Rudy  Rucker  and  John  Shirley  are  powerful  enough  as   separate
entities�what would  happen if  you put  the two  of them  together? A
frightening thought�and that's what happened. Rucker, who has a degree
in  advanced  mathematics  from   Rutgers  and  is  also   a  computer
programmer, is known for his  exuberant style (as well as,  though not
in this instance, a comic flair comparable to John Sheckley); Shirley,
who is the  author of more  than twenty books  in sf and  dark fantasy
(including  a recent  collection, Really  Really Really  Really Weird
Stories,  the tales  of which  actually do  get weirder  as the  book
progresses)  has been  known for  his angry,  intense, straight-ahead
style.

What do you  get when you  put the two  of them together?  You get the
following, which  is fast-paced,  cyberpunkish, thoughtful,  weird�and
wonderful.


Pockets

RUDY RUCKER & JOHN SHIRLEY

When the woman from Endless Media  called, Wendel was out on the  fake
balcony, looking across San Pablo Bay at the lights of the closed-down
DeGroot  Chemicals  Plant.  On an  early  summer  evening, the  lights
marking out the columns of steel and the button-shaped chemical  tanks
took on an  unreal glamour; the  plant became an  otherworldly palace.
He'd  tried   to  model   the  plant   with  the   industrial-strength
Real2Graphix program his dad had  brought home from RealTek before  he
got  fired. But  Wendel still  didn't know  the tricks  for filling  a
virtual scene with the world's magic and menace, and his model  looked
like a cartoon  toy. Someday he'd  get his chops  and make the  palace
come alive. You  could set a  killer-ass game there  if you knew  how.
After high school, maybe he  could get into a good  gaming university.
He didn't want to  "go" to an online  university if he could  help it;
virtual teachers, parallel programmed or not, couldn't answer all your
questions.

The phone rang just  as he was wondering  whether Dad could afford  to
pay tuition  for someplace  real. He  waited for  his dad  to get  the
phone, and after  three rings he  realized with a  chill that Dad  had
probably  gone  into a  pocket,  and he'd  have  to answer  the  phone
himself.

The  fake  porch,  created  for  window  washers,  and  to  create  an
impression of coziness the place had always lacked, creaked under  his
feet as  he went  to climb  through the  window. The  narrow splintery
wooden walkway outside their window was  on the third floor of an  old
waterfront motel converted to  studio apartments. Their tall  strip of
windows, designed to savor a view that was now unsavory, looked down a
crumbling  cliff at  a mud  beach, the  limp gray  waves sluggish  in
stretched squares of light from  the buildings edging the bluff.  Down
the beach some guys with  flashlights were moving around, looking  for
the little pocket-bubbles that floated in like dead jellyfish.  Thanks
to the  accident that  had closed  down the  DeGroot Research  Center,
beyond the still-functioning chemicals plant, San Pablo Bay was a good
spot to scavenge for pocket-bubbles, which was why Wendel and his  Dad
had ended up living here.

To get to the phone, he  had to skirt the mercurylike bubble  of Dad's
pocket, presently  a big  flattened shape  eight feet  across and  six
high,  rounded like  a river  stone. The  pocket covered  most of  the
available space on  the living room  floor, and he  disliked having to
touch it. There was that  sensation when you touched them�not  quite a
sting, not quite  an electrical shock,  not even intolerable.  But you
didn't want to prolong the feeling.

Wendel touched the speakerphone tab. "Hello, Bell residence."

"Well, this doesn't sound like  Rothman Bell." It was a  woman's voice
coming out of the speakerphone�humorous, ditzy, but with a  heartening
undercurrent of business.

"No, ma'am. I'm his son, Wendel.

"That's right, I remember he had a son. You'd be about fourteen now?"

"Sixteen."

"Sixteen! Whoa. Time jogs on. This  is Manda Solomon. I knew your  dad
when he  worked at  MetaMeta. He  really made  his mark  there. Is  he
home?"

He  hesitated.  There was  no  way to  answer  that question  honestly
without having to admit  Dad was in a  pocket, and pocket-slugs had  a
bad reputation. "No, ma'am. But. . ."

He looked  toward the  pocket. It  was getting  smaller now. If things
went as usual, it would shrink to grapefruit size, then swell back  up
and burst�and Dad  would be back.  Occasionally a pocket  might bounce
through two  or three  or even  a dozen  shrink-and-grow cycles before
releasing its inhabitant;  but it never  took terribly long,  at least
from the outside.  Dad might be  back before this  woman hung up.  She
sounded like  business, and  that made  Wendel's pulse  race. It was a
chance.

If he could  just keep her  talking. After a  session in a  pocket Dad
wouldn't be in any shape to call anyone back, sometimes not for  days�
but if you caught him just coming out, and put the phone in his  hand,
he might keep it together long enough, still riding the pocket's high.
Wendel just hoped this  wasn't going to be  the one pocket that  would
finally kill his father.

"Can I take a message, Ms., um, . . ." With his mind running so  fast,
he'd forgotten her name.

