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"Look," laughed Babs. "She's imitating the jellyfish in Persistence of Memory.

Hey, Sally! Do a soft watch!"

While her arty friends watched admiringly, Sally formed herself into a large smoothly bulging disk that bent in the middle to rest comfortably in her chair.

She made her skin shiny—gold in back and glassy in front with a huge watch dial with warping hands. Her soft richly computing body drooped off the edges of her chair like a fried egg. Salvador Dali had predicted the moldies. It was perfect.

But Stahn was too benumbed to appreciate Sally's visual pun. "I'm kind of surprised they let her in here," he said thoughtlessly. "What with the stink."

"Do I stink in restaurants?" demanded Wendy. "Some of us are civilized enough to know when to close our pores. You should talk, Stahn, the way you've been farting recently."

Saint cackled to hear this. "Da stinks. Da's a moldie."

Stahn quietly poured himself another glass of champagne.

"How did you like the parade, old man?" asked Babs.

"I must say, it made me feel straight. That's not a way I like to feel, mostly."

"Men are so worried about being macho," said Wendy.

"Will everyone stop picking on me?" snapped Stahn.

"We're not picking on you," said Saint, reaching over to give Stahn a caress followed by a sly poke.

"Da is a wreck," said Wendy. "He stayed up most of last night."

"What did you do, Da?" asked Saint.

"Never mind." Stahn didn't want to tell his kids about the camote. He was ashamed to be such an eternal example of out-of-control drug-taking; in recent years he'd backslid terribly. "It has to do with this new way to control moldies."

"Are you scheming to control me?" Wendy wondered suddenly. "Me, in the sense of Wendy's Happy Cloak?"

"No," said Stahn. "I wouldn't dream of it. Though it might not hurt for you to try seeing how a leech-DIM feels sometime. They say for a moldie it's like being lifted. Then you'd understand. Instead of always being such a straight goody-goody."

"I've been busy making a worm farm," said Babs, changing the subject. "Did I tell you? It's so floatin'. 'Place moistened humus between two glass sheets and add one pint red worms.' Voila!"

"You're doing this for fun?" asked Stahn. "Or is it art?"

"If you mean, 'Can I sell worm farms?'—waaal, old-timer, I just du

"Lice," said Saint. He'd taken off his foil helmet and shrugged his coat onto the back of his chair. His hair looked like upholstery on cheap furniture—it was buzz-cut, half-bleached to a punky orange, and there was a paisley filigree cut into it, revealing curving lines of scalp that seemed to have small translucent insects crawling along them.

"You have lice, Saint?" exclaimed Wendy. "How filthy! We have to get you disinfected! Oh! And we've all been hugging you!"

"I think he's teasing you, Wendy," said Stahn, peering closer at the tiny creatures on his son's scalp. "Those are micro-DIMs. I know they've been used for bartering, but I've never heard of them doing paisley before. Did you program that yourself, Saint?"

"My friend Jua

I've been finding some really floatin' ware in this building I'm maintenance-managing, Da."

"This is your new janitor job?" said Stahn.

Saint was suddenly very angry. "Don't you always say that, you stupid old man.

A

maintenance manager is not a janitor. I like to fix things. I'm good at it.

And for you to always act like it's—"

Stahn winced at the intensity of his son's reaction. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it," he said quickly. "I'm senile. When I was your age, I was Sta-Hi the taxi driver, so who am I to talk? Maintenance is wavy. Retrofitting. Tinkering.

It's almost like engineering."

"Saint doesn't want to go to engineering school, Da," put in Babs. "Get over it.

His friends already look up to him like a teacher."

"They do?" asked Stahn.

"Yes," said Saint. "I like to think about the meaning of things. And what to do with life. Every day should be happy. My friends listen to me."

"Well, hell," said Stahn. "Then maybe you can be a senator." He put up his hands cringingly. "Just kidding!"

The waitress arrived with a pitcher of sangria, more potatoes, and the grilled prawns. Stahn passed Saint the prawns and poured out glasses of the sangria.

"What's the building you're doing maintenance for?" Wendy asked Saint.

"Meta West Link," said Saint. "They own the satellites and dishes for sending uvvy signals to the Moon."

"Wholly owned by ISDN since 2020," put in Stahn. "I can certainly believe that Meta West would have some interesting things in their basement."

"Give me some DIM lice, Saintey?" pleaded Babs. "I'll make a Smart Art flea circus! I want lice right now!" She crooked one arm around her brother's neck and began picking at his head. "I'm the lice doctor!" When Babs had been younger, she'd enjoyed taking ticks off the family dog and a

"Don't be so disgusting, you two," said Wendy severely. "You're in a restaurant.

Stop it right now."

The kids broke apart with a flurry of screeches and pokes, and then both of them sat there calmly with their hands folded.

"It's Da's fault," said Saint.

"Da did it," added Babs.

"Da's bad," said Saint.

"Da's lifted and drunk," said Babs.

"Da has a drug problem," said Saint.

Stahn got the waitress and ordered himself a brandy and an espresso. "Anyone else for coffee or a drink? Anything? Dessert, kids?"

Saint and Babs ordered cake, but Wendy didn't want anything. She said she thought it was about time they got going.

"Mind if I join you?" said Sally the moldie, suddenly appearing at the end of the table. Her body was a cubist dream of triangles and bright colors.

"Sally, ole pal!" said Babs, hilarious on her four drinks. "Sit down." Sally pulled up a chair and Babs introduced her. "This is my bran and my rents—Saint, Stahn, and Wendy. This is Sally, guys."

"I've been wanting to meet Wendy," said Sally. "We moldies all wonder about her.

How do you do it? Emulate a human wife and mother, I mean. It's a pretty bizarre thing to do."

"I've been doing it so long it feels normal," said Wendy. "Though I am getting a bit tired of this particular human body."

Sally produced a screw-top jar from the folds of her flesh and took off the top.

"I like to have a little rub of this when I'm around people getting high," she said, using a green-striped finger to crook out a glob of ointment. She rubbed the goo into her chest and handed the jar to Wendy. "Try some, Wendy. It's betty. Fine, fine betty."

"We still have a long trek home," objected Stahn. He counted on Wendy being the sober one.

"Just chill sometime," said Wendy, scooping up two fingers of betty and smoothing it onto her 'Cloak self.

By the time Sally could put the jar away, she and Wendy were completely lifted.

"Wave this new take on the soft watch," said Sally, turning beige. In seconds she was shaped like an old-time computer box with a monitor on it—the box melting and drooling off the edge of her chair to make a puddle on the floor, and the monitor was displaying—the face of that Je

At the same time, Wendy was tweaking quite savagely. Her Happy Cloak stopped being a demure red Wendy the Witch cape and bunched up around her neck in a big convoluted green dinosaur ruffle. "I've been a good wife and mother all these years, but I don't want to get any older. I want a full upgrade! You need to understand this meat body isn't me," she raved. "Watch!" The ruff on her neck bucked up, pulling a frightening tangle of rootlike co