from  time  to  time--but  I  never  got  really
depressed, as in goodbye-cruel-world depressed.
     I concluded that keeping busy was the best therapy.
     #
     One of the one thousand, one hundred and  twentyone  other
people  who  died  in Nirvana was the mother of the Princess of
Wales,  the  King  of  England,  Henry  XI.  In  spite  of  his
impressive  title,  Hank  had  never  in his life done anything
worth a back-feed article in the Nipple,  until  he  died.  And
that's where the obit ran, the backfeed, with a small "isn't it
ironic"  graph  by  a cub reporter mentioning a few of his more
notorious relatives: Richard  III,  Henry  VIII,  Mary  Stuart.
Walter  blue-penciled most of it for the next edition, with the
immortal  words  "nobody  gives   a   shit   about   all   that
Shakespearean  crap,"  and  substituted  a sidebar about Vickie
Hanover and her weird ideas about sex that influenced an entire
age.
     The only reason Henry XI was in Nirvana in the first place
was that he was in charge of the plumbing in dome #3.  Not  the
air system; the sewage.
     But  the  upshot  was that, on my first free day since the
disaster,  my  phone  informed  me  that  someone  not  on   my
"accept-calls"  list wanted to speak to me, and was identifying
herself as Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. I drew a  blank  for  a
moment,  then realized it was the terrifying fighting machine I
had known as Wales. I let the call through.
     She spent the  first  few  minutes  apologizing  all  over
again, asking if her check had arrived, and please call me Liz.
     "Reason  I called," she finally said, "I don't know if you
heard, but my mother died in the Nirvana disaster."
     "I did  know  that.  I'm  sorry,  I  should  have  sent  a
condolence card or something."
     "That's  okay. You don't really know me well enough, and I
hated the boozing son-of-a-bitch anyway. He made my  life  hell
for  many  years. But now that he's finally gone . . . see, I'm
having this sort of coronation party tomorrow and I wondered if
you'd like to come? And a guest, too, of course."
     I wondered if the invitation was the result of  continuing
guilt  over  the way she'd torn me apart, or if she was angling
for coverage in the pad. But I didn't mention either  of  those
things.  I was about to beg off, then remembered there had been
something I'd wanted to talk to her about. I accepted.
     "Oh," I said, as she was about  to  ring  off.  "Ah,  what
about dress? Should it be formal?"
     "Semi,"  she said. "No need for any full uniforms. And the
reception afterward will be informal. Just a party, really. Oh,
and no gifts." She laughed. "I'm only supposed to accept  gifts
from other heads of state."
     "That lets me out. See you tomorrow."
     #
     The Royal Coronation was held in Suite #2 of the spaceport
Howard's  Hotel,  a  solidly  middleclass  hostelry  favored by
traveling salespeople and business types just in King City  for
the  day.  I  was  confronted  at  the  door  by  a  man  in  a
red-andblack military uniform that featured a fur hat almost  a
meter  high.  I  vaguely  recalled  the  outfit from historical
romances. He was rigidly at attention beside a guardhouse about
the size of a coffin standing on end. He glanced  at  my  faxed
invitation,  opened the door for me, and the familiar roar of a
party in progress spilled into the hall.
     Liz had managed  a  pretty  good  turn-out.  Too  bad  she
couldn't  have  afforded  to  hire  a  bigger hall. People were
standing elbow to elbow,  trying  to  balance  tiny  plates  of
olives  and  crackers with cheese and anchovy paste in one hand
and paper cups of punch and champagne in the other while  being
jostled  from  all sides. I sidled my way to the food, as is my
wont when it's free, and scanned it  dubiously.  UniBio  set  a
better  table,  I must say. Drinks were being poured by two men
in the  most  outrageous  outfits.  I  won't  even  attempt  to
describe them. I later learned they were called Beefeaters, for
reasons that will remain forever obscure to me.
     Not  that  my  own  clothes  were anything to shout about.
She'd said semi-formal, so I could have gotten away  with  just
the  gray fedora and the press pass stuck in the brim. But upon
reflection I decided to  go  with  the  whole  silly  ensemble,
handing  the  baggy  pants and double-breasted suit coat to the
auto-valet with barely enough time for alterations. I left  the
seat  and  the  legs loose and didn't button the coat; that was
part of the look my guild, in its infinite wisdom, had voted on
almost two hundred years ago when  professional  uniforms  were
being  chosen.  It  had been taken from newspaper movies of the
1930's. I'd viewed a lot of them, and was amused at  the  image
my  fellow  reporters  apparently  wanted  to project at formal
events: rumpled, aggressive,  brash,  impolite,  wise-cracking,
but  with hearts o' gold when the goin' got tough. Sure, and it
made yer heart proud ta be a reporter, by  the  saints.  For  a
little fun, I'd worn a white blouse with a bunch of lace at the
neck  instead  of  the  regulation  ornamental noose known as a
neck-tie. And I'd tied my hair up and stuffed it under the hat.
