Christopher Hinz - Paratwa 03 - The Paratwa

The Paratwa

Paratwa 03

Christopher Hinz

This one is for Earl Hinz and Pam Reynolds

from The Rigors, byMeridian

It was the time of our emergence. It was the time of the fast coming, when the. Earth was still vital and

the Ash Ock were fresh as today's memory; in retrospect, a fragile era, but one where life itself seemed

aglow with all manner of possibility, where we Paratwa felt destined to rule the Earth, to rule the stars. It

was a time when each of us sizzled under the, spell of our own unique simultaneities, relishing the genetic

fates that had cast our souls into two bodies instead of one. It was a time when our binary spirits seemed

molded by the essence of some primordial ubiquity, our bodies glazed to perfection, our minds burnished

by the hands of an immortal poet.

It was a time of the Ash Ock, the royal Caste—those Jive unique creations whose sphere of influence

exploded outward from that secret jungle complex deep in the Brazilian rainforest, enveloping the world,

uniting us, directing our disparate Paratwa breeds into a swarm of binary elegance that, for those brief

fragile years, seemed unstoppable.

It was a time of innocence. It was a time that could not last.

Some of us began to perceive the underlying dynamics of Ash Ock power, to comprehend their subtle

manipulations, to hear the distinctive growls of Jive exquisite motors beneath Jive exquisite hoods. The

mirror that the Ash Ock had held before each of us, which had reflected only our virtues, splintered

under the roar of those engines; our worship of their godlike prowess yielded to mere admiration,

appreciative yet tempered by the knowledge that those of the royal Caste remained mortal, despite their

incredible magic. And that magic, partially swollen by our own needs and desires, gave birth to a child

swaddled in the robes of scientific superiority. The poet departed, never to return. It was a time of

terrible betrayal

As the Star-Edge fleet—under the clandestine guidance of Theophrastus—prepared to escape from an

Earth drowning under the fury of the Apocalypse, some of us began to learn the real secrets of the Ash

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Ock. And that juncture marked the beginning of a cynicism that spread through our ranks with the

swiftness of a biological plague. By the time the Star-Edge fleet had cleared the boundaries of the solar

system, Sappho and Theophrastus were almost faced with open revolt, for many of the Paratwa had

trouble adjusting to the indignity of these ultimate truths.

But Ash Ock patience helped all of us persevere. The crisis passed. An even greater vista of

conceptualization was now open to us, and we were invited to perceive the universe from new and

dizzying heights. Most of us lost our cynicism. Those few who did not kept their doubts to them-

Theophrastus proclaimed: "Never forget that you represent the vanguard of the second coming."

"And never forget that you serve the true Paratwa," Sappho added. "Your lives now intertwine with the

destiny of the chosen.

History texts were subtly altered; the roles of the other three Ash Ock—Codrus, Aristotle, and

Empedocles—were lessened to those of supporting players.

Codrus was really the first of the royal Caste to fall from Ash Ock grace. His tways, like the tways of

Empedocles, were of mixed sexes—male and female. Even in those early days, when we were still

emerging from tie landscape of humans, when Theophrastus had not yet infiltrated the Star-Edge project,

bending it to his own designs, Sappho had begun to suggest—subtly—that dual-gendered Paratwa were

inherently flawed. For a while, even I Jell for her elegant craftiness, though eventually I came to see such

illogic as a refraction of my own male/male prejudice.

Still, I understood some of Sappho's negativity toward the others of her breed. Codrus often displayed

the most blatant weaknesses, misconstruing Ash Ock formulations for precise truths, falling into that

intellectual trap of regarding the mind as the ruler of the body. Those facets of reality that Codrus failed to

grasp became data to be processed, information that simply remained undigested by his networks.

