d  look
over my shoulder and search for the gunman, which is what saved
me  from  having  my  own  brains blown out when the third shot
arrived. The post-mortem team estimated  that  shot  missed  my
cheek  by  a  few  centimeters. I didn't see it hit, but when I
turned back I saw the results. Silvio's face had  already  been
shattered  by the fragmented bullet that had passed through me;
the third projectile was more than enough to blow the remaining
brain tissue  through  a  new  hole  in  his  head.  It  wasn't
necessary; the first had done the fatal work.
     That's  when  Cricket  took  her  famous  still  shot. The
spotlight is still on us as  I  hold  Silvio's  torso  off  the
ground. His head lolls back, eyes open but glazed, what you can
see  of  them under the film of blood. I've got one bloody hand
raised in the air, asking a mute  question.  I  don't  remember
raising  the  hand;  I  don't know what the question was, other
than the eternal why?
     #
     The next hour was as confused as  such  scenes  inevitably
are. I was jostled to the side by a bunch of bodyguards. Police
arrived.  Questions were asked. Someone noticed I was bleeding,
which was the first time I was aware that  I'd  been  hit.  The
bullet  had  punched  a clean hole through the upper part of my
left arm, nicking the bone. I'd  been  wondering  why  the  arm
wasn't working. I wasn't alarmed by it; I was just wondering. I
never  did  feel  any pain from the wound. By the time I should
have, they had it all fixed up as  good  as  new.  People  have
since tried to convince me to wear a scar there as a memento of
that  day.  I'm  sure  I  could  use it to impress a lot of cub
reporters in the Blind Pig, but the whole idea disgusts me.
     Cricket was immediately off following the assassin  story.
Nobody  knew  who  he  or she was, or how he'd gotten away, and
there was a fabulous story for whoever tracked the person  down
and got the first interview. That didn't interest me, either. I
sat  there,  possibly  in  shock though the machines said I was
not, and Brenda stood beside me though  I  could  see  she  was
itching to get out and cover the story, any part of it.
     "Idiot,"  I  told her, with some affection, when I finally
noticed her. "You want Walter to fire you? Did somebody get  my
holocam feed? I don't remember."
     "I took it. Walter has it. He's running it right now." She
had a  copy of the Nipple in one hand, glancing at the horrific
images. My phone was ringing and  I  didn't  need  a  Ph.D.  in
deductive  logic  to  know it was Walter calling, asking what I
was doing. I turned it off, which  Walter  would  have  made  a
capital offense if he'd been making the laws.
     "Get  going.  See  if you can track down Cricket. Wherever
she is, that's where the news will be. Try not to let her leave
too many tracks on your back when she runs over you."
     "Where are you going, Hildy?"
     "I'm going home." And that's just what I did.

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

        CHAPTER THIRTEEN













     I had to turn the phone off at home,  too.  I  had  become
part of the biggest story of my lifetime, and every reporter in
the  universe  wanted to ask me a probing question: How did you
feel, Hildy, when you put your hand into the  stillwarm  brains
of  the only man on Luna you respected? This is known as poetic
justice.
     For my sins, I soon set the phone to answer to the four or
five newspeople  I  felt  were  the  best,  plus  the  grinning
homunculus  that  passed  for an anchor at the Nipple, and gave
them each a five  minute,  totally  false  interview,  full  of
exactly  the  sort  of stuff the public expected. At the end of
each I pleaded emotional exhaustion and said I'd grant  a  more
complete  interview  in  a  few days. This satisfied no one, of
course; from time to time my front door actually  rattled  with
the impact of frustrated reporters hurling their bodies against
three-inch pressure-tight steel.
     In  truth, I didn't know how I felt. I was numb, in a way,
but my mind was also working. I was thinking, and the  reporter
was  coming  alive  after  the horrid shock of actually getting
shot. I mean, damn it! Hadn't that fucking bullet ever heard of
the Geneva Conventions? We were noncombatants, we were supposed
to suck the blood, not produce it. I was angry at that  bullet.
I guess some part of me had really thought I was immune.
     I  fixed  myself  a  good meal and thought it over while I
did. Not  a  sandwich.  I  thought  I  might  be  through  with
sandwiches.  I  don't cook a lot, but when I do I'm pretty good
at it, and it helps me think. When I'd handed the last dish  to
the washer I sat down and called Walter.
     "Get  your  ass  in  here,  Hildy," he said. "I've got you
lined  up  for  interviews  from  ten  minutes  ago  till   the
tricentennial."
     "No," I said.
     "I  don't  think  this is a good connection. I thought you
said no."
     "It's a perfect connection."
     "I could fire you."
