than Wil Drake. On the other side of the pyramid was the flower lady. I waved my hand over one of her displays and a carnation vanished. I snapped my fingers and it appeared in my lapel. Slipping my hand behind her ear, I produced a ten credit chip out of thin air and with a smile, told her to keep the change. "Magic can change your life," I said, adjusting the flower. She never even batted an eyelid, just stuffed the credit chip down her shirt front, a cold bank if there ever was one.

I hit the ramp to the upper levels and rode a cushion of air upwards. The ride felt like the weightlessness of space and I never tired of it. On the third level I let my self off easily, stepping around a newbie sprawled on his face at the top of the ramp, and I wondered how this clueless moke had ever gotten hold of the password.

The Zodiac Lounge was in front of me. It was a dive; the food was so bad, they needed a sign out front that said, "Sorry, We're Open." Inside, the bar smelled of stale conversation and too much cologne. The lights were dim and the holovision was muted so that you had to stand real close to hear or see anything the actors were saying and doing. I didn't mind, though. Like I said, somewhere a blonde waited for me. And this might be the place. Vinnie, the bartender, set up a Martian martini, dry, just the way I like it, and then glanced down the bar. The Zodiac's bar stretched through all the signs from Gemini to Neon and at the end was a redhead. You could tell from the way she was sitting that she was tall and wouldn't have any trouble making the rent. I smiled, fingered the jack below my left ear and pushed the drink away. I was thinking about the blonde. Her name was Marcia. I had a knack for finding blondes or maybe they just had a knack for making a fool out of me. In either case, it was fast and fun and if the ride was furiously expensive, I didn't care. I could win the Lotto any Saturday night I decided to play. I slipped Vinnie a five credit chip and smiled when he nearly broke a tooth on the plassilver. "Marcia," I said. Vinnie shook his head and worked real hard to keep his eyes looking into mine. "I don't know any Marcia, Wil." He laid the chip back on the bar. I eased the five credit chip toward his hands and this time I said real softly, "Marcia. She has a package for me." I spread my hands about 15 centimeters apart and 36 centimeters tall. "She said she'd bring it tonight." I gave him my flinty eyed stare which can send a big man gibbering into the corner. Vinnie was a two bit hustler who ran a few cons on the side to make ends meet. A two time loser, one more indiscretion and he'd have a permanent reservation at Statesville. He was panicky now. His mouth worked but no sound came out. He backed away from the bar leaving the chip behind. A nice touch. But it was too pat.

That's when the redhead at the other end of the bar made her move. Maybe she was nervous or the distance was too great in the dim light. The laser burn from her pistol whispered by my ear and charred the wallpaper behind me. I had time to pull my Baretta from its shoulder holster and burn her between her breasts. I didn't feel bad about it either. She wasn't the woman I was looking for. I watched her sizzle and disappear in smoke, then slipped the safety back on and shoved the pistol inside my suit. I ordered a scotch, neat, and searched the twenty or so time-battered and life-bruised faces in the bar as I sipped it. Marcia's wasn't among them. I told Vinnie I'd be back and left the five credits on the bar to pay for the wallpaper.

I walked through the double doors and a fist rammed into my stomach. I dropped to the floor, eyes closed and gasping for breath. An Oscar winning performance. You see, or maybe you don't, as a virtual human, pain isn't palpable; but as a player on the HoloNets, I act the part. A pair of hands wrenched me to my feet and shoved my back against the door jamb. I opened my eyes and looked into the cold, baby blues of Captain Dix Macon. His nose had been crushed and left flat; ears were clipped like a Doberman's and he smelled like ninety day whiskey poured into a rumpled brown suit; his head was capped by a battered brown fedora. Dix had been trying to bust me for years, ever since I solved the Millennium murders. "Willie-boy," he said, staring at me, his booze-soaked breath making my eyes water. "A little early for target practice isn't it?"

I smiled down at him. "You need a new suit, Dix."

He ignored my sartorial critique. "Vinnie just called; said there's a dead woman inside and you're the man who iced her."

I shrugged. "Self defense; she tried to give me too close a shave."

"Now why would she do that? Unless you had something she wanted."

"I have a lot of things women want," I said, winking at him.

Dix drove his other fist into my stomach. The drinking had caught up with him and his left only shook me up a bit.

"That jog your memory any?"

"My memory is like your left, Dix. It's not as good as it used to be."

His hands tightened on my lapels. "The package," he rasped and I was glad he had given up cigarettes or he would have seared my eyebrows. "Tell me what's inside the package," he said.

I shrugged his hands off my suit and smoothed the wrinkled material. "I don't know." I really didn't. My client had paid me 25,000 credits to pick up the package for him. He had described the woman, Marcia, who had it but hadn't volunteered any other information. For 25K I wasn't going to ask him any questions either.

"Maybe you should ask the redhead," I suggested helpfully. I was certain she must have known about my meeting with Marcia, otherwise why had she tried to burn me.

"Convenient that she's dead, isn't it," Dix snarled. "Back inside, Willie-boy, while I ask Vinnie a few questions; then we're going to take a little ride downtown." He grabbed me before I could stop him and tossed me through the double doors of the Zodiac. I saw the bar and Vinnie, whirling like a carousel, then my head ran into something hard.)

2

Inside my head, images suddenly faded to static. Cascades of snow roared past my eyes and a harsh buzzing clamored in my ears. I thought dispassionately that it couldn't be sun interference. The NASA Clan's L-1 Space Colony where I lived and worked was presently on the dark side of the Earth and there were no solar flares or sunspot activity anyway. Most likely the blow to Wil Drake's head had triggered a signal overload from the matrix into the P.I 'Net. I reached for the cable to disconnect the interface before the overload could generate a cascade failure in my neural net but the static held me prisoner. My whole body shook as synaptic functions fired irregularly across my web. If I didn't disconnect soon, the web would fry my neurons and Willie Beeman, waiter, would become a vegetable. Vainly, I tried to halt the seizures but control of my physical functions was shorting out. I started to lose consciousness when abruptly the seizures stopped and the holovision reappeared, surreal and garbled as if two images were superimposed.

(I woke up on the floor of the Zodiac. The room felt different. For one thing, the wall paper smoldered from the laser flash that had just missed me and the smell of burnt flesh from the neat pinhole I had put in the redhead nearly made me gag. And I was sweating. It was all too real. Intense sensory stimulation was usually unavailable on the HoloNets, at least in the league Wil Drake played. I shook my head in disbelief and discovered that was the wrong thing to do. The Viennese Bell Choir and an Irish penny whistle began competing for attention within my skull. I ducked between the bells and whistles until my mind cleared and the pain went away. I stood up unsteadily and looked around. The bar was dark; Vinnie and Dix had vanished. In their place two Toyos stood behind the bar, dressed in illegal shark skin suits, the flame-colored dragon tattooing of the Toyota Clan jutting above their suit collars onto their necks. They ignored me.

The little one was shaking his head in apparent disbelief. The big one was nodding and bowing. I manipulated the female receptor behind my left ear and the image cleared a little. I left my hand there. I wanted to be able to disconnect quickly if I had to. The Zodiac had disappeared completely. I could see familiar constellations in the port window behind the bar, which was now a desk. Gravity was lighter too, about one-sixth of Earth normal. That meant I had to be on one of the NASA Orbiting Colonies in a private club located on the ring. The two men continued talking in low tones. The room was still fuzzy. I adjusted the receptor a little more and everything came into view clearly like perfect video. This shook me up more than the change of scenery had. Even with the best of conditions-- no sun activity and a T-1 direct link-- nothing was ever this clear on the P. I. 'Net. Just then, the Toyos noticed me and I forgot about it. The little one yelled in perfect System English, "Hey! What the hell are you doing here?" The big one just gaped at me and then he grunted and bowed at me. "Why are you here?" he said, shaking. "We're supposed to call the Fat Man after we received the package."

I knew that I should disconnect before this became ugly. On the other hand, I was Wil Drake, Private Eye, and I was pretty tough. I'm a master of so many deadly fighting arts, I have to carry a concealed weapons permit for my tongue. I ignored his question and gave them both my flinty-eyed stare. "That's a funny once, Toy Boy. The Fat Man sent me to check up on you. Now, where's the item?"

The two talked excitedly in low tones. I couldn't make out what they were saying, but I didn't like the way the little one was making a bookmark of my face. He wasn't buying any of it., but the big one pushed him out of the way and said, "We haven't been able to obtain it, yet." "You'd better find it, chop chop. You know what the Fat Man does to failures." The big Toyo turned white under his tattoos and started bobbing up and down like a demented Jack-in-the-Box. "I'll be back," I said flatly in my best Schwarzenegger, wondering who the Fat Man was. I turned to leave when the little Toyo pulled a laser pistol from beneath his coat and pointed it at my head. "Stop!" he ordered.