Eventually, Codrus's inability to fathom the depths led Sappho to regard him like the child of her royal

family, his tways forever loyal and anxious to please, yet his monarchial consciousness incapable of

reaching its destined maturity. He was ultimately precluded from all Ash Ock intricacies, and it was

arranged that he be left behind when the Star-Edge fleet departed. Until his death at the hands of the

Costeaus, centuries later, Codrus remained blissfully ignorant, a true intellectual pauper.

Aristotle, for a time, also remained unaware of the greater concerns, although Aristotle's ignorance was

not of his own making, for in many ways, he was the equal of Sappho: shrewd and cunning, with a natural

aptitude for the intricate methodology of politics. Aristotle's male/male interlace seemed to

know—instinctively—how to utilize others to amplify his own desires; he played the human race as a

preinformation-age grandmaster played chess.

In tile earliest years of Ash Ock ascendancy, I was the servant of Aristotle, and I grew to admire and

respect the sophistication of his agile mind. For a time, I actually came to like him, especially after he had

introduced me to Empedocles, youngest of the five, male/female tways whose infectious lust for all

manner of experience rivaled even my own. In truth, I loved those years that we spent training

Empedocles, helping to mold our young warrior into an elegant bastion of Ash Ock authority, ready to

assume his place in the sphere of the royal Caste, to become the champion of all of Earth's Paratwa.

And for a time in those early years, I even doubted Sappho's wisdom in keeping Aristotle—and thus

Empedocles—ignorant of the greater reality. In Codrus's case, I understood. But I felt that Aristotle and

Empedocles should be given full access to Sappho's knowledge—the secret knowledge—which at that

time she shared only with Theophrastus and a few trusted lieutenants: Gol-Gosonia, myself, a handful of

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others.

Eventually, however, I came to see that Sappho was correct in keeping Aristotle in the dark, for that

monarch's plans within plans began rivaling the complexity of even her own intrigues. The simple fact was:

Aristotle was too much like Sappho. There could be but one ruler, and Sappho—by virtue of birthright

alone—would be sole proprietress of our destiny.

Nevertheless, the day when I betrayed Aristotle—and doomed Empedocles in the bargain—-remains

the most regretted day of my life.

Gillian felt eager for another fight. The darkness of Sirak-Brath seemed an ideal place for one.

He followed Buff and the smuggler through the alley separating a pair of low-tech industries—a nuke

breeder and a manufacturer of organic soak-dye—the dank passage cutting between the towering

buildings like a thin wafer sliced from a monstrous loaf. From the wet floor of the alley, the dirty

vacu-formed walls—slabs of reinforced plastic veneered in ancient brickface—soared over two hundred

feet up into the night sky. Shadowy forms interconnected the two buildings: a plethora of structural

support shafts, conduits, and soggy flexpipes. There were no windows.

A sliver of pale, yellowish gray light was exposed at the peaks of the artificial canyon, and that

illuminated snippet should have revealed the distant slabs of the Colony's cosmishield glass, and beyond,

the darkness of space. But the thirty-eight-mile-long orbiting cylinder had managed, over the two and a

half centuries of its existence, to acquire one of pre-Apocalyptic Earth's nastier habits: air pollution.

During peak manufacturing periods, the smog became so dense that Sirak-Brath's atmospheric

circulators could not remove it faster than it was being generated.

Buff turned to the smuggler. "How much farther?"

In the dim light of the alley, she was the shorter and thinner of the two figures. Weeks of hiding out with

Gillian in a Costeau exercise cone had enabled Buff to shed nearly fifty pounds. She remained stocky, but

there was little fat; upper

arms bulged with muscle, and her legs now boasted a strength and agility that she had never known at

her former weight.

The smuggler grunted. His name was Impleton, and he pointed ahead and whispered words that seemed

to dissolve in the dense air, even as Gillian leaned forward, straining to hear. But Buff had understood;

the black Costeau's firm nod provided assurance that Impleton's response gave no cause for alarm.