     "Don't get silly. You want my exclusive interview  to  run
in  the Shit, where they'll triple the pittance you pay me?" He
didn't answer that for a long time, and I had nothing  else  to
say  just  yet,  so  we  listened to the long silence. I hadn't
turned on the picture.
     "What are you going to do?" he asked, plaintively.
     "Just what you asked me  to  do.  Get  the  story  on  the
Flacks.  You  said I was the best there was at it, didn't you?"
The quality  of  the  silence  changed  that  time.  It  was  a
regretful   silence,   as   in  how-could-I-have-said-anything-
so-stupid silence. He didn't say he'd  told  me  that  just  to
charm  me  out of quitting. Another thing he didn't say was how
dare I threaten him with selling out to a rival,  and  he  left
un-voiced  the horrible things he'd try to do to my career if I
did such a thing. The phone line was simply buzzing with things
he didn't say, and he didn't say them so loudly I'd  have  been
frightened  if  I  really feared for my job. At last he sighed,
and did say something.
     "When do I get the story?"
     "When I find it. What I want is Brenda, right now."
     "Sure. She's just underfoot here."
     "Tell her to come in the back way. She knows where it  is,
and I don't think five other people in Luna know that."
     "Six, counting me."
     "I  figured. Don't tell anyone else, or I'll never get out
of here alive."
     "What else?"
     "Nothing. I'll handle it all from  here."  I  hung  up.  I
started making calls.
     The  first  one  was  to the Queen. She didn't have what I
needed, but she knew somebody who knew somebody. She said she'd
get back to me. I sat down and made a list  of  items  I  would
need,  made several more calls, and then Brenda was knocking on
the back door.
     She wanted to know how I was, she wanted my  reactions  to
this  and that, not as a reporter, but as a concerned friend. I
was touched, a little, but I had work to do.
     "Hit me," I said.
     "Pardon?"
     "Hit me. Make a fist and smash it into my face. I need you
to break my nose. I tried it a  couple  times  before  you  got
here, and I can't seem to hit hard enough."
     She  gave  me that look that says she's trying to remember
all the ways out of this place, and how to get to them  without
alarming me.
     "My  problem,"  I  explained,  "is  I  can't risk going in
public with this face on me; I need it  rearranged,  and  in  a
hurry.  So  hit  me.  You  know  how;  you've  seen cowboys and
gangsters do it in the movies." I stuck my face out and  closed
my eyes.
     "You've . . . you've deadened it, I guess?"
     "What  kind  of nut do I look like? Don't answer, just hit
me."
     She did, a  blow  that  would  have  sent  a  housefly  to
intensive care if one had been sitting on the tip of my nose.
     She  had  to  try four more times, in the end using an old
spitball bat I found in my closet, before we got that sickening
crunching sound that said we'd done the trick. I  shouldn't  be
too hard on her. Maybe I was acting erratic, there was probably
an  easier way and she deserved more explanations, but I wasn't
in the mood for them. She had a lot worse to come, and I didn't
have time.
     It bled a lot, as you'd expect. I held my nose pressed  in
with  a  finger  on  the tip, and stuck my face in the autodoc.
When it healed, a few minutes later,  I  had  a  wide,  vaguely
African nose with a major hook on the end and a bend toward the
left.
     Part   of   getting   a  story  is  preparation,  part  is
improvisation, part perspiration and a little bit  inspiration.
There  are  small  items  I carry around constantly in my purse
that I may use once in five years, but when I need them, I need
them badly. A disguise is something I  need  every  once  in  a
while,  never  as  badly  as  I  did  then, but I'd always been
prepared for disguising myself on the spur of the moment.  It's
harder  now  than  it  used  to be. People are better at seeing
through small changes since  they're  used  to  having  friends
rework  their faces to indulge a passing fad. Bushy eyebrows or
a wig are no longer enough, if you want to be sure. You need to
change the shape of the face.
     I got a screwdriver and probed around  in  my  upper  jaw,
between  the  cheek  and gum, until I found the proper recessed
socket. I pushed the tip of the  blade  through  the  skin  and
slotted  it in the screw and started turning it. When the blade
slipped Brenda peered into my  mouth  and  helped  me.  As  she
turned the screwdriver, my cheekbone began to move.
     It's  a  cheap  and  simple device you can buy at any joke
shop and have installed in half an hour. Bobbie had  wanted  to
take  it  out.  He's offended at anything that might be used to
mar his work. I'd left them in, and now I was glad as I watched
my face being transformed in the mirror. When Brenda was  done,
my  face  was  much  wider and more gaunt, and my eyelids had a
slight downward slant. With the new nose, Callie herself  would
not  have know me. If I held my lower jaw so I had an overbite,
I looked even stranger.
