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On the girls' eleventh birthday, Corey showed up with a set of six brand-new Silly Putters. Chuckling and showing his gray teeth, he upended his knapsack to dump the lively plastic creatures out on the floor. "Remember Jabberwocky, girls?" he cried. "Jokie, can you recite the first two verses?"

"Okay," said Joke and declaimed the wonderful, time-polished words.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!"

As Joke spoke, each of the six new Silly Putters bowed in turn: the tove, a combination badger and lizard with corkscrew-shaped nose and tail; the borogove, a shabby moplike bird with long legs and a drooping beak; the rath, a small noisy green pig; the Jabberwock, a buck-toothed dragon with bat wings and long fingers; the Jubjub bird with a wide orange beak like a sideways football and a body that was little more than a purple tuft of feathers; and the Bandersnatch, a nasty monkey with a fifth hand at the tip of his grasping tail.

Joke and Yoke shrieked in excitement as the Jabberwocky creatures moved about.

The Jubjub bird swallowed the rath and regurgitated it. The freed rath gave an angry squeal that rose into a sneezing whistle. The Jabberwock flapped its wings hard enough to rise a few inches off the floor. The tove alternately tried to drill its nose and its tail into the floor. The borogove stalked this way and that, peering at the others but not getting too close to them. And the Bandersnatch snaked its tail behind Yoke and felt up her ass.

"Don't!" said Yoke, slapping at the Bandersnatch's extra hand. The Bandersnatch gibbered, rubbed its crotch, capered lewdly, and then seized the back of Joke's leg, shudderingly hunching against the young girl's calf.

"I better do some more work on him," wheezed Corey, grabbing the Bandersnatch and stuffing the struggling Silly Putter back into his knapsack. "I put so much of myself into each of them that I'm never quite sure how they'll react to new situations. Quit staring at me like that, girls."

"Uncle Corey's a frumious Bandersnatch," giggled Yoke.

"It was so sick how that thing was pushing on my leg?" said Joke.

"Doing it," whooped Yoke. "Oh, look, the Jubjub bird is going to swallow the rath again and make it outgrabe!"

"The present tense is outgribe," corrected the literate Joke. "It's like give and gave."

If Darla was upset by the incident of the Bandersnatch, her suspicions about Corey Rhizome were fully confirmed a few months later when Kellee Kaarp came over to visit.

Kellee was a young friend of Darla's from Darla's heavy drug-use days, back when she'd been living in the Temple of Ra. Kellee was strung out on drugs—quaak, snap, three-way, merge, whatever—and she had sex with anyone who could get her high. She only visited when she needed something, but Darla always welcomed her.

Darla sometimes thought that if she hadn't met Whitey, she might have ended up like Kellee.

"Come on in, Kellee," said Darla. "How's it going?"

"Hard and xoxxy. I need money." Kellee was tiny and undernourished, not much bigger than Yoke or Joke.

"I don't keep any money around the house, Kellee," said Darla. "But I can give you a couple hits of merge. Best I can do."

"You still take merge, Darla? You still into the magic floppy?"

"Sure, whaddya think? I'm suddenly too realwoman for the love puddle? But I only do it with Whitey, like on major special occasions, maybe two or three times a month, and hardly ever in front of Yoke and Joke anymore."

"You've got your life together, Darla. I envy you. The pervo dooks I make it with, you wouldn't believe."

"I'm all ears," said Darla. "You know I love your sordid tales. How about some coffee, Kellee?"

"You got beer?"

"Affirmo."

After three beers and half an hour of chat, Kellee reminded Darla about the merge, and Darla went and got three caps from her stash.

"Thanks a lot, Darla," said Kellee, pocketing them. "And before I go, there's something I better tell you. I've been getting up my courage. The girls aren't home, are they? Yoke and Joke?"

"No, they're at school."

"Okay," sighed Kellee, ru

"What do you mean?"

"He was wearing his uvvy on his neck while he was on top of me, which is totally insulting in the first place—I know I'm not as wonderbuff as I used to be, but if somebody doesn't want Kellee, they should leave Kellee alone. I mean obviously Corey was using the uvvy to run a philtre to make me look like someone else. And I'm wondering who? So… I snatch the uvvy off him while he's coming, and I check it out, and… and it was a philtre of Joke. Or Yoke. They look the same to me."

"That gunjy deeve!" cried Darla. "My girls! I knew it! On their birthday, he gave them a Silly Putter that humped Joke's leg, and now he's ru

I'm telling Whitey!"

"Whitey will stop Corey," said Kellee. "Brah Whitey will do the deed. You got another beer?"

So Whitey spoke to Corey, and Corey stopped coming around, and the friendly di

"Come on, Darla," pleaded Corey Rhizome's hollow. "Talk to the Old Toymaker."

Slowly Darla got out of bed, her boobs jouncing in the gentle lunar gravity.

Her flesh exuded the notions of softness, of comfort, of ease. She had a mild double chin, a practical bow-shaped mouth, a pug nose, and frank eyes.

"Just a minute, goob!" she hollered and got herself dressed. She pulled on thigh-high moldie boots and low-cut black panties with a satin string waistband and scallops of lace around the edges of the crotch. She slung her heavy studded leather utility belt about her waist and left her breasts bare. She put on a long strand of black moon-pearls and a necklace of thin gold chain, then rummaged briefly at her hair, a great black haystack that puffed down over her shoulders to feather across the mounds of her breasts. She put on her black lipstick and toggled the uvvy's video camera.

"What is it?"

"Hi, Darla," said Corey Rhizome, regarding her with no special interest.

Darla's garb was not at all unusual in the heated tu

"He went out this morning, dook. He's doing something for ISDN. That's all you called for? Like I'm some kilpy message machine?" She reached for the uvvy cutoff.

"Wait, Darla, wait. I can talk to you."

"Oh, I'm lucky." Darla picked up the uvvy and carried it into the kitchen area with her. Rhizome's hollow trailed along behind the uvvy like a balloon. While she was moving, the hollow made some fu

"It's about my Silly Putters," said Corey Rhizome, looking worried. He was sitting on the toilet with his pants on. "They're acting different today.