Gillian's last visit to Sirak-Brath had been over half a century ago, and tonight's smog seemed much

worse than any he remembered from that first sojourn, in 2307. Back then, the periodic onslaughts of

dirty air had not seemed so conspicuous, the haze so impenetrable. He would have expected that during

his fifty-six years of stasis sleep, legitimate technical improvements would have contributed to making the

air invisible again.

But despite the imminent threat of the returning Paratwa starships—a threat whose closing horizon lately

had spawned bitter tensions throughout the populace of the Irryan Colonies—day-to-day scientific and

technical advancements were still under the control of E-Tech, the powerful institution whose tenets

essentially served to limit the degree of change. E-Tech's two-and-a-half-century-old ideal—to prevent

wild permutations in the social structure, like those that had decimated the Earth during the Apocalypse

of 2099—made it difficult for a Colony to alter the status quo. Sirak-Brath's smog served to illustrate the

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downside of E-Tech's otherwise noble cause.

Sirak-Brath had other problems as well. It was popularly considered to be the black sheep of the Irryan

Colonies—the cylinder denizens of the other two hundred and sixteen orbiting space islands could point

to with disdain. No matter how bad your home Colony might be in a particular respect, Sirak-Brath was

probably worse. The industrial cylinder boasted the highest crime rates, the dirtiest streets, and the most

consistently corruptible politicians. Many non-mainstreamed Costeaus, black marketeers, and high-tech

smugglers called it home.

The alley began to curve to the left, and a soft breeze brought an oppressive odor of untreated sludge.

Gillian glanced over his shoulder, saw the pale remaining light from the side street, nearly two blocks

away, slowly compress into nothingness, and the heavy barred gate, through which Impleton had led

them into this service corridor, disappear. Now, only the smog-reflected light from above remained to

guide their footsteps.

Gillian closed his eyes, listened to the night: the dull omnipresent hum of heavy machinery, distant sirens

of local pa-troller or E-Tech Security vehicles en route to fresh crime sites, their own footsteps, flapping

across the wet pavement, an occasional echo of a human voice, amplified to prominence by the acoustic

qualities of this artificial canyon. Sounds that were recognizable aspects of Sirak-Brath. Sounds that

carried no threat of danger. But there was still time.

The alley continued its steady curve to the left, on a sweeping tangent, until finally they were walking

perpendicular to their original direction. Fresh bright light appeared up ahead; the canyon walls peeled

back to reveal a cul de sac where nuke breeder joined organic soak-dye manufacturer, their common

bulkhead a monolithic eruption of greasy pipes and spiraling twill tubes. It was power distribution

machinery combined with an overworked pollution control grid. The entire conglomeration had been

designed to serve both industries and probably others as well, whose sterns would be butting against the

far side of the towering mech-wall.

Buff and Impleton became crisp silhouettes as they headed into the light, the fresh illumination provided

by a series of globed lamps positioned ten feet above the dank floor. Buffs hairless pate, cosmetically

scarred by a series of twisting blue and red lines—the deliberate handiwork of luminescent

crayons—began to shine. In the daytime, the black Costeau often wore a hat, but when a Colony's

mirrors rotated into darkness, she exposed her shaved skull and the shiny photo-luminescent streaks.

Blue lines and red lines, crisscrossing the crown of her head, all freshly painted each morning, as

important to Buff as any other aspect of her daily grooming. Blue lines and red

lines, each bound by the faint perimeter of her natural hairline, each glowing, like a nest of wet snakes.

Buff was of the clan of the Cerniglias, but the painted streaks remained universal Costeau symbols. Blue

for mourning. Red for vengeance. With Costeaus, the two colors often went together.

Buff had painted herself every morning for nearly a month and vowed to continue the ritual until she

found the Paratwa assassin—the one who had been terrorizing the Irryan Colonies for the past five

months. The one whose tripartite self— three discrete physical bodies controlled by a solitary,

telepathically interlaced consciousness—remained unique among known Paratwa breeds. The one whose

brutal massacres, throughout the orbiting cylinders, had been linked to the imminent return of the Paratwa

starships.

The one who had killed her friend Martha.

