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"For a while there, Emul and Berenice had me convinced that Silly Putters are wrong," said Joke. "Berenice kept asking how I would feel about owning six-inch-tall pet humans programmed to be animals."

"I doubt if pet humans would ever suddenly decide that they're from another galaxy," said Darla. "Cthon—that's what Rags said his name was. He was walking on his hind legs and he was talking. His eyes were different."

"Well, maybe we should go out to the isopod and visit Corey," suggested Joke.

"If it's really true."

"That child molester?" flared Darla. "Locked in the bathroom is where he belongs! We're not speaking to him anymore!"

"We're not children anymore, Ma," said Joke. "Anyway, I already have seen him again. He's lonely since Willy moved out of the isopod and into the Nest.

We've had di

"Wait, wait, wait, Joke," cried Darla. "Stop it right there. You're telling me you've been to Corey's isopod?"

"Interrupt," said Yoke. "We gotta jam over to the spaceport right now, sistahs.

Berenice says Blaster's almost here. You two can finish arguing while we're on the way."

Outside the apartment, they walked down the corridor past other cubby doors closed off by the faintly buzzing curtains of zappers. At the end of the corridor was the vertical shaft that led down to the Markt and up to the domed city of Einstein.

"Are we go

"No," said Joke. "We'll rent a buggy and drive. It's prettier that way. And Stalin's paying. It's in the contract."

"Boway!" exulted Darla. "Wonderbuff. I haven't been out under the stars in a long time. But maybe… maybe I should have worn more clothes."

"Aw, you look bitchin', Ma," said Yoke. "The bubbletopper'll keep you warm.

Let's go!"

They swung easily up the ladder that led to the top of the shaft and stepped out onto the streets of Einstein. High above them the huge dome arched over the city, with maggies flying this way and that. In the center of the street was a moving sidewalk with chairs.

"Look, girls, there goes a woman with a Silly Putter," said Darla, pointing to a woman gliding past with what looked like a Siamese cat in her lap. "I wonder if—" But the imipolex cat was just sitting there, looking comfortable and normal. Yoke looked at Darla a little questioningly. "Well, maybe Corey hasn't sent the virus to anyone else," said Darla.

"Here comes a slot," said practical Joke, and the three of them hopped onto the slidewalk and took a seat. The incredibly various architecture of Einstein streamed past, setting Darla to reminiscing.

Here came, for instance, the lotus-stem-columned Temple of Ra, a former bopper factory that had been a flophouse since the First Human-Bopper War in 2022.

Darla had lived there when she'd first come up to the Moon in 2024; she'd come as the fungirl traveling companion of a construction company executive named Ben Baxter. Darla started out as the Baxter family's baby-sitter back in her hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, but soon Baxter had fallen for Darla in a big way. Darla played along with the dook, but once he'd gotten her to the Moon, she'd ditched him and struck out on her own. Those had been some wild and scroungy times in the Temple of Ra. That was where Darla had discovered merge, and merge had led her to Whitey.

Darla's reverie was interrupted by the sight of something odd in the alley that separated the Temple of Ra from the 1930s-style office building next door.

The alley was largely filled with the rubble of discarded loonie utensils and furniture, most of it made of ceramics and polished stone, with the broken-up surfaces giving off random glints of light. A drift of polished pumice seemed to be moving around as if windblown, but there was never any wind in the Einstein dome. Could it be virus-infected rogue Silly Putters under the garbage? But just as the alley swung out of sight, Darla got a glimpse of a rat popping out from under the broken stones, a regular gray rat with a naked pink tail. Maybe Corey had just been stoned and Darla was just being paranoid. But then—what was it that had happened to Rags?

Now they slid past the old office building—it was called the Bradbury and Stahn Mooney's detective office had been in there. What a strange ski

Darla nodded to herself.

"'Sup, Ma?" said Yoke, throwing her arms around Darla and giving her a hug.

"I was watching an uvvy show about Earth the other day," said Darla. "I can't believe those filthy mudders live with moldies right among them."

"Don't whip yourself into a racist frenzy, Ma," said Joke. "Remember that (a)

it hurts my feelings and (b) we're going to be surrounded by moldies at the spaceport trade center."

"Well, how would you like it if some xoxxox bopper had caged you up and raped you like Emul did to me? Not that I don't love you, Jokie, but—"

"Oh, give it a rest, you two," interrupted Yoke. "We get off here."

They hopped down from the moving sidewalk's bench. They were near the edge of Einstein, with the dome wall just a few hundred feet ahead. Butted up against the wall was a pumice-block building with a high false front shaped like a crenellated castle wall. The wall was decorated with huge set-in polished obsidian letters saying MOON BUGGIES.

The three women went in and got bubbletopper spacesuits and a solar-powered buggy with large flexible wheels. The buggy's metal surfaces were candy-flecked purple, and the wheels had orange imipolex DIM tires. The buggy had four independently stanchioned seats, each seat a minimal affair with a back pad and two butt pads. In a few minutes they were bouncing along the dusty gray tracks that led from Einstein to the spaceport. Yoke drove, Darla rode shotgun, and Joke sat in back. Back in the 2030s, when the loonie moldies were less proud, the bubbletoppers might have been full-fledged moldies, but now the bubbletoppers were back to being dumb piezoplastic with a DIM set in. At least the suits had uvvies, so it was easy for the women to talk.

"That man in there had the hots for you, Ma," uvvied Yoke, jouncing happily and handling the wheel. "When he helped you into the bubbletopper, he got turned on.

I could see the nasty bulge in his pants."

"Ha, a fat old woman like me? I doubt it. Speaking of romance, let's get back to the subject of Joke and Corey Rhizome. Spill it, kid!"

"There's nothing to tell, really," replied Joke from the rear. "I've seen him a couple of times recently. He's nice. And you know, Ma, he never actually did anything to Yoke and me when we were little. Maybe that snapped-out Kellee Kaarp was lying about Corey ruffing Kellee with a slarvy philtre of me. Frankly I doubt if Corey would sleep with a skeeze like Kellee." Now Joke's voice grew tender. "My dear old Bandersnatch is much too fine a lover for that."

"You fucked him?" screeched Darla, turning around to stare at Joke's blankly reflecting bubbletopper in the backseat.

"I think she's teasing you, Ma," giggled Yoke, piloting the buggy over the lip of one of the larger craters crossed by the broad beaten-down trail to the spaceport. "But I don't know for sure. Joke won't tell me."