The big one looked surprised and grabbed his partner's arm. "Don't."

"You idiot," the little one screamed, pulling his arm free. "He isn't the Mailman." I took another step back and held up my hands. "Just kidding guys. I'm looking for Marcia," I stammered, saying the first thing that came into my mind.

"Christ! It must be a webhead!" the big one shouted. "How'd he get in here? This is a private circuit."

"Grab the son of a bitch!" the other one ordered.

The big one rushed around the edge of the desk, cutting me off from the door. He tried to tackle me. I ducked under his arms and sent him sprawling into a chair. It rolled on castors and crashed into a bulkhead, dumping the Toy boy on the floor. I bolted for the door. A laser shot went between my legs, just missing my thigh, and a pin sized, smoldering dot appeared in the door frame. I jerked on the handle and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind me. I stopped cold and stared through plasglass windows at the space colony's dreidl-shaped, central Hub. Bluish-red lights, blazing like violet jets of gas, limned the Hub's cascading levels in the blackness of space. I recognized the vista since I had seen it many times. I was on the Freeport side of NASA's L-1 colony, the oldest of the orbiting colonies and the transit point for Luna commerce and deep space traders. And the place where my host, Willie Beeman, lived and worked as a waiter in order to pay for his web habit as me. How Wil Drake, P.I., had ended up at L-1 on someone else's private holo-channel was beyond me. But I wasn't about to stop and set up a chat room to discuss it. I shed my paralysis and started to run only I was too late.

Behind me the door to the room banged open. Only one way left to escape... I grasped the receptor below my ear. Disconnecting was, admittedly, a cheap way out of a difficult situation. As a well known, resourceful, tough private detective, I don't like to use it very often. But this was a strange situation. I was no longer on the P.I. 'Net. I was on some one's private HoloNet and these Toy boys meant to capture me. Capture is a situation everyone playing in the Gamelan avoids at all costs, since six hours is the saturation level for anyone jacked in. More than that and you risked demolition-- fried neurons and permanent brain damage.

So, I unjacked as the men lunged toward me.

I smiled, expecting to see the Toyos and myself vanish as the incubus in Willie Beeman's mind faded like a monitor to a black dot--metaphorically speaking. But I'd waited too long. The bigger of the two Toyos wrenched my arm behind my back. With his other hand he jammed the jack back into the receptor below my ear and twisted it violently. Somewhere, Willie Beeman's hand was involuntarily doing the same.

My shoulder screamed with agony as the Toyo then slammed my body against the plasglass windows of the corridor. He squashed my face against the glass as though he were going to push me through it molecule by molecule. As a P.I. you get roughed up quite a bit, but on the HoloNets it wasn't supposed to hurt. This was definitely becoming too real.

"Who sent you?" the little one shouted. I couldn't think straight to answer. My brain was fogged, not so much from the pain but from the perplexing quandary that Wil Drake shouldn't be here. When I had pulled the plug from my receptor, all of this should have become a fading incubus in the mind of one Willie Beeman, waiter. So, I stared helplessly out the windows at a gibbous Earth in a deep, dark well beneath me. L-1 was passing over Lake Michigan and even from 12,000 miles I could see the Chicago Corridor sprawling up the western shore to Lake Superior like a smear of sludge with 50 million pinpricks of light scattered through it. The big Toyo wrenched my arm harder and the pain brought me back to virtual reality. "This guy knows Marcia," he said.

"Shut up!" the little one barked. He pressed his laser pistol beneath my left eye. The barrel looked big enough to swallow an elephant.

"Who sent you? I'll give you five seconds."

"You won't get any cookies from me, Toy boy," I said reflexively in my best private eye voice. "Go ahead, pull the trigger. Kill me and you'll never find out."

He smiled, gold fillings and bad teeth, like a Kung Fu Holo-villain. "We won't kill you--right away. Yoshi here will rip your arms off first. Believe me, you will tell us what we want to know before you die." His dialogue was as bad as his teeth and I wondered who was writing his lines in this script.

I shifted my head a fraction and squeezed a look at Yoshi. He actually snarled, the same metal mangled smile as the little one. Wil Drake, P.I., definitely needed to pull a McGyver out of his hat and soon. Though Yoshi had my right arm twisted behind me, my left arm was plastered against the plasglass near my face and I could see the chrono on my wristpad. The chrono had been programmed like a James Bond movie and, while the Toyos argued about which arm to rip out first, I inched my nose across the glass and managed to press one of the studs. A loud ringing noise filled the corridor. The Toyo with the gun whirled around and the big one slightly loosened his grip. It was all I needed. I stomped his instep and slammed my knee into his groin. He hit the floor like a side of beef falling from a truck. The little one pulled the trigger of his laser pistol and swung the weapon in a hissing arc toward me. The smell of burning metal and plastic filled the corridor. Stepping inside the sweep of his arm, I chopped him in the throat with the ridge of my hand and the pistol fell silently to the floor. I dragged both men back into the room and threw the laser pistol into the garbage chute. L-1 covers a lot of space. The station is over a mile across from one side of the ring to the other. From the ring, twenty spokes intersect with the Hub-- fifty-three levels and plenty of places to hide. But I didn't even give it a second thought. I entered the first room that wasn't locked and stopped cold. At the far end against an exterior bulkhead, Willie Beeman was lying on his bunk, one end of a cable jacked behind his ear and the other into a HoloNet interface. My mind went into a holding pattern and I wondered if he could see me seeing him, seeing me, like one of those infinite mirror into mirror images. I shuddered and couldn't suppress the achy feeling of bitter regret for Willie's mundane waiter life. I knew if I could, I'd pull the plug on him. However, I also knew that was impossible. My reality lay in a gossamer web of the purest silver laid across Willie's brain. The filigreed silver neural net in Willie's head was called a Black Widow by all the HoloNet junkies. Willie had had this Black Widow for a year now. At first he had promised himself only twice a week for an hour. Eventually he had succumbed and like a junkie, jacked in every day. Once Jim, the cook who rented the lower bunk from the bartender, found Willie twitching in a petit mal seizure and had to disconnect him, or was it me--sometimes I lose the thread. It was twenty-four hours before Willie could walk again.

The Black Widow wasn't a bad job coming from a Hong Kong cut shop. A second class Vested had implanted the neural web for half price. The Vested began by removing the top half of Willie's skull. A neural relay chip replaced the mastoid nerve and was connected to a jack behind his left ear. Then the Vested laid a silver wire net, like a spider's web, across the left hemisphere's ventro medial region and hard wired it to the underside of his frontal lobe. Presto. A webhead is born. A week after the Vested glued his skull back together, Willie could jack himself into any program on the Commercial Nets. But Willie stayed exclusively within the Gamelan, mired within the P.I. 'Net. That's where I, Willie's alter ego, a tough private dick, was born. Gamelan is the cyberjocks' name for the virtual world created by the HoloNets. The name comes from an obscure Javanese orchestra of tuned metal and wooden chimes mixed with percussion instruments. The music is wild and hypnotic and once plugged into it, you can't help but dance to the beat, no matter where it takes you. Similarly, you hook into the Gamelan with thousands of others, experiencing the same surreal adventures with none of the pain and all of the glory. That's why so many people become webheads, Willie included. The Clans have outlawed neural webs, of course, but with 40% of the world jacked in, they can't do anything about it. After the operation, Willie used the rest of the water rations he had stolen to bribe a First Class Vested in the NASA Clan for a one way ticket on the shuttle to the Freeport side of NASA's L-1 colony. He became a waiter on L-1, as far from Earth as any non-vested could ever hope to be. Tips barely covered his habit. But the Black Widow was great; even a half price one. And life on L-1 was infinitely better than on Earth where the vast majority of humanity lived in a waterless jungle of rationing in the giant City Corridors. Though I knew Willie had to ease up on his web use, I knew even better, with the same, bitterly frank introspection of an addict, that long ago Willie had given himself over to the neural web. He didn't have the guts to pull the plug on the HoloNets-- thank God. Sooner or later the Black Widow would devour him. He'd ride it past saturation all the way to demolition then I would vanish--a wisp of blue smoke in his vegetated brain, not even an after image on somebody's DVD to remember me by. But I would not, could not ask him to stop.