"Manda Solomon. Just tell him�"

"Can I tell him where you're calling from?" He grimaced at himself  in
the mirror  by the  front door.  Dumbass, don't  interrupt her, you'll
scare her off.

"From San  Jose, I'm  a project  manager at  Endless Media.  Just show
him�oh, have you got iTV?"

"Yeah. You want me to put it on?" Good, that'd take some more time. If
Dad had kept up the payments.

He carried the phone over to the iTV screen hanging on the wall like a
seascape; there was  a fuzzy motel-decor  photo of a  sunset endlessly
playing in  it now,  the kitschy  orange clouds  swirling in  the same
tape-looping pattern. He tapped the  tab on the phone that  would hook
it to the iTV, and faced the  screen so that the camera in the  corner
of the frame could  pick him up but  only on head-shot setting  so she
couldn't see the pocket, too. "You see me?"

"Yup. Here I come."

Her picture appeared in a window  in an upper corner of the  screen, a
pleasant-looking redhead  in early  middle age,  hoop earrings,  frank
smile. She held up an e-book, touched the page turner which  instantly
scrolled  an image  of a  photograph that  showed a  three-dimensional
array of people floating in space, endless pairs of people spaced  out
into the nodes of  a warped jungle-gym lattice,  a man and a  woman at
each node. Wendel recognized the couple as his dad and his mother.  At
first it looked as if all the nodes were the same, but when you looked
closer, you  could see  that the  people at  some of  the more distant
nodes weren't Mom and Dad after all. In fact some of them didn't  even
look like  people. This  must be  a photo  taken inside  a pocket with
tunnels coming out  of it. Wendel  had never seen  it before. "If  you
print out  the picture,  he'll know  what it's  all about,"  Manda was
saying.

"Sure." Wendel saved the picture to the iTV's memory, hoping it  would
work.  He didn't  want Manda  to know  their printer  was broken  and
wouldn't be repaired anytime soon.

"Well it's been a  sweet link, but I  gotta go�just tell him  to call.
Here's the number, ready to  save? Got it? Okay, then.  He'll remember
me."

Wendel saw she wasn't wearing a  wedding band. He got tired of  taking
care of Dad alone. He  tried to think of some  way to keep her on  the
line. "He'll be right back�he's way overdue. I expect him . . ."

"Whoops, I really gotta jam."  She reached toward her screen  and then
hesitated, her head cocked as she looked at his image. "That's what it
is: you look a lot like Jena, you know? Your mom."

"I guess."

"Jena was a zippa-trip. I hated it when she disappeared."

"I don't remember her much."

"Oops, my boss is chiming hysterically at me. Bye!"

"Um�wait." He  turned to  glance at  the dull  silvery bubble, already
bouncing back from  its minimum size,  but when he  turned back, Manda
Solomon was gone and it was only the snowy sunset again. "Shit."

He went to the bubble and kicked it angrily. He couldn't feel anything
but "stop," with his sneaker on. It wasn't like kicking an object,  it
was like something stopped you,  turned you back toward your  own time
flow. Just "stopness."  It was saying  "no" with the  stuff of forever
itself. There was no  way to look inside  it: Once someone crawled  in
through a pocket's navel, it sealed up all over.

He turned away, heard something�and when he looked back the pocket was
gone and  his dad,  stinking and  retching and  raggedly bearded,  was
crawling toward him across the carpet.



Next morning, it seemed  to Wendel that his  dad sucked the soup  down
more noisily, more sloppily, than ever before. His hands shook and  he
spilled soup on the blankets.

His  dad was  supposedly forty�but  he looked  fifty-five. He'd  spent
maybe fifteen years in  the pockets�adding up to  only a few weeks  in
outside time, ten minutes here and two hours there and so on.

Dad sat up in his bed,  staring out to the bay, sloppily  drinking the
soup  from  a  bowl, and  Wendel  had  to look  away.  Sitting  at the
breakfast bar that divided the kitchenette from the rest of the  room,
he found himself staring at the  pile of dirty clothes in the  corner.
They needed  some kind  of hamper,  and he  could go  to some Martinez
garage sale  and find  one next  to free.  But that  was something Dad
ought to  do; Wendel  sensed that  if he  started doing  that sort  of
thing, parental things, his dad would give a silent gasp of relief and
lean on him, more and more; and paradoxically fall away from him, into
the pockets.

"I was gone like�ten minutes world-time?" said Dad. "I don't suppose I
missed anything here in this . . . this teeming hive of activity."

"Ten minutes?" said Wendel. He snorted. "You're still gone, Dad.  And,
yes, there  was a  call for  you. A  woman from  Endless Media.  Manda
Solomon. She left her number and a picture."

"Manda?" said Dad. "That flake? Did you tell her I was in a pocket?"

"Right,"  said Wendel  contemptuously. "Like  I told  her my  dad's a
pocket-slug."