     "Let me get that left one  again,"  Brenda  said.  "You're
lopsided."
     "Lopsided  is  good."  I  tasted  blood, but soon had that
healed up. Looking at myself, I  decided  it  was  enough,  and
turned  the  nerve  receptors  in  my face back on. There was a
little soreness on the nose, but nothing major.
     So I could have gotten some of the same effect by stuffing
tissue paper into my cheeks, I guess. If that's all I had,  I'd
have  used  it, but did you ever try talking with paper in your
mouth? An actor is trained to do it; I'm not.  Besides,  you're
always aware it's there, it's distracting.
     Brenda  wanted  to  know  what  we were going to do, and I
thought about what I could safely tell her. It wasn't much,  so
I sat her down and she looked up at me wide-eyed.
     "You  got  two choices," I told her. "One, you can help me
get ready for this caper, and then you can bow out, and no hard
feelings. Or you can go along to the end.  But  I'll  tell  you
going  in, you're not going to know much. I think we'll get one
hell of a story out of it, but we  could  get  into  a  lot  of
trouble."
     She thought it over.
     "How much can you tell me?"
     "Only  what I think you need to know at the moment. You'll
just have to trust me on the rest."
     "Okay."
     "You idiot. Never  trust  anybody  who  says  'trust  me.'
Except just this once, of course."
     #
     I went to the King City Plaza, one of the better hotels in
the neighborhood   of   the   Platz,  and  checked  in  to  the
Presidential Suite using  Brenda's  Nipple  letter  of  credit,
freshly re-rated to A-Double-Plus. I'd told Walter I might need
to  buy  an  interplanetary liner before this job was over, but
the fact was since he was paying for it, I just  wanted  to  go
first  class, and I'd never stayed in the Presidential Suite. I
registered us under the  names  Kathleen  Turner  and  Rosalind
Russell,  two  of  the  five  people  who've played the part of
Hildegard/Hildebrandt Johnson on the silver screen. The  fellow
at  the  front  desk must not have been a movie buff; he didn't
bat an eye.
     The suite came furnished with a staff, including a boy and
a girl in the spa, which was large enough for  the  staging  of
naval war games. In a better mood I might have asked the boy to
stick around; he was a hunk. But I kicked them all out.
     I  stood  in  the  middle of the room and said "My name is
Hildy Johnson, and I declare this to be  my  legal  residence."
Liz  had  advised that, for the benefit of the hidden mikes and
cameras, just in case the tapes were ever  brought  forward  as
evidence  in  a court of law. A hotel guest has the same rights
as a person in quarters she owns or rents, but it never hurt to
be safe.
     I made a few more phone calls, and spent the time  waiting
for  some of them to be returned by going from room to room and
stripping the sheets and blankets off the many beds. I chose  a
room with no windows looking out into the Mall, and went around
draping  sheets  over all the mirrors in the room. There were a
lot of them. The  call  I  was  waiting  for  came  just  as  I
finished. I listened to the instructions, and left the room.
     In  a  park  not  far  from  the hotel I walked around for
almost half an hour, which didn't surprise me. I assumed I  was
being  checked  out. Finally I spotted the man I'd been told to
look for, and sat on the other end of a park bench.  We  didn't
look at each other, or talk. He got up and walked away, leaving
a  sack  on  the bench between us. I waited a few more minutes,
breathed deeply, and picked up the sack. No hand reached out to
grab my shoulder. Maybe I didn't have the nerves for this  sort
of work.
     Back in the suite I didn't have long to wait before Brenda
knocked  on  the door, back from her shopping expedition. She'd
done well. Everything I'd asked for was  in  the  packages  she
carried.  We got out the costumes of the Electricians Guild and
put them on: blue coveralls with Guild  patches  and  equipment
belts.  Names  were  stitched  into  the  fabric  over the left
breast: I was Roz and she was Kathy.  Next  to  the  ceremonial
wrenches,  screwdrivers,  and circuit testers dangling from the
belt I clipped some of the items I'd just obtained  in  such  a
melodramatic  fashion.  They  fit  right  in.  We donned yellow
plastic hardhats and  picked  up  black  metal  lunchboxes  and
looked  at  each  other  in  the mirror. We burst out laughing.
Brenda seemed to be  enjoying  the  game  so  far.  It  was  an
adventure.
     Brenda looked ridiculous, as usual. You'd think a disguise
on Brenda  would work about as well as a wig on a flagpole. The
fact is, she is not that abnormal for her generation. Who knows
where this height thing is going to end? Another of many causes
of the generation gap Callie had  talked  about  was  a  simple
matter of dimension: people of Brenda's age group tended not to
frequent  the  older  parts  of the city where so many of their
elders lived . . . because they kept  hitting  their  heads  on
things. We built to a smaller scale in those days.