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Impleton—fat, pale-skinned, wearing a knee-length pink corselet coat—craned his neck and muttered

something to Buff. She paused at the entrance to the bottleneck, waited for Gillian to catch up.

"He says Faquod's not here yet."

Gillian went hyper alert. Senses, normally diluted by a wide range of environmental stimuli, focused;

muscles prepped for instantaneous response. His tongue slithered along the tiny rubber pads attached to

his bicuspids and molars—the activation circuitry for the hidden crescent web hardware strapped around

his waist. One snap of the jaw and the defensive field would ignite, form a near-invisible sheath along the

front and rear contours of his six-foot frame, a barrier capable of deflecting projectile and energy

weapons alike. And hidden in the sleeve covering his right forearm, gripped securely in a slip-wrist

holster, lay a pale egg with a tiny needle protruding from one end.

His Cohe wand: a device infinitely rare and highly illegal, the original weapon of the Paratwa assassins

from the days before the decimation of Earth, over two-and-a-half centuries ago. The Cohe was devilish

to control, requiring years of training to become proficient in its more subtle capabilities. But once

mastered, it was a weapon that bore no equal. Impleton sucked in his gut and said loudly, "Faquod, he

will be along shortly."

Two other figures were poised in the bottleneck. To Gillian's right, a well-groomed man with a

sawed-off beard leaned against the wall, one hand tucked under his black coat. And across the alley,

seated on a four-foot-high ledge, was a blond-haired muscle boy, grinning like a scuddie. The youth was

stripped to the waist. Bulging pectorals bore tattoos of ancient motorized cycles and the cryptic phrase,

I'm a Harley in Heat, was printed neatly above his navel.

Buff scowled. "You said he'd be waiting here for us."

The smuggler rolled his eyes. "Faquod, he does as he pleases."

The muscle boy laughed. Gillian approached the youth while casually scanning the mech-wall, already

fairly certain of what he would find on it. He was not disappointed.

About twenty feet up, squeezed amid the filthy spirals of relay tubes and monstrous conduits, sat a

hunched figure with a thruster rifle. It was a fairly good hiding place, though not good enough to escape

Gillian's detection. Although he had met Impleton only yesterday, their brief encounter had provided

enough raw data to establish a psych profile of the swarthy black marketeer. Gillian had known that bold

deceit would be Impleton's fashion; the presence of an armed backup, out of sight, fit the smuggler's

profile like a glove.

Impleton licked his lips. "These high-tech playthings you desire . . . Faquod, he says that they are not

easy to come by. Faquod says they will not be cheap."

Gillian halted two paces away from the grinning muscle boy and leaned over the four-foot ledge that the

tattooed smuggler sat upon. On the other side of the wall, a vertical drop plunged fifteen feet into a

plodding river of sludge covered by a fine-meshed net. The harsh odor of untreated sewage, far more

potent than it had been in the alley, assailed his nostrils. Gillian suspected that the open sewage channel

was illegal.

"Very expensive," continued Impleton, his fat cheeks squirming as if his mouth were stuffed with

unchewed food.

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"Faquod—he will want at least half the money in advance, I am sure."

"You told us that already," Buff replied calmly.

"You have the money?"

"Not with us, of course." Buff sighed. "You don't think we're that foolish, do you?"

Gillian leaned against the ledge and relaxed his muscles, body poised for action. He was now fairly

certain that Impleton was lying. Faquod's not coming. We've been set up for a knockdown. They're

planning to rob us. Maybe kill us as well. He found himself secretly smiling as he began to consider ways

to extend the duration of the upcoming fight. It was important for him to be able to relish every moment.

The smuggler with the black coat and sawed-off beard carefully withdrew a small thruster from his

pocket. He made no threatening gestures, keeping the weapon aimed at the ground.

Impleton yawned. "My men . . . they're very excitable. I told them they would be paid tonight. I hope

they will not be disappointed."