In the mirror I'd looked just like Kate Hepburn masquerading as
a boy, at least from the neck up. From there down the suit hung
on me like a tent, but such was the cunning architecture of  my
new  body that anything looked good on it. I'd saluted my image
in the mirror: here's lookin' at you, Bobbie.
     Liz spotted me and made her way toward me  with  a  shout.
She  was  already half looped. If her late mother had given her
nothing else, she had seemingly inherited  his  taste  for  the
demon  rum.  She  embraced  me  and thanked me for coming, then
swirled off again into the crowd. Well, I'd corner  her  later,
after the ceremony, if she could still stand up by then.
     What  followed hasn't changed much in four or five hundred
years. For almost an hour people kept arriving,  including  the
hotel  manager  who had a hasty conference with Liz--concerning
her credit rating, I expect--and  then  opened  the  connecting
door  to Suite #1, which relieved the pressure for a while. The
food and champagne ran out, and  was  replenished.  Liz  didn't
care   about   the   cost.  This  was  her  day.  It  was  your
proto-typical daytime party.
     I met several people I  knew,  was  introduced  to  dozens
whose  names  I  promptly forgot. Among my new friends were the
Shaka of the Zulu Nation, the Emperor of Japan,  the  Maharajah
of  Gujarat,  and  the  Tsarina of All the Russias, or at least
people in silly costumes who styled themselves that  way.  Also
countless  Counts,  Caliphs,  Archdukes,  Satraps,  Sheiks  and
Nabobs. Who was I to dispute their titles?  There  had  been  a
vogue  in  such  genealogy about the time Callie had grudgingly
expelled  my  ungrateful  squalling  form   into   a   lessthan
overwhelmed  world;  Callie  had  even  told me she thought she
might be related to Mussolini, on her mother's side.  Did  that
make  me  the  heirapparent  of  Il  Duce?  It wasn't a burning
question to me. I overheard intense debates about the rules  of
primogeniture--even  Salic Law, of all things--in an age of sex
changing. Someone--I think it was the Duke of York--gave  me  a
lecture  about  it  shortly before the ceremony, explaining why
Liz was inheritor to the throne, even though she had a  younger
brother.
     After  escaping  from  that with most of my wits intact, I
found  myself  out  on  the  balcony,  nursing   a   strawberry
Margarita. Howard's had a view, but it was of the cargo side of
the  spaceport.  I  looked  out over the beached-whale hulks of
bulk  carriers  expelling  their  interplanetary  burdens  into
waiting underground tanks. I was almost alone, which puzzled me
for  a  moment,  until  I remembered a story I'd seen about how
many people had suddenly lost their taste for surface views  in
the  wake  of  the Kansas Collapse. I drained my drink, reached
out and tapped the invisible curved canopy that held vacuum  at
bay, and shrugged. Somehow I didn't think I'd die in a blowout.
I had worse things to fear.
     Somebody held out another pink drink with salt on the rum.
I took  it  and  looked  over  and  up--and up and up--into the
smiling face of Brenda, girl reporter and apprentice giraffe. I
toasted her.
     "Didn't expect to see you here," I said.
     "I got acquainted with the  Princess  after  your  .  .  .
accident."
     "That was no accident."
     She  prattled  on about what a nice party it was. I didn't
disillusion her. Wait till she'd attended a few  thousand  more
just like it, then she'd see.
     I'd been curious what Brenda's reaction would be to my new
sex. To my chagrin, she was delighted. I got the skinney from a
homo-oriented  friend  at  the  fashion  desk: Brenda was young
enough to still be exploring her own sexuality, discovering her
preferences. She'd already been pretty sure she  leaned  toward
females  as  lovers, at least when she was a woman. Discovering
her preferences as a male would have  to  wait  for  her  first
Change.  After all, until quite recently she'd been effectively
neuter. The only problem she'd had in her crush on me was  that
she  wasn't  much  attracted to males. She had thought it would
remain platonic until I thoughtfully made everything perfect by
showing up at work as my gorgeous new self.
     I really, really didn't have the heart to tell  her  about
my preferences.
     And  I  did owe her. She had been covering for me, putting
my  by-line  on  the  Invasion  Bicentennial  stories  she  was
writing,  the  stories I simply could no longer bring myself to
work on. Oh, I was helping, answering her questions, going over
her drafts, punching up the prose, showing  her  how  to  leave
just  enough excess baggage in the stories so Walter would have
something to cut out and shout at her about and thus  remain  a
happy  man.  I  think  Walter was beginning to suspect what was
going on, but he hadn't said anything yet because expecting  me
to cover the Collapse and get in our weekly feature was unfair,
and  he  knew  it.  The thing he should have foreseen before he
ever came up with his cockamamie Invasion series was that there
would always be a story like the Collapse happening, and  as  a
good  editor  he  had  to  assign  his best people to it, which
included me. Oh, yeah, if you wanted  somebody  to  intrude  on
grief  and  ogle  bodies puffed up like pink and brown popcorn,
Hildy was your girl.