     There were no human guards on the workers' entrance to the
Flack  Grand Studio. I didn't really expect to encounter any at
all; according to the information I'd bought they only employed
six of them. People tended to rely on machines for that sort of
thing, and their trust can be misplaced, as I  demonstrated  to
Brenda  with one of the illegal gizmos. I waved it at the door,
waited while red lights turned green, and the door sprung open.
I'd been told that one of the three machines I had  would  deal
with  any  security system I'd find in the Studio. I just hoped
my trust wasn't misplaced, in either the shady  characters  who
sold this sort of stuff or the machines themselves. We do trust
the  little  buggers, don't we? I had no idea what the stinking
thing was doing, but when it flashed a  green  light  at  me  I
trotted right in, like Pavlov's dog Spotski.
     Up  three  floors, down two corridors, seventh door on the
left. And who should be standing there looking frustrated but .
. . Cricket.
     "If you touch that doorknob," I said, "Elvis  will  return
and  he won't be handing out pink Cadillacs." She jumped just a
little. Damn, that girl  was  good.  She  was  trying  to  pass
herself  off  as  some  kind  of  Flack functionary, carrying a
clipboard like an Amazon's shield. The good old  clipboard  can
be  the magic key to many places if you know how to use it, and
Cricket was born to the con. She looked at us haughtily through
dark glasses.
     "I beg your pardon," she sniffed. "What are you two  doing
.  . ." She had been flipping officiously through papers on her
board, as if searching for our names, which  we  hadn't  given,
when  she realized it was Brenda way up there under that yellow
hardhat. Nothing had prepared her for that, or for the  dawning
realization of who it was playing the Jeff to Brenda's Mutt.
     "Goddam," she breathed. "It's you, isn't it? Hildy?"
     "In  the  flesh.  I'm ashamed of you, Cricket. Balked by a
mere door? You've apparently forgotten your girl scout motto."
     "All I remember is never let him in the back door  on  the
first date."
     "Be  prepared,  love,  be prepared." And I waved one of my
magic wands at the door. Naturally, one of the lights  remained
obstinately  red.  So  I  chose  another  one at random and the
machine paid off like a crooked slot machine. We  went  through
the  door,  and  I suddenly realized what her dark glasses were
for.
     We were in an ordinary corridor with three  doors  leading
off  of  it.  Music  was  coming  from behind one of the doors.
According to the map I'd paid a lot of Walter's money for, that
was the one. This time I had to use all three machines, and the
last one took its time, each red light going out only  after  a
baffling  read-out  of  digits on a numeric display. I guess it
was doing something arcane with codes. But the door opened, and
I didn't hear any alarms. You wouldn't, of course, but you keep
your ears tuned anyway. We went  through  the  door  and  found
ourselves in a small room with the Grand Council of Flacks.
     Or with their heads, anyway.
     The  heads  were  on  a shelf a few meters from us, facing
away toward a large screen which was playing It Happened At The
World's Fair. They were in  their  boxes--I  don't  think  they
could  be  easily  removed--so what we saw was seven television
screens displaying the backs of heads. If they  were  aware  of
our  presence  they  gave  no sign of it. Though how they could
have given any sign of it continues  to  elude  me.  Wires  and
tubes  grew  out  of  the bottom of the shelf, leading to small
machines that hummed merrily to themselves.
     Brenda was  looking  very  nervous.  She  started  to  say
something but I put a finger to my lips and put on my mask. She
did  the  same,  as Cricket watched us both. These were plastic
Halloweentype masks, modified with a voice scrambler,  and  I'd
gotten  them  mostly to calm Brenda; I didn't expect them to be
any use if it came to the crunch, since security cameras in the
hallways would surely have taken our pictures by now.  But  she
was  even  less  sophisticated  in  these  things  than  I, and
wouldn't have realized that.
     Cricket had had her hand in a coat pocket since we entered
the first corridor. The hand started to come out, and I pointed
over her shoulder and said "What the hell is that?" She looked,
and I took one of  the  wrenches  off  my  equipment  belt  and
clanged it down on the crown of her head.
     It  doesn't  work  like you see it on television. She went
down hard, then lifted herself up onto her hands,  shaking  her
head.  A rope of saliva was hanging out of her mouth. I hit her
again. Her head started to bleed, and she  still  didn't  clock
out.  The  third time I really put some english on it, and sure
enough Brenda grabbed my arm and spoiled my aim and the  wrench
hit  her  on  the  side  of the head, doing more damage than if
she'd left me alone, but it also did the job. Cricket fell down
like a sack of wet cement and didn't move.
     "What the hell are you doing?" Brenda asked. The scrambler
denatured her voice, made her sound like a creepoid from Planet
X.