"Yeah," agreed Buff, with a sharp glance at Gillian, "I certainly hope no one gets pissed."

The fat smuggler stroked his chin. "I think that maybe you have some of the money, anyway. Down

payment money. Sign of good faith. You give it to us. We give it to Faquod."

Buff scowled. "You bring Faquod. Then we'll talk about money."

Impleton's pudgy face attempted a smile. "Your way ... it is not good for business. Faquod ... he likes to

know that there is trust, that there is openness."

Gillian felt his chest begin to tingle—the onslaught of the familiar desperate excitement that now directly

preceded his fights. Buff referred to his eagerness for confrontation—for violence—as "full-body

hard-on," and she was probably not far from the truth. Over the past month, his increasing desire to

engage in combat had developed strange sexual overtones. Fighting had mutated into a distinct mode of

self-expression; violence and lust had become intertwined.

But Gillian knew that at its core, the fighting remained away for him to keep his turbulent inner forces at

bay, a way to temporarily relieve the tremendous mental/emotional pressure that relentlessly strove to

devolve his consciousness. He fought not only because it felt good but because it helped to maintain his

sanity.

He turned to Buff. "We're wasting our time. These scuddies have been lying to us. I don't think they're

smart enough even to know Faquod."

Impleton sneered. "Not smart? Smarter than you, maybe. Smart enough not to wander into an alley with

strangers, maybe."

Gillian let out a harsh laugh, heard it echo up the canyon walls, heard his own heart beating with

excitement, with the urgency of wild desire. A fresh assault of malodorous sewage drifted up from the

sludge river. He inhaled deeply. The odor should have repulsed him, should have carried with it a

hundred connotations: childhood naughtiness, genetically determined distaste, a manifest of internal

responses, learned and innate. But it smelled good. The whole night smelled good.

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He spun to face Impleton. "You're right. You should never allow yourself to be alone with strangers. It's

not smart. It's not safe."

The smuggler with the sawed-off beard raised his disrupter and pointed it at Buff. She held up her hands,

pleading restraint.

"Look," she said softly, "we really don't want any trouble." She glared at Gillian. "We just want to meet

Faquod."

"Then you pay," said Impleton. "Meeting Faquod . . . that is a privilege."

Gillian pointed his finger at the muscle boy, four feet away. "Can this ignor fight? Whenever I see

someone like this, I'm reminded of the value of contraceptives. If his parents had only known."

"Oh shit," muttered Buff.

Muscle boy lost his smile. Saw-beard tightened his grip on the thruster and glanced at Impleton, waiting

for orders. Impleton's mouth squirmed. The fat smuggler released a loud belch.

The belch was a signal. Muscle boy hopped down from the ledge and took a step toward Gillian. "I'm

going to—"

His words ended in a choking gasp as Gillian's right foot lashed out, slammed into his belly. Muscle boy

doubled over in pain.

Saw-beard pivoted, aimed his thruster at Gillian. He was far too late. Gillian, biting down hard, ignited

his defensive web, heard the near-invisible crescents—front and rear—hum softly as they came to life.

Saw-beard fired. Gillian, braced against the ledge, was hit by the discrete blast of energy, feeling it as a

gentle nudge against his front crescent.

A single-tube thruster, thought Gillian. A one-second recharge interval before it can be used again.

All the time in the world.

Gillian flexed his right wrist and compressed his knuckles, launching the Cohe wand from its slip-wrist

holster into his waiting palm. He squeezed the egg.

The twisting black beam whipped up the side of the mech-wall, the leading fifteen to twenty inches of the

hot particle stream disintegrating everything in its path, the remainder of the beam merely a trail of

harmless light. The fourth smuggler, perched twenty feet above the alley, screamed as twill tubes, relays,

and conduits exploded, showering him beneath a mix of hot liquids and pressurized gases. Live wires

arced; the alley's gloom vanished in a sizzling display of electrical madness. The smuggler—along with a

melange of exploding flares—was jolted from the mech-wall, his arms flailing wildly, thruster rifle flying

from his grasp, his crescent web turning the color of red wine as it soared to full power, trying to

neutralize the thrashing high-voltage cables.