     "Tell me, sweetheart, how did you feel when  you  saw  the
man cut your daddy's head off?"
     "What?" Brenda was looking at me strangely.
     "It's  the  essential disaster/atrocity question," I said.
"They don't tell you  that  in  Journalism  101,  but  all  the
questions  we  ask, no matter how delicately phrased, boil down
to that. The idea is to get the first appearance of  the  tear,
the  ineffable  moment  when  the  face twists up. That's gold,
honey. You'd better learn how to mine it."
     "I don't think that's true."
     "Then you'll never be a great reporter. Maybe  you  should
try social work."
     I  saw  that I had hurt her, and it made me angry, both at
her and at myself. She had to understand these things,  dammit.
But  who  appointed you, Hildy? She'll find out soon enough, as
soon  as  Walter  takes  her   off   these   damn   comparative
anthropology  stories  that  our readers don't even want to see
and lets her get out where she can grub in the  dirt  like  the
rest of us.
     I  realized I'd drunk a little more than I had intended. I
dumped the rest of my drink in a thirsty-looking potted  plant,
snagged  a  coke  from  a  passing tray, and performed a little
ritual I'd come  to  detest  but  was  powerless  to  stop.  It
consisted  of a series of questions, like this: Do you feel the
urge to hurl yourself off  this  balcony,  assuming  you  could
drill a hole through that ultralexan barrier? No. Great, but do
you  want  to  throw a rope over that beam and haul yourself up
into the rafters? Not today, thank you. And so on.
     I  was  about  to  say  something  nice  and  neutral  and
soothing,  suitable  for  the  reassurance  of  idealistic  cub
reporters,  when  the  Jamaican  steel  band  which  had   been
reprising every patriotic British song since the Spanish Armada
suddenly  struck  up  God  Save  The  Queen, and somebody asked
everyone to haul their drunken asses down to the main ballroom,
where the coronation was about to commence. Not in those words,
of course.
     #
     There was another  band  in  the  ballroom,  playing  some
horrible  modern version of Rule Britannia. This was the public
portion of the show, and I guess Liz thought it ought  to  make
some  attempt to appeal to the tastes of the day. I thought the
music was dreadful, but Brenda was snapping her fingers,  so  I
suppose it was at least current.
     A  few  specialty  channels and some of the 'pads had sent
reporters, but the crowd in the ballroom  was  essentially  the
same folks I'd been avoiding up in the Suites one and two, only
they  weren't  holding  drinks. A lot of them looked as if they
wished the show would hurry  up,  so  they  could  hold  drinks
again, for a short time, at least.
     One  touch  Liz  hadn't expected was the decorations. From
the whispers I overheard, she'd only booked the  hall  for  one
hour.  When  the  coronation  was  over  a  wedding  party  was
scheduled to hold a reception there, so the walls  were  draped
in  white bunting and repulsive little cherubs, and there was a
big sign hung on the wall that said Mazel  Tov!  Liz  looked  a
little   nonplussed.  She  glanced  around  with  that  baffled
expression one sometimes gets after wandering  into  a  strange
place. Could there have been a mistake?
     But  the  coronation  itself went off without a hitch. She
was proclaimed "Elizabeth III, by  the  Grace  of  God  of  the
United  Kingdom  of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland
and of her other Realms  and  Territories,  Queen,  Empress  of
India, Head of the Commonwealth and Defender of the Faith."
     Sure,  it was easy to snicker, and I did, but to myself. I
could see that Liz  took  it  seriously,  almost  in  spite  of
herself.  No  matter  how  spurious the claims of some of these
other clowns might have  been  to  ancient  titles,  Liz's  was
spotless  and unquestioned. The actual Prince of Wales had been
living and working on Luna at the time of the Invasion, and she
was descended from him.
     The original Crown Jewels had  naturally  not  accompanied
the  King  in  Exile to Luna; they were buried with the rest of
London--of England, of Europe, of the whole surface  of  Planet
Earth.  Liz had the use of a very nice crown, orb, and sceptre.
Hovering in the background as these items were produced  was  a
man  from Tiffany's. Not the one in the Platz, but the discount
outlet down on Leystrasse, where even as the tiara was  lowered
onto  Liz's head a sign was going up announcing "By Appointment
to Her Majesty, The Queen." The jewels were  hired,  and  would
soon reside in a window advertising the usual E-Z Credit Terms.