     "Brenda, I said no questions."
     "I didn't plan on this."
     "I didn't, either, but if you crap out on me now  I  swear
I'll  break both your arms and leave you right beside her." She
faced me down, breathing hard, and I began to wonder if I could
handle her if it came to  it.  My  record  with  angry  females
wasn't  sterling, even when I had the weight advantage. At last
she slumped, and nodded, and I quickly dropped to one knee  and
rolled  Cricket  over and put my face close to hers. I felt her
pulse, which seemed okay, peeled back an  eyelid,  checked  the
pupils. I didn't know much more first aid than that, but I knew
she  was  in  no  danger.  Help  would be here soon, though she
wouldn't welcome it. I picked up the goofball that  had  rolled
out  of  her  limp  hand  and put it in my own pocket. I showed
Brenda a photo.
     "Look through those  cabinets  back  there,  find  one  of
these," I told her.
     "What are we--"
     "No questions, dammit."
     I checked the fourth and most expensive electronic burglar
tool I'd purchased, which had been functioning since we entered
the Studio.  All  green lights. This one was busily confounding
all the active and passive systems that might  be  calling  for
help for the seven dwarfs on the shelf. Don't ask me how; all I
know  is if one man can think up a lock, another can figure out
how to pick it. I'd paid heavily for the  security  information
about  the  Studio,  and  so far I'd gotten my money's worth. I
went around the shelf and stood  between  the  screen  and  the
Council,  saw seven of the infamous Talking Heads that had been
a television feature from the very beginning. I chose the Grand
Flack, and leaned close to his prim, disapproving features. His
first reaction was to use his limited movement to try  and  see
around me. More interested in the movie than in possible danger
to  himself.  I  guess  if  you live in a box you'd have to get
fairly fatalistic about such things.
     "I want you to tell me how to remove you  from  the  shelf
without doing any harm to you," I said.
     "Don't  worry about it," he sneered. "Someone will be here
to arrest you in a few minutes."
     I hoped he was bluffing, had no way of knowing for sure.
     "How many minutes can you live without these machines?" He
thought it over, made a head movement I interpreted as a shrug.
     "Detaching me is easy; simply lift the handle  on  top  of
the  box.  But  I'll  die in a few minutes." The thought didn't
seem to bother him.
     "Unless I plug you into one of these." I took the  machine
Brenda  had  located  and held it up in front of him. He made a
sour face.
     I don't know what the machine was called. What it did  was
provide  life  support  for his head, containing things like an
artificial heart, lungs, kidneys, and so forth, all quite small
since there wasn't that much life to support. I'd been told  it
would  sustain  him for eight hours independently, indefinitely
when hooked into an autodoc. The device was the same dimensions
as his head-box, and about ten centimeters deep. I placed it on
the floor and lifted the box by the handle. He  looked  worried
for  the  first  time.  A  few  drops of blood dripped onto the
shelf, where I could see a maze of metal pins,  plastic  tubes,
air  hoses.  There  was  a  similar  pattern of fittings on the
transport device, arranged so there was only one way you  could
plug  it  in.  I  positioned  the box over the life support and
pressed down.
     "Am I doing it right?" I asked the Grand Flack.
     "There's not much you  could  do  wrong,"  he  said.  "And
you'll never get away with this."
     "Try me." I found the right switches, turned off his voice
and three  of  the television screens. The fourth, the one that
had been showing his face, was  replaced  with  the  movie  the
group  had  been  watching  when  we arrived. "Let's get out of
here," I said to Brenda.
     "What about her? What about Cricket?"
     "I said no questions. Let's move."
     She followed me out into the corridor,  through  the  door
where  we'd  met Cricket, down more hallways. Then we rounded a
corner and met a burly man in a brown uniform who  crossed  his
arms and frowned at us.
     "Where are you going with that?" he asked.
     "Where  do  you  think, Mac?" I asked. "I'm taking it into
the shop. You try to run ten thousand of these  things,  you're
gonna get breakdowns."
     "Nobody told me nothing about it."
     I  set the Grand Flack on the floor with the movie side of
the screen facing the guard; his eyes strayed to the screen, as
I'd  hoped.  There's  something  about  a  moving  image  on  a
television  screen  that  simply  draws the eyes, especially if
you're a Flackite. I had one hand  on  my  trusty  wrench,  but
mostly  I flipped through the papers on my clipboard in a bored
manner. I came to one page--it seemed to be an insurance policy
for Cricket's  apartment  --and  pointed  triumphantly  to  the
middle of it.
     "Says  right  here.  Remove and repair one model seventeen
video  monitor,  work  order  number  45293a/34.  Work  to   be
completed by blah blah blah."