I shook my head free of its downward spiral of maudlin self-examination. Wil Drake, private eye, wouldn't normally have given a webhead's addiction a second thought. Right now, there were too many other urgent questions and I needed some 411 right away such as how was it possible that I was staring at my host? And how had Wil Drake's P.I. gig become mixed in with someone's private HoloNet? Who was the Fat Man? How did the Toyos know Marcia? Where was Marcia? And what was the item in the package she was supposed to hand me? I was getting nowhere fast and I didn't have much time. Those Toy boys wouldn't stay knocked out forever and then they would be out looking for me. I'd have to hide.

The simplest way to cover my tracks was to jack out, but when I tried to turn the male receptor below my left ear, it wouldn't budge. The Toyo had somehow fused it when he jammed it back in. I went over to Willie Beeman, hoping that I could somehow twist his connection free. Static boomed in my head from a feedback loop and I nearly passed out before I staggered backward out of range. My eyes throbbed and I rubbed my temples until my head was clear. Apparently, I was stuck on the HoloNets and it was looking like I'd have to find a way back to the P.I. 'Net and have someone there disconnect me. I checked my chrono, four hours until demolition. Plenty of time, if those Toyos didn't stop me first. They wouldn't take long to search this section of the ring once they woke up. I had to do something and fast. Whenever the situation becomes really bleak, I listen to that little voice in my head that tells me what I should do. It's never wrong. Since I was on L-1, I would take over Willie's life as a waiter.

3

I tore off my double breasted suit and stashed it behind one of the other bunks. Then I quickly oiled my body, the way the waitrons at the Skyview Lounge do, giving my physique a bronze-hued look like Adonis. Not too much of a stretch; afterall, Willie and I look alike--almost two meters tall, 100 ki's of rugged muscle, and as good looking as a Greek statue. Our pectorals were highly defined and nicely set off by a triple window tattoo-- a good forgery of the Microsoft Clan. We had the strong muscular shoulders of a bodybuilder and the long curly blond hair and beautiful face that caused tourist women to give extra large tips. The tattoo didn't hurt any either. I didn't have time to pump up at the gym but a quick look in the mirror told me I could pass muster. I didn't want to lose Willie's job and end up deported. Just the thought of deportation made me shudder. On L-1 Willie shared a ten by ten room with only two other people. Such space was a real luxury.

I grabbed Willie's loin cloth and threaded my way through the room. The bartender had installed hydroponic equipment and grow lights. He grew fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce to supplement the processed soy-meals served in the Freeport cafeterias. In the one-sixth gravity I blew past pens holding rats--the other white meat--and into the corridor. I dogged the door behind me so the Toyo's couldn't break in and pushed off in the one-sixth gravity, headed for the nearest air lock. As I cycled through the lock to the long corridor which lead to the main part of the station, I had a good view of L-1's outer ring-- everywhere dotted with surplus shuttle fuel tanks. Mostly the alloy shells were hauled in by scavengers who sold them to NASA as living quarters for workers in the colony. One scavenger, Sevros Markos, provided them on a lease back scheme. He outfitted them with plush accommodations for the wealthier Toyos who wanted to enjoy the lighter gravity sports of the ring during their stay at L-1. Markos was a strange man, a spacer who had come up with the construction crew for L-1. He could have retired after construction but he had stayed on in the salvage trade. It was rumored that once he became wealthy, he had never stirred from his quarters in the outer ring. Still, he knew everything that happened on the station, legal or otherwise. Sooner or later, I figured, it would be good to talk with him.

The airlock opened onto one of the spokes leading to the main Hub of the L-1 Colony. I glided toward the core in that funny half lope, half dance step that one-sixth gee requires and then waited for one of the Hub's airlocks to cycle by. The Hub spun faster than the outer ring of the station, giving it a more Earth-like gravity. Some tourists came up as I waited. They were dressed in tuxedos and gowns and I could hear the women titter nervously as they looked at my broad, muscled back and massive thighs. I was a little nervous myself, though for different reasons. I didn't want to be stuck waiting for the airlock when the Toy boys came down the corridor. The airlock cycled and I stepped carefully into the Hub. Only a newbie hustled across the threshold to be slammed by the Earth-like gravity. I moved slowly, feeling the gravity begin as a thickening goo around my feet as though the air were more dense somehow and harder to push through. By the time I reached the Skyview Lounge and its clear crystal dome providing a stunning panorama of the Milky Way, I was wading through the seventy-five percent of Earth normal gravity that the Hub advertised. I could have gone straight to the kitchen but I had a few minutes before roll call so I stopped in at the bar to talk with my/Willie's landlord. I needed to find Marcia quickly. The Toyo's knew her which meant she was on this channel somewhere. Everyone came to the Skyview Lounge eventually and maybe the bartender had seen her. I unballed the loin cloth in my fist and draped it over my head. Willie thought this made the bartender laugh, though it was hard to tell with him; the bartender wasn't even remotely human. As I entered the lounge area, the bartender fixed a glittering eye on me which seemed to say it all-- Willie was a couple of months behind on his rent and hadn't paid his 'Nets bill. The bartender's other eye never wavered from the brandy bottle he was emptying into a biocrystal decanter. The living crystals fed on the alcohol imparting a pleasant smokey after taste to the liqueur.

I didn't greet him by name. I couldn't pronounce it. Nobody on L-1 could. It's a sound like a bullfrog on a warm summer night-- Grrrunhnk. I called him Enobarus. He didn't seem to mind.

The bartender was from Tau Ceti. He had wandered into Sol System, as the traveling minstrel that he was, the first deep space alien to visit our solar system. Earth had feted him for six months and then asked him to explain how he made such a long deep space voyage so quickly or if Tau Cetans used suspended animation techniques. The bartender was no scientist. He was a traveling man, a hobo by name, a tramp on a tramp steamer. His solar sail wasn't even as efficient as Earth models. Tau Cetans simply lived longer so they could take longer trips. He was born 506 light years ago and he figured he had another 8000 or 10,000 good years left. He had a lot of time to explore the wonders of the galaxy and he stopped at a few planets along the way to relieve the boredom of long space flight.

Eventually Enobarus had made his home on L-1 because the gravity was better for his race and he could see some exotic things he wouldn't be able to see on Earth. He's bipedal, though not exactly humanoid. His feet operated as a second pair of hands and his eyes protruded from his skull on stalks like a spiny fish. Though one color, they were compound like a dragonfly's. He saw infinitely in several directions and into the infrared band. A fleshy appendage on his face passed for a nose and two small concavities on either side of his hairless head were his ears. Enobarus's System English and Japanese were good, but he was also fluent in the Classical Earth languages, like German and French. Yet he preferred the Hawaiian pidgin of Earth's non-vested hilljacks and, like Lewis Carroll's caterpillar, he borrowed words from any language when it suited him. His one eye continued to stare at me as I crossed the lounge to the bar. It was disconcerting to think that he was following my image, reproduced 60,000 times in the glittering facets of his iris, and I wondered if he could tell that I wasn't Willie the waiter but Wil Drake the private eye. "Hey, blalah," he reverberated in pidgin, welcoming me as a friend and brother. Enobarus used vocal chords to produce sounds but he didn't have tracheal equipment like ours to form words. Instead, he mixed echoes in the cavities of his skull to create language. A simple word like "hello" might have twenty mixings before exiting from his lipless mouth with a cavernous sibilance. Having a conversation with Enobarus was like talking into a deep well.

"You got da kine?" he asked me.

I shook my head. "I will tonight, blalah, if Marcel no moke be. If I get good tables, I have da kine, is all." Inwardly, I breathed a sigh of relief as Willie's pidgin came easily to me. I suppose it should have, afterall his memories were mine and mine his. Enobarus turned away and, standing like a flamingo, made two drinks with three limbs. He swiveled one eye back on mine. "No care now. Da kine come bimebye. One more month. "You find wahine me?" he asked then, his eyes glittering even more than usual.

I blinked. Women were attracted to him, maybe it was his completely hairless body, and he didn't need me pimping for him.

"I thought you no problem with da wahines. You mo bettah than any blalah."

"Bimebye, no wahine." He shrugged. "Kefe. You help, blalah?"

"No worry. I find da wahine. But I need da kine for da kine."

Enobarus nodded in the bartender's universal way of knowing. He set up a scotch neat on the house and went to the other end of the bar. I sipped my drink and checked my watch, 20:15--demolition in less than four hours, then at midnight the contents of Willie's mind would be sucked into the Net's matrix and I'd vanish forever like the buffalo and the eagle. I had to find a way to transfer from this private link to Willie's original channel before then. That little voice inside me told me Marcia and the package were the key. She had to be on the station somewhere, and if I found her before the Toyo's did, I could clear up this whole mess. I hoped.