The smuggler was still in midair when Gillian twisted his wrist and turned the Cohe's deadly energy on

Saw-beard. For an instant, the black beam seemed to coil in upon itself, lancing into an expanding spiral

as it hurtled high into the air. Gillian squeezed the egg harder and jerked his wrist; the Cohe's deadly

energy stream performed a U-turn, plunged toward the ground. Saw-beard opened his mouth in

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astonishment as the Cohe's devastating energy sliced off the barrel of his thruster. Gillian released

pressure on the egg-shaped wand. The black beam vanished just as the plummeting smuggler slammed

onto the floor of the alley.

Muscle boy, still clutching his guts, reached into his pants pocket. Gillian jerked forward, extended his

left foot through the weak side portal of his web, and slammed his heel into muscle boy's chest. The

tattooed smuggler grunted hard, collapsed to his knees.

Get up, Gillian urged, feeling the excitement race through his body, unrestrained, as if his inner skin were

being tickled, as if there were feathers in his bloodstream. His breath came in short intense gasps and he

could feel tremendous waves of heat coursing up and down his chest. Full-body flush. Full-body

hard-on.

"Cohe wand," whispered Impleton, the words echoing his fright. Buff grabbed the smuggler by the neck

and yanked him forward so violently that he fell to his knees.

Saw-beard dropped the useless remnant of his weapon and backed away, his eyes wide with fear. The

man from the mech-wall remained prone on the floor of the alley, moaning softly.

Gillian stared at muscle boy. "Get up!" He slithered into a combat crouch, turned sideways toward the

tattooed smuggler, ready to lash out with hand or foot through the web's portals.

Muscle boy raised his head. A defeated face met Gillian's. Hard contours had been transformed into

quivering patches of fear, humiliation. There was no more fight left in him. Eyes like those of a beaten

puppy stared up at Gillian, begging forgiveness.

"No!" Gillian screamed, lunging forward, grabbing muscle boy's ankle and elbow, lifting the terrified

smuggler overhead. With one violent twist, he sent him cartwheeling over the ledge. Muscle boy's shriek

lasted until the youth plowed into the net-covered sludge river, fifteen feet below. There was a loud

muffled splash, and then steaming gray geysers sprayed Gillian, bringing with them fresh wafts of the foul

odor.

Gillian felt cheated; the fight had ended too soon. His left sleeve was damp with sludge, and he rammed

the garment

against his nostrils, sucked in the odor, wanting it to overpower him, hoping sensory overload would

occupy consciousness, take his mind away from the reality of his damaged psyche. But the smell was a

poor substitute for the cathartic power of violence. In a rage, he started toward Impleton.

The fat smuggler was on his knees, quaking in fear, his head pivoting wildly between Gillian and Buff.

"Won't tell what I saw!" he pleaded. "Please . . . won't tell—"

Gillian grabbed the front of Impleton's coat and rubbed the protruding needle of his Cohe into the thick

flesh of Impleton's neck.

"Won't tell," repeated the terrified smuggler, his voice dropping to a whisper, his eyes blinking like a set

of short-circuiting status lights.

"Let's talk about Faquod," suggested Buff.

Impleton, with an overly vigorous nod of his head, managed to scratch himself on the needle of the

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Cohe.

"Oww!" he screamed.

"Calm down," ordered Buff. "And maybe you'll survive this night."

"Faquod," urged Gillian. "Where is he?"

The smuggler's lips began to quiver, uncontrollably, until finally the words exploded from his mouth.

"You're a Paratwa!" His eyes panned back and forth between Gillian and Buff. "You're tways!"

Buff laughed. "And you're a shitpile with maggots for neurons! Now talk! We want to find Faquod!"

Ten feet away, Saw-beard started to inch forward. Gillian glared at him. It was enough of a warning.