     A  procession was traditional after a coronation back when
the Empire had any real meaning--and even after it  had  become
just  a tourist attraction. But processions can be difficult to
organize in the warrens of Luna, where the cities  are  usually
broken  up into pressure-defensible malls and arcades connected
by tube trains. So after the ceremony we all straggled  into  a
succession  of  subway  cars  and  zipped  across town to Liz's
neighborhood, many of us growing steadily more sober and unsure
why we'd come in the first place.
     But all was well. The real party began when we arrived  at
the  post-coronation  reception, held in the Masonic Lodge Hall
half-way between Liz's  apartment  and  the  studio  where  she
worked.  In addition to its many other virtues the lodge didn't
cost her anything, which  meant  she  could  spend  what  royal
budget she had left entirely on food, booze, and entertainment.
     This bash was informal and relaxed, the only kind I enjoy.
The band was good, playing a preponderance of things from Liz's
teenage  years,  which  put  them  mid-way  between  my era and
Brenda's. It was stuff I could dance to. So I stumbled out into
the public  corridor  in  my  twotone  Oxford  lace-ups--and  a
clunkier  shoe  has  never  been invented--found a mail box and
called my valet. I told it to pack up the drop-dead shiny black
sheath dress slit from the ankles to you-should-only-blush  and
'tube it over to me. I went into the public comfort station and
changed  my  hair  color to platinum and put a long wave in it,
and when I came out,  three  minutes  later,  the  package  was
waiting  for  me.  I  stripped out of the Halloween costume and
stuffed it into the return capsule, cajoled my  abundance  into
the  outfit's  parsimonious  interior.  Just  getting into that
thing was almost enough to give you an orgasm. I left  my  feet
bare.  And  to hell with Kate Hepburn; Veronica Lake was on the
prowl.
     I danced almost non-stop for two hours. I  had  one  dance
with  Liz,  but she was naturally much in demand. I danced with
Brenda, who was a very good if visually unlikely terpsichorean.
Mostly I danced with a succession of men, and I turned  down  a
dozen  interesting offers. I'd selected my eventual target, but
I was in no hurry unless he suddenly decided to leave.
     He didn't. When I was ready I cut him out of the  herd.  I
put a few moves on him, mostly in the form of dance steps whose
meaning  couldn't  have  been  missed by a eunuch. He wanted to
join the rather sparsely-attended orgy going on in  one  corner
of  the  ballroom,  but  I  dragged  him off to what the Masons
called, too coyly in my opinion, snuggle rooms. We spent a very
enjoyable hour in one of them. He  liked  to  be  spanked,  and
bitten.   It's  not  my  thing,  but  I  can  accommodate  most
consenting adults as long as my needs are attended to as  well.
He  did  a  very  good  job of that. His name was Larry, and he
claimed to be the Duke of Bosnia-Herzegovina,  but  that  might
have been just to get into my pants. The couple of times I drew
blood he asked me to do it again, so I did, but eventually lost
my  .  .  . well, my taste for that sort of thing. We exchanged
phone codes and said we'd look each  other  up,  but  I  didn't
intend  to.  He  was  nice to look at but I felt I'd chewed off
about as much as I wanted.
     I staggered back into the ballroom drenched in  sweat.  It
had  been very intense there for a while. I headed for the bar,
dodging dancers. The faint-hearted had left, leaving about half
the original attendees, but those looked ready  to  party  till
Monday  morning.  I  eased  my pinkened, pleasantly sore cheeks
onto a padded barstool  next  to  the  Queen  of  England,  the
Empress of India, and the Defender of the Faith, and Liz slowly
turned her head toward me. I now knew where her impressive ears
came  from.  There  were  posters of past monarchs taped to the
walls here, and she was the spitting image of Charles III.
     "Innkeeper," she shouted, above the music. "Bring me salt.
Bring me tequila.  Bring  me  the  nectar  of  the  lime,  your
plumpest  strawberries,  your coldest ice, your finest crystal.
My friend needs a drink, and I intend to build it for her."
     "Ain't got no strawberries," the bartender said.
     "Then go out and kill some!"
     "It's all right, Your Majesty,"  I  said.  "Lime  will  be
fine."
     She  grinned  foolishly at me. "I purely do like the sound
of that. 'Your Majesty.' Is that awful?"
     "You're entitled, as they say. But don't expect me to make
a habit of it." She draped an arm over my shoulder and  exhaled
ethanol.
     "How are you, Hildy? Having a good time? Getting laid?"
     "Just did, thank you."
     "Don't thank me. And you look it, honey, if I may say so."
     "Didn't have time to freshen up yet."
     "You don't need to. Who did the work?"