Enobarus came back. "Blalah," I asked him, "You seen a blonde wahine, true thing, no Clairol, about so high?" I held my hand near my shoulder. Marcia is nearly as tall as I am with a Xena body. Enobarus was a good blalah, knew almost everything one needed to know in the universe and volunteered nothing, unless you were a friend. "Earlier, a blonde wahine came in bimebye carrying da kine. Is all."

My favorite Marcia. I almost asked him to keep an eye out for her, but the last time Willie did that, Enobarus pulled a Columbo and removed one of his eye stalks, placing it on the bar where it had a full view of the room. I shivered at the memory.

"Thanks. Let me know if she comes in again."

He nodded and left again to set up a tray of sake for a group of Toyos. A few moments later, Enobarus returned like Hardy's native and I asked him where he'd stopped off on his way to Earth.

He switched to standard English. "There are a lot of systems between Hrumryphft and Sol," he said, using his race's own name for Tau Ceti. "Most are uninhabitable. But one has a small planetoid where the Builders erected a force dome over the entire world in order to maintain a stable and constant atmosphere." (He has never explained the Builders to Willie though he sounded reverent-- he could have been pissed off too; there weren't many clues to a Tau Cetan's emotions.) "What do they do there?"

"It's an experimental substation for flora and fauna. The Builders take the successful mutations to planets that need them. Though some of the experiments are so outlandish that I think the Builders raise them simply to see if they are possible. While there I was almost eaten by a Grra!graphhyk." He chuckled, laughter coming out of his mouth as a hissing sound. "It's a three horned mammal something like your triceratops."

"We don't have those anymore." I sipped my drink and willed Marcia walk into the bar at that moment. Cyberspace magic. Sometimes on the HoloNets, if you can visualize what you want clearly enough, you get what you ask for. She didn't walk in.

I asked Enobarus, "How do you say those big words so easily?"

"It's not so easy. You should try saying triceratops in my language."

"No thanks. How about rhinoceros?"

"Prepoceros."

"Hippopotamus?"

"Impossimus."

I gave up. Ogden Nash didn't have anything on him. I finished the scotch and thanked him for the drink before shoving off for the kitchen. I looked around the bar, hoping I'd spot Marcia but she was nowhere to be seen. It was early for a Saturday Night on L-1. The bar was only a third full. In a corner by the kitchen two Alphans, who had come back with a deep space crew, were practicing their English which they had learned on the six year voyage here. I went by them slowly but they weren't saying anything interesting. I entered the kitchen and noticed that all the personnel of the Skyview Dining Room were lined up so that the Maitre'd, Marcel, could inspect them. Anyone whose body was blemished by a bruise or a cut would not be allowed to work this shift. Any imperfection would be noticed by the diners and would tarnish the reputation of the Skyview Lounge.

I donned my loincloth and took my place at the end of the line. The line rippled with amusement, waiters and waitresses laughing silently at Marcel's obesity. Marcel was the only member of the restaurant staff wearing clothes, dressed in a gaudy, emerald-green, velvet tuxedo, but even this couldn't hide the elephantine folds of skin and fat. Marcel's System English was perfect. No accent. He definitely wasn't a blalah. Probably he couldn't even speak the pidgin. He wouldn't know da kine from da kine. He was a moke. I looked around. I was the only white person present tonight. Most of the crew were oriental, though two of the busboys were African and Marcel was Hawaiian.

Marcel came down the line slowly. He stopped in front of Yvonne, a Masai Vested standing next to me. Her skin was so black it gleamed. Marcel studied her carefully. He seemed to take an extra bit of time with everyone tonight to be certain they were immaculate. I wondered if he would know that the real Willie Beeman remained jacked into the HoloNets, semi-comatose, visualizing all of this. Or, a sudden thought struck me-- was I dreaming him. I almost fell over not wanting to think about all the paradoxes with Willie's real life unfolding on someone's personal holo-channel. I managed to ignore the question of the dreamer or the dream--it was better suited to theologians and priests than private investigators anyway--and concentrate on where I was. All I needed to know was that a blonde out there could help me. I quickly tightened my washboard belly muscles to mask my unease as Marcel slowly and carefully checked my physique. The veins in my arms and legs throbbed. Marcel started suddenly, then controlled himself and drew back. Slowly and gently with the kindness of a cobra mesmerizing its victim before it strikes, Marcel stood straight and looked me in the eye. That little voice was telling me he knew. He said, "Mr. Beeman, your body is well muscled and your veins etch your skin in a provocative pattern," and I refrained from breathing out a sigh of relief. He didn't know. Or if he knew, he wasn't telling anyone. Marcel reached out as if to trace the veins of my right arm and I almost leaped back in revulsion. It was part of the rules that Marcel never touched any of the waitrons without permission. But I was not at all certain how far Marcel would go. If I slapped Marcel's hand, I could lose Willie's job. I was sweating now and the drops of perspiration beaded up on my oiled physique. Marcel smiled wickedly out of the corner of his mouth and stopped just short of the hair on my forearm. "Mr. Beeman, you had better be more careful. Hit the gym tomorrow. Your losing a little tone."

Quickly I stood on my hands and did twenty controlled pushups hard enough to do on Earth, but on L-1 a pushup required precise control in the lesser gravity or I would wobble and fall over. Marcel wasn't impressed. "Everyone, take your stations," was all he said, dismissing us. Two of the waiters, twins from Osaka, winked at me. One of them said, "Better be careful or Marcel will invite you to his room to see your etchings." He and his brother laughed and I flushed angrily.

"I thought I was going to have to hit him or something to make him back off," I grated. "That pig wouldn't last a minute in the Cincinnati Corridor. He'd be killed just for his water alone. What a moke."

The second twin looked at me sideways and then punched me playfully in the arm. "Willie, you'd better ease up on the 'Nets. Next thing you know, you'll think you really are a private dick or something." The two brothers laughed and went off to their stations.

The twin's remark sobered me quickly and I moved quickly to Willie's/my first table.

It was an eight top. They were Free Traders just in from a deep space voyage, out six years with Earth passengers and cargo and six years back with aliens and hard to find isotopes for fusion reactors. The whole table was quiet. They would speak only to give Willie their orders. I didn't mind. Free Traders were big tippers. They spent a long time away from Earth but they were all rich. Even a vested who had a fiftieth of the cargo could retire on L-1 for the remainder of his life. And L-1 was where he would stay. Twelve years in near weightless travel made return to Earth impossible. The three-quarter G of the Hub was tolerable and the one-sixth at the rim was better. Earth was banned to all of them forever now. But Free Traders didn't care, nor would they retire. I could sense in them the same dependence on deep space that I had on the web. They wanted to get out there again as soon as a cargo could be loaded. L-1 was just a stop on a long procession of voyages from Earth to the galaxy and back again. They rode the molecular sails of their ships on the solar winds and never cared about Earthworms.

I took the Free Traders' orders and keyed them with a menu chip into the comcorder at their table. In the kitchen the head chef, Jim, would read the orders on a huge screen above the grills and ovens. He was the only worker in the Skyview Lounge who did not have a synthchip in his head. He thought of himself as an artist and Skyview's management put up with his fear of electromagnetic petards shunting through his brain.

It would have been easier and less expensive for the customers to have keyed in their own selections, but the Skyview prided itself on an old-fashioned staff of waiters, waitresses and busboys. Each table had white linen table cloths and starched, salmon-colored napkins. The silverware was pure silver and the drinking glasses and wine cups were pure crystal. The costs were enormous but only Clansmen and Clanswomen and Free Traders could afford to visit or live permanently on the station anyway.

While I waited for Jim to acknowledge the order, I wondered what I should do next. Quite possibly Marcia could walk into the dining room and just as possibly she could be boarding a shuttle back to Earth. I needed information and I knew suddenly that that meant Markos. I had to rid myself of this waiter schtick soon.

A dull ping sounded inside my ear. Jim had received the order and I moved quickly to Willie's next table, greeting four Japanese tourists. "Kombonwa." "Good evening, I said, bowing slightly from the waist. The four men buried their faces in their menus and ignored my Japanese. Toyos spoke only System English to outsiders, when they spoke at all. I inserted the menu chip into the comcorder at their table and waited to key in the orders, but they did not say anything. I coughed politely and asked, "Sumimasen. Ano, nani ga i desuka?" Excuse me. What would you like?

The Toyos talked among themselves but continued to ignore me. A tough-looking guy across the table from me was familiar. I had seen him before.