     "I guess the paperwork didn't get to me yet," he said, one
eye still  on  the screen. Maybe we were coming to his favorite
part. All I knew was if he'd asked to  see  the  paperwork  I'd
have  held  the  clipboard  out  to him and beaned him with the
wrench when he looked at it.
     "Ain't that always the way."
     "Yeah. I was just surprised to see you two here, what with
all the excitement with Silvio gettin' killed and all."
     "What the hell," I said, with  a  shrug,  picking  up  the
Grand  Flack  and tucking him under my arm. "Sometimes you just
gotta go that extra kilometer if you want to get a  head."  And
we walked out the door.
     #
     Brenda  made  it almost a hundred meters down the corridor
and then she said, "I think I'm going to faint." I steered  her
to  a  bench in the middle of the mall and sat her down and put
her head between her knees. She was shaking all  over  and  her
breathing was unsteady. Her hand was cold as ice.
     I  held  out  my  own hand, and was pleased to note it was
steady. I honestly hadn't been frightened after I detached  the
Flack  from  his shelf; I'd figured that if there was any point
where my devices might fail, that would be it. But I was  aided
by  something  that had helped many a more professional burglar
before I ever tried my hand at it. It  had  simply  never  been
envisioned  that  anyone would want to steal one of the council
members. As for the rest . . . well, you  can  read  all  these
wonderfully  devious  tales  about  how  spies in the past have
stolen military and state secrets with  elaborate  ruses,  with
stealth  and  cunning. Some of it must have been like that, but
I'd bet money that a lot of them had been stolen by people with
uniforms and clipboards who just went up to somebody and  asked
for them.
     "Is it over yet?" Brenda asked, weakly. She looked pale.
     "Not yet. Soon. And still no questions."
     "I'm  going  to  have a few pretty damn soon, though," she
said.
     "I'll bet you will."
     #
     In order to save time  I  hadn't  had  her  get  any  more
costumes  to stash along our getaway route, so we simply peeled
off the Electrician duds and stuffed them into the trash  in  a
public  rest  room and returned to the Plaza in the nude. I was
carrying the Grand Flack in a shopping  bag  from  one  of  the
shops  on  the Platz and we had our arms around each other like
lovers. In the elevator Brenda let go of me like I was  poison,
and we rode up in silence.
     "Can  we  talk  now?"  she asked, when I'd closed the door
behind us.
     "In a minute." I lifted the box out of the bag, along with
the few other items  I'd  saved:  the  magic  wands,  the  dark
glasses,  the  goofball. I picked up a newspad and turned it on
and we watched and read and listened for a few minutes,  Brenda
growing  increasingly  impatient.  There  was  no  mention of a
daring break-in at the Grand Studio, no all-points bulletin for
Roz and Kathy. I hadn't expected  one.  The  Flacks  understood
publicity,  and  while there is some merit in the old saw about
not caring what you print about me so long as you spell my name
right, you'd much prefer to see the news you manage  out  there
in  the  public  view.  This  story had about a thousand deadly
thorns in it if the Flacks chose to exploit it, and I was  sure
they'd think it over a long time before they reported our crime
to  the  police,  if  they ever did. Besides, their plates were
full with the assassination stories,  which  would  keep  their
staff  busy  for months, churning out new angles to feed to the
pads.
     "Okay," I said to Brenda. "We're safe for  a  while.  What
did you want to know?"
     "Nothing,"  she  said coldly. "I just wanted to tell you I
think you're the most disgusting, rottenest, most horrible .  .
." Her imagination failed when it came to finding a noun. She'd
have  to  work  on that; I could have suggested a dozen off the
top of my head. But not for the reasons she thought.
     "Why is that?" I asked.
     She was momentarily stunned at the enormity of my lack  of
remorse.
     "What  you  did to Cricket!" she shouted, half rising from
her chair. "That was so dirty and underhanded .  .  .  I  don't
think I want to know you anymore."
     "I'm  not  sure  I  do,  either.  But  sit  down.  There's
something I want to show you. Two things, actually." The  Plaza
has  some  charming  antique phones and there was one beside my
chair. I picked up  the  receiver  and  dialed  a  number  from
memory.
     "Straight Shit," came a pleasant voice. "News desk."
     "Tell  the  editor that one of her reporters is being held
against her will in the Grand Studio of the F.L.C.C.S. church."
     The voice grew cautious. "And who might that be?"
     "How many did you infiltrate this  morning?  Her  name  is
Cricket. Don't know the last name."
     "And who are you, ma'am?"
     "A  friend  of  the  free press. Better hurry; when I left
they were tying her down and cueing up  G.I.  Blues.  Her  mind
could be gone by now." I hung up.
     Brenda sputtered, her eyes wide.