     I  showed  her  the monogram on the nail of my pinkie. She
squinted at it, and seemed to lose interest, which  might  have
meant  that  Bobbie's  fears  of  falling  out  of fashion were
well-grounded-- Liz would be up on these things--or  only  that
her attention span was not what it might be.
     "What  was  I  gonna  say? Oh, yeah. Can I do anything for
you, Hildy? There's a tradition among my people  .  .  .  well,
maybe  it's  not an English tradition, but it's somebody's damn
tradition, what you gotta do is, anybody asks you for  a  favor
on your coronation day, you gotta grant it."
     "I think that's a Mafia tradition."
     "Is it? Well, it's your people, then. So just ask. Only be
real,  okay?  I mean, if it's gonna cost a lot of money, forget
it. I'm gonna be payin' for this fucking shivaree for the  next
ten fucking years. But that's okay. It's only money, right? And
what a party. Am I right?
     "As  a matter of fact, there is something you could do for
me."
     I was about to tell her, but  the  bartender  delivered  a
Margarita  in  its  component  parts,  and Liz could only think
about one thing at a time. She spilled a lot  of  salt  on  the
bar,  spread it out, moistened the rim of a wide glass, and did
things necessary to produce a too-strong concoction  with  that
total   concentration   of   the  veteran  drunk.  She  did  it
competently, and I sipped at the drink I hadn't really wanted.
     "So. Name it, kiddo, and it's yours. Within reason."
     "If you . . . let's say . . . if  you  wanted  to  have  a
conversation  with  somebody,  and you wanted to be sure no one
would overhear it . . . what would you do?  How  would  you  go
about it?"
     She  frowned  and  her  brow  furrowed. She appeared to be
thinking heavily, and her hand toyed with the layer of salt  in
front of her.
     "Now  that's  a  good one. That's a real good one. I'm not
sure if anyone's ever asked me that before." She looked  slowly
down  at  the  salt,  where  her  finger had traced out CC??. I
looked up at her, and nodded.
     "You know what bugs are like these days. I'm not  sure  if
there's any place that can't be bugged. But I'll tell you what.
I know some techs back at the studio, they're real clever about
these  things.  I could ask them and get back to you." Her hand
had wiped out the original message and written p-suit. I nodded
again, and saw that while she was without a  doubt  very,  very
drunk,  she  knew  how  to handle herself. There was a glint of
speculation in those eyes I wasn't sure  I  liked.  I  wondered
what I might be getting myself into.
     We  talked  a while longer, and she wrote out a time and a
destination in the salt crystals. Then someone else sat next to
her and started fondling her breasts  and  she  was  showing  a
definite interest, so I got up and returned to the dance floor.
     I danced almost an hour longer, but my heart wasn't really
in it.  A  guy  made  a  play  for  me,  and he was pretty, and
persuasive, and a very good, raunchy dancer, but in the  end  I
felt he just didn't try hard enough. When I'm not the aggressor
I can choose to take a lot of persuading. In the end I gave him
my  phone code and said call me in a week and we'd see, and got
the impression he probably wouldn't.
     I showered and bought a paper chemise in the locker  room,
staggered  to  the tube terminal, and got aboard. I fell asleep
on the way home, and the train had to wake me up.

        =*= =*= =*= =*=

        CHAPTER ELEVEN









     I've read about hangovers. You just about have to  believe
those  people  were exaggerating. If only a tenth of the things
written about them were true, I have no  desire  to  experience
one.  The  hangover  was  cured  long before I was born, just a
simple chemical matter, really, no tough science involved.  I'd
sometimes  wondered  if that was a good idea. There's an almost
biblical belief deep in the human psyche that we should pay  in
some  way  for  our over-indulgences. But when I think that, my
rational side soon takes over.  Might  as  well  wish  for  the
return of the hemorrhoid.
     When I woke up the next morning, my mouth tasted good.
     Too good.
     "CC, on line," quoth I.
     "What can I do for you?"
     "What's with the peppermint?"
     "I thought you liked peppermint. I can change the flavor."
     "There's  nothing  wrong  with  peppermint qua peppermint.
It's just passing strange to wake up with my mouth tasting like
anything but . . . well, it wouldn't mean anything  to  you,  I
don't  guess taste is one of your talents, but take my word for
it, it's vile."
     "You asked me to work on that. I did."
     "Just like that?"
     "Why not?"
     I was about to answer, but Fox stirred in  his  sleep  and
turned  over, so I got out of bed and went into the bathroom. I
had shaken out a  toothcleaning  pill,  then  I  looked  at  it
sitting there in my hand.
     "Do I need this, then?"
     "No. It's gone the way of the toothbrush."
     "And  science  marches on. You know, I'm used to what they
call future shock, but I'm not used to being the cause of it."