"Gomen nasai. Chumon shimasuka?" I'm sorry. What will you order? I asked him very politely, hoping he would look up. They all continued to hide behind their menus. I don't like being ignored, especially when I'm doing my best to be polite. I thought about taking the hand of the Japanese nearest me and bending his fingers back until he looked directly up at me. Then he dropped his menu and looked at me. His eyes went round and I had his attention or I should say he had mine. The slanting, black eye of a dragon peered at me from the nape of the Toyo's neck. That little voice in the back of my mind was howling at me, "You've made a big mistake." I had seen this moke before from the business end of a laser pistol.

I acted like nothing was unusual. "What would you like to order?" I repeated in English, trying to cover my surprise. He didn't answer, but reached inside his suit coat. I was certain he wasn't going to hand me a tip and I wondered if I could cover the distance to the kitchen before he fired.

The big Japanese then lowered his menu. Blue-red dragons spilled above his shirt collar, turning darker as he grunted in astonishment. He reacted swiftly for a big man and reached across the table before I could move, grabbing my forearm. He turned the wrist and deftly applied a joint lock which doubled me over painfully and brought me hopping over to his side of the table. The little one hissed in perfect System English, "It's the webhead lurking on our circuit."

The two other Toyos remained impassive as though the little guy had just pointed out a speck of dust to them. The big Japanese smiled showing his bad teeth. He clamped down harder, but I stood up suddenly and flexed my body, pushing him backwards in his chair. In the low gravity of the Hub, the Toyo tipped over slowly. He hung onto my forearm with one hand while his other arm windmilled furiously to keep his balance but his Earth reflexes betrayed him in the three-quarter gravity and he only succeeded in pulling me over with him. I fell on him and drove both knees into his solar plexus. Can't say that I minded any when he squealed like a pig in slaughterhouse and let go. I pushed off easily and bolted for the exit.

The little Toyo pulled a laser pistol from his coat and caught me dead in his sights. I stopped and faced him, raising my hands as I did. A part of my mind was detached enough to wonder if this would mean that Willie Beeman would automatically disconnect and save his brain. The Toyo took deliberate aim at my chest. My skin tingled and I could feel the burn even before he pulled the trigger and I winced. I was a goner.

A sudden blast by my left ear and I ducked instinctively, watching in stunned fascination as the laser pistol exploded from the Toyo's hand. Blood splattered in a slow moving rain across the white linen table cloth. The Toyo lurched into the table, overturning it onto the laps of the other two Japanese, and they all toppled to the floor in slow-motion like the Titanic upending into the North Atlantic.

Bells tolled in my left ear from the gun blast and I could barely hear above their roar. A voice whispered in my right ear, "My employer wants a word with you." A hand grabbed me by the loin cloth and yanked me to my feet. Before I could protest, I was dragged through the kitchen and then we were both running onto the main thoroughfare of the hub. It's amazing how a path appears in a crowd when a man waving a gun runs through it towing a half naked man by his loin cloth.

We ducked into a small shrine to the Church of God's Divine Bodily Functions--one of those new religions that pops up on the matrix, lasts a week and then dies out, mostly from boredom with only a few diehards chanting its praises. Pilgrims were lined up in a bizarre array of costumes with little substance to receive communion from a priest wearing only an enormous erection and giving a whole new meaning to the word transubstantiation. We skirted the defrocked Priest and the altar and ran through a small opening at the back of the chancel like camels through the Eye of the Needle. It would have been easier had we been slightly greased, and I left some skin on the door jamb.

After that there were twists and turns, startled tourists and upset coffee carts. I barely had time to wonder where L-1's security was. They should have been all over us but I hadn't heard or seen them since this wild ride had started.

We jumped several levels by riding a gondola that provided a breathtaking view of L-1's recreation of Victoria Falls complete with a hologram of Sir Richard Francis Burton, sporting great black mustachios, recounting his search for the head waters of the Nile. In real life he had never made it, losing out to his rival, Speke. We exited the gondola in the lower levels of L-1 near the Hub's docking ring. Seconds later we were through a pressurized airlock and into a shuttle craft. My rescuer threw a switch and demagnetized the latching hooks. We floated free. He eased the port side throttles forward and we rolled right, away from the Hub. Within seconds, we were arcing toward the plush suites on the Gold Coast side of L-1, 180 degrees opposite of Freeport and I filed away the entire experience under desperate escape measures for future reference.

4

My rescuer needed a good tailor. He was dressed in a cheap gray suit and narrow black tie that made his pallid, flatnosed face look like the south end of a donkey headed north. His hair was cut short and he wore an oversized fedora which gave his head the impression of a seed rattling around in a gourd. He looked like a character out of a cheap novel, which was how this Saturday night was shaping up. The skull and crossbones tattooed on both ear lobes and the silver jack implanted behind his left ear told me he was a cyberdog. Cyberdogs played the HoloNets for profit; not true gamesters who pitted themselves against experienced players for the sake of the game, but mokes who preyed on the newbies. He held the pistol, an old style, single action .38, in his right hand while he guided the shuttle with his left. He looked like he wasn't going to let go of the pistol any time soon, either.

"Thanks...," I hesitated, waiting for him to fill in the vacuum on his name.

"Wilmer," he said.

"Thanks for the help, Wilmer. Now turn this shuttle back toward the Hub. I've got some unfinished business back there with a blonde and some Toyos." I reached for the controls in the co-pilot's chair and he rapped my fingers hard with the butt end of the .38, motioning me to sit back away from the controls.

I rubbed my hand and settled into one of the passenger seats. He wasn't getting any points from me for charisma.

"So who are you taking me to?"

"Kefe," he said. "You think I'm some kinda moke. My boss wants to talk to you. Is all." He shut up then and didn't say anything for the remainder of the fifteen minute ride. I settled back and enjoyed the view.

L-1 is like a Twentieth Century Earthside city. On one arc is Freeport, the slums where the workers and a few middle class traders live, and restaurants and taverns that are dives with nothing more than a few tables and chairs in unadorned shells of tungsten and steel. The rich people live on the Gold Coast part of the ring, angled so they have a permanent view of the Milky Way. Like the suburbs, the farther out you are, the richer you are. Connecting it all through the center lies the Hub, where the best restaurants and casinos are located. The Skyview Lounge occupies the highest level. As far as I'm concerned, the fat cats can have their view of the stars. I never tire of looking at Earth-- 10,000 murders a day and covered with lowlifes like maggots on a corpse-- my kind of planet. We came to the outermost part of the ring where only members from the wealthiest Clans lived. Wilmer docked with a soundless clang at a section which bulged outward from the rest of the station like a bunion. I was shocked by the view. The architecture was a Grafartist's fantasy of Camelot-- spiraling towers and arches of glittering metal that would twist and break apart under the stress of Earth's gravity and topped by crenelated turrets from a giant's Lego set. The castle loomed over us, a gleaming black and white specter out of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, and I swallowed hard, wondering if the owner was going to whisper, "Rosebud," in my ear before he ordered his gunsel to whack me. Wilmer pointed the .38 at me and indicated I was to go first into the airlock. I obliged him and when he followed me into the lock, I whirled, pulling his coat down around his elbows and disarming him. (If you think this is easy in one-sixth G, then try repeating the maneuver in the deep end of a swimming pool and pulling the top down on your ex-wife's bathing suit. You get the picture.) I pushed Wilmer away and he half floated and stumbled into the other side of the airlock. "Go on, knock politely, Wilmer. We shan't be late," I said. Sullen, he pulled his suit coat back up and looking like the cat who lost the mouse, cycled the airlock and went inside. Except for the small cone of light from the airlock, the place was dark. A faint odor of anisette and cigars filled the air. I pushed Wilmer and he stumbled forward into the shadows. A soft chuckle came out of the darkness from the farside and then a dim light came on, illuminating a corner of the chamber. Cigar smoke feathered the gloom. I was standing in a tall room richly Egyptian with dark wood and kilims and beveled glass cabinets filled with Middle Eastern curios. Thick, brightly colored oriental rugs, their sides and corners overlapping, carpeted the steel floor and tickled the soles of my bare feet. The room seemed to extend past the light, but darkness swallowed it up. Fifteen feet in front of me, an enormous man sat in an overstuffed chair, rolls of fat piling up against the richly brocaded wings. He was dressed in a simple kilt and he held a burning cigar in the thick fingers of his left hand. Cuban, I judged, grown illegally in defiance of the UN crop convention. Pendulous folds of neckskin lay upon his chest and his eyes were sunk so deeply in layers of fat that they appeared to be points of light peering out of twin tunnels. His bald white head was ringed by tufts of gray hair. All he needed was a pennant flying the name Mount Adipose. He was stroking a large Persian cat in his lap. The cat surprised me. It must have cost him more than the cigars, at least twenty thousand credits, before boosting it off Earth. But more peculiar than the cat were the shelves of dead tree editions that filled the walls behind him. Beside him on a small table were a pair of reading glasses. Enobarus was the only other person I had ever met who read real books.