     "And you think that makes up for what you did to her?"
     "No, and she doesn't deserve it, but she'd probably do the
same thing  for  me  if  the  situation  was reversed, which it
almost was. I know the editor at the Shit; she'll have a flying
squad of fifty shock troops down there in ten minutes with some
ammunition the Flacks will understand,  like  mock-ups  of  the
next hour's headline if they don't cough up Cricket pronto. The
Flacks  will  want  to  keep  this quiet, but they aren't above
trying to get our names out of Cricket since it  looks  like  a
falling out among thieves."
     "And if it wasn't, what was it?"
     "It  was  the  golden  rule,  honey,"  I  said, putting on
Cricket's dark glasses and  holding  up  the  goofball  between
thumb  and  forefinger.  "In journalism, that rule reads 'Screw
unto others before they screw you.'"  I  flicked  the  goofball
with my thumb and tossed it between us.
     Damn,  but  those things are bright! It reminded me of the
nuke in Kansas, seeming  to  scorch  holes  right  through  the
protective  lenses.  It  lasted  some fraction of a second, and
when I took the glasses off Brenda  was  slumped  over  in  her
chair. She'd be out for twenty minutes to half an hour.
     What a world.
     I  picked  up  the head of the church and carried him into
the room I'd  prepared.  I  set  him  on  a  table  facing  the
wall-sized  television  screen,  which  was  turned  off at the
moment. I rapped on the top of the box.
     "You okay in there?" He didn't answer. I  turned  a  latch
and  opened  the front screen, which was still showing the same
movie on both its flat surfaces,  inner  and  outer.  The  face
glared at me.
     "Close  that door," he said. "It's just ten minutes to the
end."
     "Sorry," I said, and closed it. Then I took my wrench--I'd
developed a certain fondness for  that  wrench--and  rapped  it
against the glass screen, which shattered. I had a glimpse of a
blissfully  smiling  face  as  the  shards  fell,  then  he was
screaming insults. Somewhere I heard a little motor whirring as
it pumped air through whatever he used for a larynx.  He  tried
uselessly  to  twist himself so he could see one of the screens
to either side of him,  which  were  also  tuned  to  the  same
program.
     "Oh,  were you watching that?" I said. "How clumsy of me."
I pulled a cord out of the wall and patched his player into the
wall television set, turned the sound down low. He grumped  for
a  while,  but in the end he couldn't resist the dancing images
behind me. If he'd noticed I was letting him  see  my  face  he
didn't  seem  worried  about  the  possible implications. Death
didn't seem to be high on his list of fears.
     "They're going to punish you for this, you know," he said.
     "Who would 'they' be? The police? Or do you have your  own
private goon squads?"
     "The police, of course."
     "The police will never hear about this, and you know it."
     He just sniffed. He sniffed again when I broke the screens
on each  side of his head. But when I took the patch cord in my
hand he looked worried.
     "See you later. If you get hungry, holler." I  pulled  the
cord out of the wall, and the big screen went blank.
     #
     I  hadn't  brought  any  clothes  to  change  into.  I got
restless and went down to the lobby and browsed around in  some
of  the  shops  there,  killed a half hour, but my heart wasn't
really in it. In spite of all  my  rationalizations  about  the
Flacks, I kept expecting that tap on the shoulder that asks the
musical  question,  "Do  you  know a good lawyer?" I picked out
some loose harem pants in gold silk and a  matching  blouse,  a
lounging  pajama ensemble I guess you'd call it, mostly because
I dislike parading  around  with  no  clothes  in  public,  and
because Walter was picking up the tab, then I thought of Brenda
and  got  interested. I found a similar pair for her in a green
that I thought would do nice things to her eyes.  They  had  to
extrude  the arms and legs, but the shirt waist was okay, since
it was supposed to leave the midriff bare.
     When I got back to the suite Brenda was no longer  slumped
in  the  chair. I found her in the bathroom, hugging the toilet
and crying her eyes out,  looking  like  a  jumbo  coat  hanger
somebody  had  crumpled up and left there. I felt low enough to
sit on a sheet of toilet paper and swing my feet, to  borrow  a
phrase  from  Liz.  I'd  never  used  a  goofball  before,  had
forgotten how sick they were  supposed  to  make  you.  If  I'd
remembered, would I still have used it? I don't know. Probably.
     I  knelt  beside  her and put my arm around her shoulders.
She quieted down to a few whimpers, didn't try to move away.  I
got  a  towel and wiped her mouth, flushed away the stuff she'd
brought up. I eased her around until she  was  sitting  against
the  wall.  She  wiped  her eyes and nose and looked at me with
dead eyes. I pulled the pajamas out of the sack and  held  them
up.