Saw-beard froze in midstride.

"Don't want to die," whimpered Impleton.

"Faquod!" shouted Buff. "Where is he?"

Gillian pressed the Cohe's needle tip deep into a fold of flesh on the smuggler's neck, until it almost

broke the skin.

"Fin Whirl in centersky," babbled Impleton. "Fin Whirl— tomorrow night. Faquod—he is always there.

He never misses it."

Gillian glanced at Buff. "You know where this place is?"

"Yeah, I know where Fin Whirl is." A deep frown settled on her face. "Where else?" she asked

Impleton. "Where else can we find him?"

"Don't know," whispered Impleton, his eyes begging. "It's truth! Fin Whirl—that's all I know."

Gillian leaned down, pressed his mouth against the smuggler's ear. "If you're lying, I'll come back for

you. I'll slice off your head and put it in my trophy case."

"Fin Whirl," cried the smuggler. "It's truth—I swear!"

"Fin Whirl's a big place," pressed Buff. "Where exactly?"

"He has a private booth—BS-four."

Gillian believed him. He nodded to Buff, and she laid her palm on Impleton's forehead. The smuggler

jerked once. His eyes glazed over, and he fell forward into her arms, unconscious. She let him slide off

her body onto the damp paving and opened her palm, exposing the tiny white neuropad attached to the

skin. She crooked her finger at Saw-beard.

He came quickly, almost eagerly, obviously finding a few hours of deep sleep via synaptic scrambling

preferable to any further encounter with Gillian's Cohe wand.

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"You may as well be comfortable," suggested Buff, pointing to Impleton's prone form. Saw-beard sat

down beside his partner and rested the back of his head on Impleton's ample gut. Buff gave a quick

touch with the neuropad. Saw-beard's eyes glazed over as he entered induced sleep.

"Let's go," said Gillian.

They began to jog up the alley, around the bend, retracing their path, toward the huge gate that Impleton

had keyed open for them, toward the sanctuary of the street. Their boots splashed against puddles,

spraying the canyon walls with the foul conglomeration of liquids, like twin-rotored boats leaving

overlapping wakes.

"What's Fin Whirl?" asked Gillian, picking up the pace. It felt good to run hard, run fast, keep the body

stimulated.

"I don't think you should go there," said Buff, the distaste in her voice easily discernible.

"We have to."

Buff did not reply. She was a Costeau, and she would do what was necessary. They had been partners

for over a month now, ever since that Venus Cluster debacle in Irrya.

Their near-fatal encounter with Slasher and Shooter—two tways of the vicious tripartite assassin who

had been ravaging the Colonies—had provided a commonality of cause. Buff needed to avenge the death

of her friend Martha; Gillian needed to keep his inner turbulence under control.

"What's Fin Whirl?" he repeated.

"It's a place where games are played . . . dangerous games." She paused. "I don't think you should go

there."

They reached the end of the alley, jogged to a halt in front of the massive service gate. Gillian found the

control panel on the left wall, pressed the button. Silently, the gate slid open.

They emerged onto the narrow side street, deserted except for an old man seated on a stoop across the

way, his head encased in a metallic shroud—a ree-fee—a self-powered programmable holo, providing a

sensual experience as rich as the wearer's darkest fantasies. The man was muttering to himself:

"Now, silky—onto the floor. Onto your knees. Give us what we've been asking for. Ground it, silky.

Ground it good. Make it earth, silky. Make it wet as the world. ..."

Behind them, the gate closed automatically. They headed quickly up the street toward one of the main

boulevards, three blocks away, to a place where Sirak-Brath began to lose its shadows, where its

fantasies became accessible to all.

"Is Fin Whirl an entertainment complex?" probed Gillian. "A fantasy club?"

"It's no fantasy. It's very real."

"But a place of enjoyment, nonetheless?"

Buff grimaced. "I don't think you should go there."

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Christopher Hinz - Paratwa 03 - The Paratwa

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