"Good Evening, Mr. Drake," the man said in a whispery voice with a slight accent. "We meet at last."

I gave him a Stanley and Livingston. "Mr. Markos, I presume."

He nodded and then smiled gravely at his pet cyberdog. "You see, Wilmer, Mr. Drake is much smarter than you gave him credit for." Wilmer sniffed and looked like he would start whining at any moment. "Mr. Drake," Markos continued in that soft voice like a butterfly wing, "Would you kindly return Wilmer his pistol. He feels lost without it."

I smiled. "Kids shouldn't play with guns. Someone might get hurt."

"I insist."

"Markos, the way I see it, you're in no position to insist on anything. As a matter of fact, I'm going to insist on a little information before I leave."

Markos stroked the Persian thoughtfully. After a few seconds he said, "I suppose a trade of information would be in the best interests of everyone. But really, the gun is such an unnecessary provocation." "Maybe from your end, but I like the view from here, just fine." I settled on the arm of a chair where I could keep Markos and Wilmer covered.

He sighed and shook his head. "I do so dislike having to do things the hard way."

That little voice in the back of my head told me to duck, but not before I felt a sharp pinch on the side of my neck. The room turned fuzzy and I blacked out.)

5

Whatever happened to Wil Drake's private investigator's head scrambled my black widow and suddenly my net was being spammed by the same brain fart over and over. Static storms filed past my eyes and each lightning strike spiked a new high on my pain threshold. I couldn't believe that I was still conscious or maybe I was just experiencing what dying felt like. Then a tug by my left ear told me I was still alive but I was too frozen to do anything about it. Through the escalating noise and torture behind my eyeballs I heard a voice whisper, "He's stabilized. Better leave him jacked in for now until we figure out how to unjam this thing. No telling whether forcing the plug loose will fry his brain or not."

I tried to speak, scream to them to take the chance and yank the plug out, but my words were lost within a haze of pain and I blacked out.

6

(...a calloused hand gripped my jaw and shook me. "He's coming around now," a whiny voice said. My eyes fluttered open. Wilmer let go of me and slapped me on the cheek.

The lights were all blurry and then they came into focus suddenly like a "B" movie. Markos was sitting in his chair stroking the Persian. Cyberdog was standing over me like a pointer, holding the .38. My head felt like the inside of a cement truck.

Markos chuckled. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Mr. Drake."

"If you call this living." I rubbed my eyes and the kaleidoscope of colors made my head ache.

"You'll probably want something for that headache."

"A bag of ice and some Scotch would help." Markos nodded to Wilmer who went to a side bar near the overstuffed chair. Markos had to raise his voice above the hum of the ice making machine. "Allow me to introduce my other associate, the Asp." A small man in a nondescript, dark suit stepped out of the shadows behind me. He carried a black bowler hat in both hands. His eyes were mere slits and his ears were small and pointed like an elf's. I had the feeling that I had seen him somewhere before but I couldn't place his comic strip mug for certain. I had the certainty that he didn't belong on this HoloNet, though quite honestly I wouldn't have been more surprised if a White Rabbit in a checkered weskit with a pocket watch had hopped through the room, claiming to be late.

I groaned. Like the White Rabbit, I could feel time slipping away. Saturday night was coming to an end and I was no nearer any answers than when I started. All I had was a hunch that someone was manipulating the Gamelan, rearranging all of the HoloNets to fit his own whims; and I was a pawn in Wonderland. Wilmer returned with a small ice bag and a brandy. He handed the brandy to Markos and tossed me the ice bag. Markos took a sip and stroked the cat. Then he pressed a stud on his wrist pad and more lights came up in the rest of the room. The room shot back quite a ways. Hallways, promising even more riches in unoccupied space, extended from it and at the far end, I could see through a door to a large kitchen, all tile and stainless steel. From where I stood, most of the room was filled with still more Middle Eastern curios, a cave of wonders. A sarcophagus with the falcon head of the Egyptian God, Horus, stood upright in one corner. On a pedestal by an ancient roll top desk sat a miniature ivory carving of the Sphinx. I wondered whether I would be allowed to leave, if I answered the riddles in this room. "Mr. Drake, let me be honest." He chuckled and took another sip. "No that's asking too much. But let me say that I could simply kill you, but that would be wasteful. I am looking for an item and I have reason to believe that you can help me find it."

I put the ice bag aside and went over to the side bar to pour myself a Scotch.

"I'm looking for something myself," I admitted after I downed the booze. It was 60 proof, 50 years old and as mellow as a nun in church. I poured myself another and sipped this one slowly.

"I'll be blunt," he continued. "I want the package. It's worth a lot of money to me."

"What's in it?" I asked, trying to give myself some time to think. There were a lot of people after that package and Marcia was the key.

His eyes narrowed and nearly disappeared in his face. "You don't know?" Markos seemed a bit agitated. "I had assumed you were told about the item." He heaved himself up from the chair like a whale surfacing and then proceeded to pace ponderously, in spite of the one-sixth gravity, across the rugs. The silence grew while Markos appeared to be considering his options.

"My client paid me a lot of money and told me to bring him a box," I said, filling the gap. A woman named Marcia was supposed to tell me what was in it when she delivered it. "I don't even know what the box looks like."

Like a man who's come to a decision, Markos stopped pacing. He motioned to the Asp who went to the desk at the far side of the room near the door to the kitchen. The Asp opened a drawer and pulled out an ornately decorated cedar chest, a little larger than a jewelry box. He carried it carefully, as though it would explode, across the plush carpeted room and handed it to Markos. The chest was a Chinese puzzle box and I could see no seams.

Markos turned it over. "This box is the companion to the one your client hired you to find." He pressed an edge and the top slid back. He showed it to me. "As you can see this one is empty."

"Illuminating," I said. "But it still doesn't tell me what's in the other box."

"I'll pay you ten times whatever your client has offered you for the item in that box."

I hid my shock. I'm reasonably honest, more so than most private eyes. Twice my client's fee would have been enough to make me seriously consider switching employers. Ten times was alarming. It meant my life wasn't worth a single credit if I didn't accept Markos' offer. I wondered where Marcia fell into all of this.

"You can have the woman," he said, as if reading my thoughts. "Just bring me the item."

"And that would be?

"The Maltese..." His words were cut off as a laser beam split his skull and continued down to his crotch. He literally fell apart at the seams.

7

When a laser cleaves the man on the brink of answering one of life's little mysteries, you don't turn and say thank you.

I cartwheeled over Markos' dead body, grabbing his wrist pad as I flew by. As I rolled away, I pressed several of the studs, rendering the room dark. Wilmer fired once wildly. The sound was deafening. The laser started to quarter the room; the gun banged three more times, the muzzle flash illuminating his hand sticking around the side of Markos' chair. The laser sliced through the armrest and Wilmer screamed.

Two down, I thought. Two to go.

A whistling like a boomerang sliced the air above me. I heard a sound of cloth on metal and the laser died out. Just me and the Asp left. I sprang across the room toward the airlock and slammed up against it in the dark. After a few fumbling seconds, I found the access panel and punched in the opening sequence. I ducked down away from the door while it cycled open. The light from the tube would illuminate the room and all I needed was one clean shot and the Asp was history. I reached for my laser pistol when I realized I was wearing only Willie Beeman's loincloth. I was left literally with my dick in my hand, and unless I was suddenly charged by a horny dryad, the Asp was going to take the title. The airlock door swung open with a hiss of air and I crouched, a deer in the headlights. The Asp had vanished. So had the laser wielding assassin. In the light spilling from the airlock, I could see Wilmer behind the chair, dead, his shoulder burned off, his flesh still smoldering. Blood covered the thick oriental rug. He had evacuated himself and the stench was awful. I recalled how clear and real everything had been when I first appeared on this private channel and I thought to myself that this was a weird kind of Holo-adventure I had jacked into; it was all too real. Holo-adventures were supposed to be nothing more than a collection of photons and pixels beamed directly into a webhead's cerebral cortex. Just part of the Gamelan. But I was unable to disconnect from this Holo-adventure and apparently a person could get iced permanently here. I shuddered to think what would happen to Willie Beeman lying in his room if that happened to me. I put those thoughts aside and looked at my chrono, 22:05. I had less than two hours to solve this mystery, if some gunsel didn't kill me before then. I only had one chance. I had to find Marcia. Wil Drake, P.I., didn't hesitate.