     "Humans usually are the cause of the new inventions."
     "You said that."
     "But you can never tell when a human will take the time to
work on a particular problem. Now, I have no talent for  asking
questions like that. As you noted, my mouth never tastes bad in
the  morning,  so  why  should  I?  But  I have a lot of excess
capacity, and when a question  like  that  is  asked,  I  often
tinker  with  it and sometimes come up with a solution. In this
case, I synthesized a nanobot that goes after the  things  that
would  normally  rot  in your mouth while you are sleeping, and
changes them into things that taste good. They also clean  away
plaque and tartar and have a beneficial effect on gums."
     "I'm afraid to ask how you slipped this stuff to me."
     "It's in the water supply. You don't need much of it."
     "So   every  Lunarian  is  waking  up  today  and  tasting
peppermint?"
     "It comes in six delicious flavors."
     "Are you writing your own ad campaigns now? Do me a favor;
don't tell anyone this is my fault."
     I got into the shower and it turned on, gradually  warming
to  just  a  degree below the hottest I could stand. Don't ever
say anything about showers,  Hildy,  I  cautioned  myself.  The
goddam  CC  might  find  a  way to clean the human hide without
them, and I think I'd go mad without my morning shower.  I'm  a
singer  in  the  shower.  Lovers  have  told  me I do this with
indifferent esthetic effect, but it pleases  me.  As  I  soaped
myself I thought about a nanobot-infested world.
     "CC.  What  would  happen  if all those tiny little robots
were taken out of my body?"
     "Doing it would be impractical, to say the least."
     "Hypothetically."
     "You would be hypothetically dead within a year."
     I dropped the  soap.  I  don't  know  what  answer  I  had
expected, but it hadn't been that.
     "Are you serious?"
     "You asked. I replied."
     "Well . . . shit. You can't just leave it lying there."
     "I  suppose  not.  Then  let me list the reasons in order.
First, you  are  prone  to  cancer.  Billions  of  manufactured
organisms  work  night  and day seeking out and eating pinpoint
tumors throughout your body. They find one almost every day. If
left  unchecked,  they  would  soon  eat  you  alive.   Second,
Alzheimer's Disease."
     "What the hell is that?"
     "A  syndrome  associated  with  aging. Simply put, it eats
away at your brain cells.  Most  human  beings,  upon  reaching
their  hundredth  birthday  in  a  natural  state,  would  have
contracted it. This is an example of  the  reconstructive  work
constantly  going  on  in  your  body.  Failing brain cells are
excised and duplicated with healthy ones so the neural  net  is
not  disrupted.  You  would have forgotten your name and how to
find your way home years ago; the disease  started  showing  up
about the time you went to work at the Nipple."
     "Hah!  Maybe  those  things didn't do as good a job as you
thought. That would go a long way toward explaining . . . never
mind. There's more?"
     "Lung disease. The air in  the  warrens  is  not  actually
healthy  for  human  life. Things get concentrated, things that
could be cleaned from the air are not, because replacing  lungs
is  so  much  cheaper and simpler than cleaning up the air. You
could live in a disneyland to offset this; I  must  filter  the
air  much  more  rigorously in there. As it is, several hundred
alveoli are re-built in  your  lungs  every  day.  Without  the
nanobots, you'd soon begin to miss them."
     "Why didn't anyone ever tell me about all this?"
     "What  does  it  matter?  If you'd researched it you could
have found out; it's not a secret."
     "Yeah, but . . . I thought those kind of things  had  been
engineered out of the body. Genetically."
     "A popular misconception. Genes are certainly manipulable,
but they've  proved resistant to some types of changes, without
. . . unacceptable alterations in the gestalt, the  body,  they
produce and define."
     "Can you put that more plainly?"
     "It's difficult. It can be explained in terms of some very
complicated  mathematical  theories  having  to do with chaotic
effects and chemical holography. There's often no  single  gene
for  this  or that characteristic, good or bad. It's more of an
interference pattern produced by the overlapping effects  of  a
number  of genes, sometimes a very large number. Tampering with
one produces unintended side-effects, and tampering  with  them
all is often impossible without producing unwanted changes. Bad
genes  are  bound  up  this  way as often as good ones. In your
case, if I eradicated the faulty genes that insist on producing
cancers in your body, you'd no longer  be  Hildy.  You'd  be  a
healthier  person, but not a wiser one, and you'd lose a lot of
abilities and outlooks that, counterproductive though they  may
be in a purely practical sense, I suspect you treasure."
     "What makes me me."
     "Yes.  You  know  there are many things I can change about
you without affecting your . . . soul is the simplest  word  to
use, though it's a hazy one."
     "It's  the  first  one  you've  used that I understand." I
chewed on that  for  a  while,  shutting  off  the  shower  and
stepping  out,  dripping  wet,  reaching  for  a  towel, drying
myself.