     "Look what I got you," I said. "Well, actually I used your
credit card, but Walter's good for it."
     She  managed a weak smile and held out her hand and I gave
them to her. She tried to show an interest, holding  the  shirt
up  to  her  chest.  I  think  if she'd thanked me I'd have run
screaming to the police, begging to be arrested.
     "They're nice," she said. "You think it'll  look  good  on
me?"
     "Trust  me,"  I said. She met my eyes without flinching or
giving me one of her apologetic smiles  or  any  other  of  her
arsenal  of  don't-hit-meI'm-harmless  gestures.  Maybe she was
growing up a little. What a shame.
     "I don't think I will," she said. I put a hand on each  of
her shoulders and put my face close to hers.
     "Good,"  I  said,  stood, and held out a hand. She took it
and I pulled her up and we went back to the main  room  of  the
suite.
     She  did  cheer  up  a little when she got the clothes on,
turning in front of a big mirror  to  study  herself  from  all
angles, which reminded me to look in on my prisoner. I told her
to wait there.
     He  wasn't  nearly  as bad off as I'd thought he would be,
which worried me more than I let him know. I couldn't figure it
out until I crouched down to his  level  and  looked  into  the
blank television screen he faced.
     "You  tricky rascal," I said. Looking at the inert plastic
surface of the screen, I could see part of  a  picture  on  the
screen  directly behind his head, the only one I hadn't smashed
out. I couldn't tell what the movie was,  and  considering  how
little of it he could see he might not have known, either, with
the  sound  off, but it must have been enough to sustain him. I
picked him up and turned him around facing away from  the  wall
screen.  He  made  a  fascinating  centerpiece,  sure  to start
interesting conversations at  your  next  party.  Just  a  head
sitting  on  a  thick  metal  base,  with  four  little pillars
supporting a flat roof above him. It was like a little temple.
     He was looking really worried now.  I  crouched  down  and
looked at all the covered mirrors and glass. I found no surface
that  would  reflect  an  image to him if I were to turn on the
screen behind him, which I did.  I  debated  about  the  sound,
finally  turned  it  on,  figuring it would torment him more to
hear it and not be able to see. If I was wrong, I could  always
try  it the other way in an hour or so, if we were granted that
much time. Let's face it, if anybody was looking for  us,  we'd
be  easy  to find. I waved at him and made a face at the string
of curses that followed me out of the room.
     How to get information out of somebody that  doesn't  want
to  talk? That's the question I'd asked myself before I started
this escapade. The obvious answer is torture, but even  I  draw
the line at that. But there's torture and then there's torture.
If  a  man  had  spent  most  of his life watching passively as
endless images marched by right in front  of  his  face,  spent
every  waking hour watching, how would he react if the plug was
pulled? I'd find out  soon  enough.  I'd  read  somewhere  that
people in sensory deprivation tanks quickly became disoriented,
pliable,  lost  their  will to resist. Maybe it would work with
the Grand Flack.
     Brenda and I spent a silent half hour  sitting  in  chairs
not  too  far  from  each other that might as well have been on
other planets. When she finally  spoke,  it  startled  me.  I'd
forgotten she was there, lost in my own thoughts.
     "She was going to use that thing on us," she said.
     "Who,  Cricket?  You  saw  it fall out of her hand, right?
It's called a goofball. Knocks you right  out,  from  what  I'm
told."
     "You were told right. It was awful."
     "I'm  really  sorry, Brenda. It seemed like a good idea at
the time."
     "It was. I asked for it. I deserved it."
     I wasn't sure about that, but it had been the quickest way
to show her what we'd narrowly averted. That's  me:  quick  and
dirty,  and  explain  later.  She  thought  about it a few more
minutes.
     "Maybe she was just going to use it on the Flacks."
     "Sure she was; she didn't expect to find us there. But you
didn't see her handing out pairs of  glasses.  We'd  have  gone
down with the Flacks."
     "And she'd have left us there."
     "Just like we left her."
     "Well,  like you said, she didn't expect us. We forced her
hand."
     "Brenda, you're trying to apologize for her, and it's  not
necessary.  She forced my hand, too. You think I liked cracking
her on the head? Cricket's my friend."
     "That's the part I don't understand."
     "Look, I don't know what her plan was. Maybe she had drugs
on her, too, something to make the  Flacks  talk  right  there.
That  might  have  been  the best way, come to think of it. The
penalties for . . . well, I guess for headnapping,  it's  going
to be pretty stiff if they catch me."
     "Me, too."
     I  showed  her  the  gun  I'd  bought from Liz; she looked
shocked, so I put it away. I  don't  blame  her.  Nasty  little
thing, that gun. I can see why they're illegal.
     "Just  me.  I