I walked between the mounds of Markos' body, two large hills of flesh in the center of the room. The cedar box was beside the outstretched fingers of his right hand. I picked it up, fiddled with the edges and pressed a spot. The lid slid shut. I took it with me and entered the shuttle.

I suppose that I should have called L-1 security but there would be no explaining a waiter from the Skyview Lounge in a room on the Gold Coast with two dead bodies.

I took the shuttle back to the Hub.

8

Mulling things over during the fifteen minute ride on the shuttle, I decided to I bypass the Hub and go to the airlock nearest Willie's room on the Freeport side. Willie was still stretched out on his bunk, the cable from the HoloNet interface like a feeding tube, filling his brain with food for thought, my thoughts. Saturday night was ending and I didn't have much time to find Marcia and the box, exit this private channel, deliver the item to my client and find someone to disconnect me. I had to find Marcia but I had no idea where to start looking for her. Markos had uttered the word, "Maltese," before a laser beam had cut him in twain. Maybe I should start there. Malta had remained an independent island country in the Mediterranean, south of Sicily. Population 750,000. A lot of people on a small rock. It had been home to the Knights of Malta, the supposed defenders of the Holy Grail. Malta was also a small, extinct breed of dog, having long, silky white hair. It could also be a cat.

Dogs were domesticated mammals from the family, Canis familiaris. They were also wieners sold at baseball games. Cats, other than being the longest running musical on Broadway, were from the family Felis catus. Place the two animals side by side and you would see immediately why dogs were from Mars and cats were from Venus. About the only thing they had in common, besides being soft and furry was that Asians raised them like cattle. This line of thought was taking me nowhere fast and I was running out of ideas and time. I was a rebel without a clue. My wristpad beeped. I pressed a stud and saw Enobarus on the pad's tiny screen. "Da wahine, she be here, is all," he said.

"I'll be right there."

I dressed quickly in the double breasted. My laser pistol slid easily into my shoulder holster. I ran my fingers in my hair a few times and I checked myself out in the mirror. I was hot.

It was 22:30 before I entered the bar. The usual suspects were gathered, scattered among the stools and tables. The lights were dimmer than before. One of the Alphans I had seen earlier was at the synthesizer, pounding out untempoed rhythms. Enobarus was at the bar. He had activated the joy juice machine behind him to handle the simpler drinks. I caught one of his eyes and he angled it to the left. I saw her instantly. She was seated in a corner of the room, half concealed by a column, where the dim light was easy to hide in. She had her back to the wall. On the table in front of her was a box that looked identical to the one I carried in my suit pocket.

Marcia had blonde hair cascading to her waist, leaf green eyes in a heart shaped face and lips that could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch. She was wearing a diaphanous dress over tights that showed her muscles were in all the right places. She was nursing a martini and studying the room without appearing to. A real professional, I told myself.

I walked over to her table and she looked up and smiled. I was reminded of a cat just before it pounces.

"You're hard to find," she said.

"I could turn that around," I answered, pulling a chair up. I sat facing her. I stretched out my hands and saw her tense slightly, but I reached past the box, taking the fingers of her left hand in mine. She relaxed.

"I missed you at the Zodiac," I said.

"It wasn't safe there."

"It isn't safe here." I wasn't going to tell her all I'd been through. I just wanted the box and a way off this channel.

"Then why are you sitting with your back to the door?" Her voice sounded amused but her eyes were as hard as plassilver and just as expensive.

I smiled, let go of her hand and sat back in my seat. "Because, they don't want me; they want what's in the box."

Her lips formed a question, "They?" but the word never came out. Two men emerged from the shadows beside us. It was the Toyos. The little one's right hand was bandaged but he carried a laser pistol in his left. "Quite right, Mr Drake," he said. "We do want what's in the box. But I'm sure our employer would not mind having you and the young lady as a bonus."

We were in a back room of the Skyview Lounge. The box was on a desk and Marcia and I were seated in two chairs in front of it. My chrono said it was fifty-five minutes until midnight. Fifty-five minutes until demolition and not a whole lot of options.

The little Toyo was having a private conversation with his wrist pad. He pushed a stud and turned toward us. "The Fat man will be here soon."

Needing some answers, I said, "While we're waiting, let's see what's in the box."

"Not until the Fat Man arrives."

"You don't have to open it. Just ask Marcia. Afterall, she's his number one, isn't she?" The big one turned red in the face and his dragons glared at me. I knew I'd scored a direct hit.

"Was," the big Toyo grated. "She won't be anyone's number one once the Fat Man finishes with her."

The Toyos' dialogue was still horrible. "You guys need somebody to punch up your lines," I said.

"Shut up, webhead," the big one growled. I opened my mouth but the little one waved his pistol at me and I closed it without a word. I wasn't going to get anymore answers from those two. Meanwhile, Marcia sat as cool and voiceless as an alabaster statue. The case was running on empty. As far as I could figure, Marcia had double crossed her boss for whatever was in that box and was now dragging me down with her. You can become deeply introspective, waiting for a man to arrive to kill you, or you can spend your last minutes finding a way out of the mess you got yourself into. I've heard that every trap and every hopeless situation has a solution if a man is clever enough and determined enough to find it. Only no brilliant ideas of escape floated out of the mists of my cerebral cortex and I was fresh out of gumption. It didn't look as though the Greek God in charge of Private Eyes would suddenly descend to save my ass and resolve the plot, either. Introspection was looking better and better all the time. In a way, waiting helped me come to grips with Willie's impending demolition. I was certain that once this affair ended and I was eliminated by the Toyos, Willie Beeman would be freed from the HoloNet connection and would wake up just fine. Sort of like a schizoid patient who integrates his alter is made whole again. Then tomorrow night, or the next, I would once more be chasing down leads as Willie's alter ego on the P.I. 'Net. The problem was that there was no guarantee that when Willie the waiter jacked back in, the new collection of photons and pixels that shaped the new Wil Drake would have the same integrity as I did, now. I know what you're thinking. HoloNet alter egos aren't supposed to grapple with human philosophical conundrums of life and death. We're a kind of psychic recreation-- a chance for webheads to achieve a glory unavailable in their ordinary lives. We die every night and are resurrected. But I certainly was concerned. The Wil Drake on this personal Holo channel was more alive than at any time in his year long existence and was certainly more exciting than Willie Beeman, waiter. The way I saw it, I could lose my identity. This last thought gave me an idea. Maybe, there was a way out of this trap, afterall, if our captors and Marcia felt the same as I did. I looked at the two Toyo's, standing on the other side of the desk as unconcerned as manikins. Next to me, Marcia remained as self-possessed as a piece of granite. My hopes faded. They might as well be DNA computers. I wouldn't have any luck pulling a Captain Kirk arguing humanity's free will with them. So much for introspection and escape plans. Like Atlas, I shrugged. The door opened. The slim glimmer of hope that it would be Enobarus ended as a small man with elf ears and wearing a black bowler hat walked in covering all of us with a laser pistol. The Asp.

The Toyos dropped their weapons and scurried behind us. Markos waddled in. Marcia gasped then controlled herself.

9

Markos stood in the doorway, his grotesque paunch sucking in the room's space like a black hole. He saw the look on my face and he had the answer even before I asked the question. "Let me assure you, Mr. Drake, and you too, Marcia, I am the real thing. The Markos you saw split in half was a hologram. Pretty useful thing, holographic images. Wouldn't you say?"

I had to agree, it had fooled me. I noted it had fooled his would-be killer, too, but Marcia had the wits to shut up and stay still, the image of diorite. Good girl, I thought, realizing at the same time that I could fall in love with a murderess, especially one as beautiful and dangerous as she was. I kept this last bit to myself and instead I asked, "What about Wilmer? Was he a hologram too?"

"Alas, poor Wilmer was the real McCoy. But he had served his purpose." Marcos smiled and moved clumsily in the three-quarters gravity. The Asp motioned with his pistol and the Toyos scoured the room, finally producing a large chair. Each of us watched with equal amounts of fascination and revulsion as Markos lowered his monstrous girth into it. He was dressed the same as his hologram had been and he looked like a hog being stuffed into a potato sack. It took him a minute to get settled and we all sighed with relief when he was finished.

At last he said, "Now onto our business. You have something I want, I believe."

I pointed to the box on the table between us. "It's right there."

"I meant the box you took from my room."

I sighed and took the other box from my suit coat pocket, then pushed it along side the other one.

Markos had a look on his face like a kid in a candy store. One by one he gathered the boxes to him. He pressed the side of my box first and the top slid back. It was empty. He looked at me with a sad smile. "You disappoint me, Mr. Drake. I had heard of your ability with sleight of hand and I had wagered with the Asp that you had already switched the boxes."