     "It doesn't make sense  to  me  that  things  like  cancer
should be in the genes. It sounds contrasurvival."
     "From  an  evolutionary  viewpoint,  anything that doesn't
kill you before  you've  become  old  enough  to  reproduce  is
irrelevant  to  species  survival.  There's  even a philosophic
point of view that says cancer and things like it are good  for
the  race. Overpopulation can be a problem to a very successful
species. Cancer gets the old ones out of the way."
     "They're not getting out the way now."
     "No. It will be a problem someday."
     "When?"
     "Don't worry about it. Ask me again at the  Tricentennial.
As   a  preliminary  measure,  large  families  are  now  being
discouraged, the direct opposite of the  ethic  that  prevailed
after the Invasion."
     I  wanted to hear more, but I noticed the time, and had to
hustle to get ready in time to catch my train.
     #
     Tranquility Base is by far the biggest tourist  attraction
on  Luna,  and the reason is its historical significance, since
it is the spot where a human foot first  trod  another  planet.
Right?  If you thought that, maybe I could interest you in some
prime real estate on Ganymede with a great view of the volcano.
The real draw at Tranquility is just over the horizon and  goes
by  the  name  of  Armstrong Park. Since the park is within the
boundaries of Apollo Planetary Historical Preserve,  the  Lunar
Chamber  of  Commerce can boast that X million people visit the
site of the first Lunar landing every year, but the ads feature
the roller coaster, not the LEM.
     A good number of those tourists do find the time  to  ride
the  train  over  to  the  Base  itself and spend a few minutes
gazing at the forlorn  little  lander,  and  an  hour  hurrying
through  the  nearby  museum,  where most of the derelict space
hardware from 1960 to the Invasion is on display. Then the kids
begin to whine that they're bored,  and  by  then  the  parents
probably are, too, and it's back to the land of over-priced hot
dogs and not-socheap thrills.
     You  can't take a train directly to the base. No accident,
that. It dumps you at the foot of the thirty-story explosion of
lights that is the  sign  for  and  entrance  to  the  Terminal
Seizure,  what the ads call "The Greatest SphincterTightener in
the Known Universe." I  got  on  it  once,  against  my  better
judgment,  and  I guarantee it will show you things they didn't
tell you  about  in  astronaut  school.  It's  a  twenty-minute
MagLev,  six-gee, free trajectory descent into the tenth circle
of Hell that guarantees one blackout and seven  gray  hairs  or
your  money back. It's actually two coasters--the Grand Mal and
the Petit Mal--one  of  them  obviously  for  wimps.  They  are
prepared  to  hose  out the Grand Mal cars after every ride. If
you understand the attraction of that, please don't come to  my
home to explain it to me. I'm armed, and considered dangerous.
     I  walked  as  quickly as I could past the sign-30,000,000
(Count 'Em!) Thirty Million Lights!-and  noticed  the  two-hour
line  for  the  Grand  Mal ride was cleverly concealed from the
ticket  booth.  I  made  it  to  the  shuttle   train,   having
successfully  avoided the blandishments of a thousand hucksters
selling  everything  from  inflatable  Neil  dolls  to  talking
souvenir  pencil  sharpeners  to  put  a point on your souvenir
pencils. I boarded the train, removed a hunk  of  cotton  candy
from  a seat, and sat. I was wearing a disposable paper jumper,
so what the hell?
     The Base itself is an area large enough to play a game  of
baseball/6.  Those  guys never got very far from their ship, so
it made no sense to preserve  any  more  of  the  area.  It  is
surrounded by a stadium-like structure, un-roofed, that is four
levels  of  viewing area with all the windows facing inward. On
top is an un-pressurized level.
     I elbowed my  way  through  the  throngs  of  cameratoting
tourists from Pluto and made it to the suit rental counter. Oh,
dear.
     If  I  ever had to choose one sex to be for the rest of my
life, I would be female. I think the body  is  better-designed,
and  the  sex  is a little better. But there is one thing about
the female body that is distinctly inferior  to  the  male--and
I've  talked  to others about this, both Changers and dedicated
females, and ninety-five percent agree  with  me--and  that  is
urination. Males are simply better at it. It is less messy, the
position  is  more  dignified,  and  the  method  helps develop
hand-eye coordination and a sense of artistic expression, a  la
writing your name in the snow.
     But  what  the  hell,  right? It's never really much of an
annoyance . . . until you go to rent a p-suit.