I smiled. "Disappointment happens."

Markos set the box aside and fingered the edge of the second one. The top slid back, revealing the item that had been chased after from New York to L-1 and for which at least two people had been killed. Resting inside the box like a corpse in a coffin was a tiny, black-furred figurine of Horus. Markos sucked in air like a Japanese tourist. He lifted the Falcon God gingerly and held it like a man would hold his own baby. "I've waited seventeen years for this moment," he said.

I blinked and then cleared my throat. "All this brouhaha over a doll?" I said, dumbfounded.

Markos chuckled. "Not just any doll, Mr Drake, but the Maltese Furby. Only one had ever been made and it's worth a million credits at least. But more important than its worth is that it is now mine."

"Not for long!" a voice boomed from the door.

Marcel stood there in his emerald green tuxedo like an enormous leprechaun. He held a laser pistol in his right hand and with his left he motioned to the Asp to drop his pistol. The Asp reacted like Bruce Willis and ended up on the floor with a smoking pinhole in his third eye.

The Toy boys picked up their hardware and went over to stand beside Marcel.

"So you're the Fat Man," I said. "I should have guessed."

"At your service, Willie. Now, I'll take the item!" Marcel barked.

Markos' jowls quivered like jello. "You can't have it," he squealed. "It's mine."

Marcel shrugged. "You can hold on to it until you die, or you can hand it over to me and live," he said.

I winced at his words and vowed to myself that if I ever found the people who wrote this Holoscript, I'd throw them from a cliff and let God sort them out.

Slowly, I reached across the table and took the Maltese Furby from Markos. He resisted. "It's over," I said gently. Trembling, he let go with a sad little sigh and the life seemed to pour out of him. I suppose Markos' loss was a lesson that you can put too much emphasis on material goods. On the other hand, in virtual reality, what else is there. It's not like the man with most toys doesn't win. This revelation didn't stop me from playing it smart, though. I put the doll into one of the cedar chests, closed it and shoved the box across the table.

Marcel picked up the box and smiled at us. His pistol never wavered and for a minute I thought he was going to slice us all as neatly as a cherry pie. Instead, he came over and stood next to me, running his twinkie sized fingers over the folds of my suit. "You have such wonderful definition, Willie, it would be a crime against the world of art to kill you."

"Just tell me one thing, Marcel" I said. "You're the one who's been manipulating the Nets, right?" "I think I'll let you stay in ignorance, Willie, or should I say, Mr. Drake." He shot me a look and I realized that Marcel had known all along who I really was. He turned slowly toward Marcia. "As for you." Without warning, Marcel slapped her savagely across the cheek, leaving scarlet weals on her skin. Her head never moved and she didn't make a sound. I wondered if he had hurt his fingers on her stony features. "Don't ever cross my path again," he warned her. Then mercifully he and the Toyos left without saying another word.

As soon as Marcel had disappeared, Markos grabbed my coat sleeve and screamed at me, "I'll give you 500,000 credits to get it back!"

I shook him off and stood up. "Not interested." He pleaded, cajoled and threatened me, but in the end, I left him sobbing like a little boy on Christmas day with a broken choo-choo.

At the door I stared back at Marcia. "You coming?" I asked. She nodded and we left the room.

At the bar Enobarus was making an Irish coffee. Marcia and I sat at the bar across from him. She looked about as glum as an indicted politician. I wasn't feeling so bad except for the time running out on the clock, but that I couldn't help anymore than I could stop a Senator from lying. I held up two fingers and signaled Enobarus for a pair of Scotches, neat.

"Hey, blalah," I said, when he brought them over. "You meet da wahine, Marcia. Marcia, my blalah, Enobarus."

He laid out his hand palm up, the fingers slender and fine boned, each with a long, delicate fingernail hooked like a tiny claw. She laid the back of her hand into his. "Pleased to meet you, Grrrunhnk," she said, pronouncing his name flawlessly. His eyes gleamed and he said something to her in Tau Cetan. She answered and I was ignored like last week's protein mash. I got up to leave and pulled a cedar box from my coat pocket. Pushing it across the bar to Enobarus, I said, "This should square us on the rent and the HoloNets."

I squeezed the edge and the lid slid back. Inside was the Maltese Furby. Marcia started. "You switched the boxes!" she cried out, her marble poise cracking. I gave her my best Bogart, "Sweetheart, magic can change your life."

"Kefe!" Enobarus said. "You one good blalah. Is all." I think he grinned. It's hard to tell.

I drifted out of the bar toward Willie Beeman's room. My chrono said I had five minutes until midnight. Not much time left so I figured I'd watch what happened to Willie the waiter in the last seconds of his/my existence. Not that I was ready to read Sartre or Heidegger, it just seemed that there wasn't much point to anything else. I cycled through the hub's airlock and a fist slammed me in the stomach, doubling me over. "That was my left hand, Willie-boy. I've been working out since you last saw me."

Gasping, I straightened. "We've got to stop meeting like this, Dix. It's bad for my suits."

He hurled me down the corridor, and I spun slowly in one-sixth gee skipping five times on the carpet like a stone on a lake. I laughed then, thinking it must be some kind of record. "What's so funny?" Dix asked.

"Your breath and a buffalo fart."

He picked me up and flung me hard to the other side. A potted plant broke my fall. "Don't get smart with me, Willie-boy."

"That would be tough," I conceded. He came at me again. "Hold off, Dix. In three more minutes I'm history anyway."

He stood back. Stupid barely covered the look on his face. What a moke. But looking at him standing there confused as a Girl Scout at a crap game, I realized that Dix wasn't a player. I mean that he wasn't real. He was a holo-figure, part of the HoloNets' repertory of hologram actors, created to fill out the cast of characters for the P.I. 'Net's storyline. I laughed at the irony of an alter ego calling a hologram unreal. I quickly sobered and shoved the Joycean surrealism aside. Dix's sudden appearance prompted an idea buzzing in the back of my brain.

"How'd you get in here?" I asked.

"Why?" he asked, on guard.

"Humor me."

He snorted. "As if it matters. When I finish with you, my appearance will be the least of your worries. I followed you into the Zodiac but you'd vanished. When I asked Vinnie where you'd gone, he gave me some cockamaimie line about one second you were kissing the carpet like the face on the barroom floor and the next you got all sparkly like and disappeared. I tried to shake the truth out of him, but he wouldn't budge from his story. When I turned around to call for a unit to pick him up, he slugged me on the back of my skull. I woke up here, just before you came in."

The idea thundered in my head. I checked my watch. One minute to go. It was a long shot, but I was willing to try anything. I got off the floor and went over to Dix. "Sorry about this Dix, but it can't be helped." I cuffed him twice across the face. He looked stunned for a second but then he reacted the way I knew he would. He hit me as hard as he could and I smashed against the bulkhead. Everything went dark.)

Waves of static crashed against the bony pier of my skull. My thoughts bobbed like a skiff in a storm and the muscles of my body thrummed like taut hawsers in a hurricane. A far away voice said, "It's almost midnight. We have to jack him out now!"

Numbly I agreed.

Two hands held my head while a third clawed at the female receptor behind my left ear. A twisting pain seared my flesh followed by what felt felt like a spike being removed from my neck. Then the pain subsided abruptly. My eyes opened and I saw Jim the cook and a waiter from the Skyview hovering over me. Jim held the blunt end of a connector in his right hand. It was charred and useless, the way my head felt. "Thanks," I croaked. Then blackness, cool and painless.

(I peeled myself off the floor and shook my head. The static was gone. My body felt whole and uninjured. In fact, I never felt better. I recognized the furniture and the decor and the twenty or so people sitting at tables and I knew that I was back in the Zodiac Lounge. When I turned around, Vinnie was standing at the bar holding a bottle of Jim Beam. He went white, dropped the whiskey like a hot rock and fled the bar. I checked my chrono. It was three minutes after midnight. I felt good, not even a little fuzzy. My suit looked as though it had been freshly pressed. I can't explain why I was standing there, unhurt and whole, or what had happened to Willie the waiter up on L-1. Nor am I going to spend time trying to reason out the realities of separate existences. I'm no philosopher and besides, the ways of the world and its philosophical underpinnings do not hold much interest for me. I'm a P. I. and it's enough for me to know that there are murders to solve and items people have that don't belong to them that others want returned. As far as I was concerned everything had worked out for the best. And on top of that, it was still Saturday night. Smiling, I walked out of the Zodiac, rode the lift to the ground level and went out to find my flitter. The valet blew off my tip. Back on the strip, the rain made diamonds on my windshield and somewhere ahead in the dim night a curvy blonde waited for me, Wil Drake, P.I.)