     Almost three hundred years of  engineering  have  come  up
with  three  basic  solutions  to  the  problem:  the catheter,
suction devices, and . . . oh,  dear  lord,  the  diaper.  Some
advocate  a fourth way: continence. Try it the next time you go
on a twelve-hour hike on the surface. The catheter was  by  far
the  best.  It  is painless, as advertised . . . but I hate the
damn thing. It just feels wrong.  Besides,  like  the  suckers,
they  get  dislodged. Next time you need a laugh, watch a woman
trying to get her UroLator back in place. It could start a  new
dance craze.
     I've  never  owned a p-suit. Why spend the money, when you
need it once a year? I've rented a lot of them,  and  they  all
stank.  No  matter  how  they are sterilized, some odors of the
previous occupant will linger. It's bad enough in a man's suit,
but for real gut-wrenching stench you have to put on the female
model. They all use the suction method,  with  a  diaper  as  a
back-up.  At  a  place  like Tranquility, where the turnover is
rapid and the help likely to be  under-paid,  unconcerned,  and
slipshod,  some of the niceties will be overlooked from time to
time. I was once handed a suit that was still wet.
     I got into this one and sniffed cautiously; not  too  bad,
though  the perfume was cheap and obvious. I switched it on and
let the staff put it through a perfunctory  safety  check,  and
remembered  the  other  thing  I  didn't like about the suction
method. All that air flowing by can chill the  vulva  something
fierce.
     There  were  surgical  methods of improving the interface,
but I found them ugly, and they didn't make sense  unless  your
work  took  you  outside  regularly. The rest of us just had to
breathe shallowly and bear it, and try not to  drink  too  much
coffee before an excursion.
     The  air  lock  delivered  me onto the roof, which was not
crowded at all. I found a place at the  rail  far  from  anyone
else,  and  waited.  I  turned  off  my suit radio, all but the
emergency beacon.
     I said, "CC, what do I get out of it?"
     The CC is pretty good at picking up a conversation  hours,
weeks,  and  even years old, but the question was pretty vague.
He took a stab at it.
     "You mean the morning mouth preparation?"
     "Yeah. I thought it up. You did the  work,  but  then  you
gave it away without consulting me. Shouldn't there be a way to
make some money out of it?"
     "It's  defined as a health benefit, so its production cost
will be added to the health tax all Lunarians pay, plus a small
profit, which will go to you. It won't make you rich."
     "And no one gets to choose. They get it whether they  like
it or not."
     "If  they  object, I have an antibot available. No one has
so far."
     "Still sounds  like  a  subversive  plot  to  me.  If  the
drinking water ain't pure, what is?"
     "Hildy,  there's so many things in the King City municipal
water you could practically lift it with a magnet."
     "All for our own good."
     "You seem to be in a sour mood."
     "Why should I be? My mouth tastes wonderful."
     "If you're interested, the approval ratings  on  this  are
well  over ninety-nine percent. The favorite flavor, however is
Neutral-with-a-Hint-ofMint. And an unforeseen side  benefit  is
that it works all day, cleaning your breath."
     He'd  beaten halitosis, I realized, glumly. How did I feel
about that? Shouldn't I be rejoicing? I recalled the way  Liz's
breath  had smelled last night, that sour reek of gin. Should a
drunk's breath smell like a puppy's tongue? I was sure as  hell
being a crabby old woman about this, even I could see that. But
hell, I was an old woman, and often crabby. I'd found that as I
got older, I was less tolerant of change, for good or ill.
     "How  did  you  hear  me?" I asked, before I could get too
gloomy thinking about a forever-changing world.
     "The radio you switched off  is  suit-to-suit.  Your  suit
also  monitors  your vital signs, and transmits them if needed.
Using your access voice is defined as an  emergency  call,  not
requiring aid."
     "So  I'm  never  out from under the protective umbrella of
your eternal vigilance."
     "It keeps you safe," he said, and I told him to go away.
     #
     When Armstrong and Aldrin came in peace for  all  mankind,
it  was  envisioned  that  their landing site, in the vacuum of
space, would remain essentially unchanged for a million  years,
if need be. Never mind that the exhaust of lift-off knocked the
flag over and tore a lot of the gold foil on the landing stage.
The  footprints would still be there. And they are. Hundreds of
them, trampling a crazy pattern in the dust,  going  away  from
the  lander,  coming  back, none of them reaching as far as the
visitors' gallery. There are no other footprints  to  be  seen.
The  only change the museum curators worked at the site were to
set the flag back up, and suspend an ascentstage module about a
hundred feet above the landing stage,  hanging  from  invisible
wires.   It's   not  the  Apollo  11  ascent  stage;  that  one
crashlanded long ago.
     Things are often not what they seem.
     Nowhere in the free literature or the thousands of plaques
and audio-visual displays in the museum will you  hear  of  the
night  one hundred and eighty years ago when ten members of the
Delta Chi  Delta  fraternity,  Luna  University  Chapter,  came
around  on  their  cycles. This was s