Dad opened his mouth like he was going to protest the disrespect� then
thought better  of it.  He shrugged,  with as  much cool  as he  could
manage. "Manda's down with pockets, Wendel. Half the guys  programming
virtual physics for MetaMeta were using them when I was there. Pockets
are a great way to make a deadline. The MetaMeta crunch-room was  like
a little glen  of chrome puffballs.  Green carpeting, you  wave? Manda
used to walk around setting sodas and pizzas down outside the pockets.
We'd work in there for days, when it was minutes on the outside�get  a
real edge on the other programmers. She was just a support tech  then.
We called her Fairy  Princess and we crunchers  were the Toads of  the
Short Forest, popping out all loaded on the bubble-rush. Manda's  gone
down in the world, what I heard, in terms of who she works for�"

"She's a project manager. Better than a support tech."

"Nice of  her to  think of  me." Dad  made a  little grimace. "Endless
Media's about  one step  past being  a virtu-porn  Webble. Where's the
picture she sent?"

"I saved it in the iTV,"  said Wendel, and pushed the buttons  to show
it.

Dad made a groaning sound. "Turn it off, Wendel. Put it away."

"Tell me  what it  is, first,"  said Wendel,  pressing the  controller
buttons to zoom in on the faces. It was definitely�

"Mom and me," said Dad shakily. "I took that photo the week before she
died." His voice  became almost inaudible.  "Yeah. You can  see . .  .
some  of the  images are  different further  into the  lattice .  . .
because our pocket had a tunnel leading to other pockets. That happens
sometimes, you know. It's not a  good idea to go down the  tunnels. It
was the time after this one that. . . Mom didn't come back." He looked
at the picture for a moment; like its own pocket, the moment seemed to
stretch out to a gray forever. Then he looked away. "Turn it off, will
you? It brings me down."

Wendel stared at his mother's young face a moment longer, then  turned
off the image. "You never told me much about the time she didn't  come
back."

"I don't need to replay the experience, kid."

"Dad. I... look, just do it. Tell me."

Dad stared at him. Looked away. Wendel thought he was going to  refuse
again. Then he  shrugged and began,  his voice weary.  "It was a  much
bigger pocket than usual," said Dad, almost inaudible. "MetaMeta . . .
they'd scored  a shitload  of them  from DeGroot,  and we were merging
them together so  whole teams  could fit  in. Using  fundamental space
time geometry weirdness to meet the marketing honcho's deadlines,  can
you believe? I was  an idiot to buy  into it. And this  last time Jena
was mad at me, and she flew  away from me while we were in  there. And
then I couldn't tell which of the lattice-nodes was really her. Like a
mirror maze in  a funhouse. And  meanwhile I'm all  tweaked out of  my
mind on bubble-rush. But  I had my laptop  harness, and there was  all
that code-hacking to  be done, and  I got into  it for sure,  glancing
over at all the Jenas now and then, and they're programming, too, so I
thought it was OK, but then ..." He swallowed, turning to look out the
window, as if he might see her out there in the sky. "When the  pocket
flattened  back  out, I  was  alone. The  same  shit was  coming  down
everywhere all of a sudden, and then there was the Big Bubble disaster
at  the  DeGroot  plant  and  all  the  pocket-bubbles  were  declared
government property and if you want to use them anymore . . .  people,
you know ..." His voice trailed into  a whisper: ". . . they act  like
you're a junkie." 

"Yeah," said Wendel. "I know." He  looked out the window for a  while.
It was a sunny day, but the foulness in the water made the sea a dingy
gray, as if it were brooding on dark memories. He spotted a couple  of
little pocket-bubbles floating in on the brackish waves. Dad had  been
buying them from beachcombers, merging  them together till he got  one
big enough to crawl into again.

They'd talked about  pockets in Wendel's  health class at  school last
term. In terms  of dangerous things  the grown-ups wanted  to warn you
away from, pockets  were right up  there with needles,  drunk driving,
and doing it bareback. You could  stay inside too long and come  out a
couple of  years older  than your  friends. You  could lose your youth
inside  a pocket.  Oddly enough,  you didn't  eat or  breathe in  any
conventional  way  while you  were  inside there�those  parts  of your
metabolism went into suspension.  The pocket-slugs dug this  aspect of
the  high�for after  all, weren't  eating and  breathing just  another
wearisome world-drag? There were even rock songs about pockets setting
you free from "feeding  the pig," as the  'slugs liked to call  normal
life. You didn't eat or breathe inside a pocket but even so were still
getting older, often a lot faster than you realized. Some people  came
out, like, middle-aged.

And, of course, some people never came out at all. They died in  there
of old  age, or  got killed  by a  bubble-psychotic pocket-slug coming
through  a tunnel,  or�though this  last one  sounded like  government
propaganda�you might  tunnel right  off into  some kind  of alien Hell
world. If  you found  a pocket-bubble,  you were  supposed to  take it
straight to  the police.  As opposed  to selling  it to  a 'slug,  or,
worse, trying to accumulate enough of them to get a pocket big  enough
to go into  yourself. The word  was that it  felt really good,  better
than drugs or sex or booze. Sometimes Wendel wanted to try  it�because
then,  maybe,  he'd  understand  his  dad.  Other  times  the  thought
terrified him.

He looked at  his shaky, strung-out  father, wishing he  could respect
him. "Do you  keep doing it  because you think  you might find  Mom in
there someday?" asked Wendel, his voice plaintive in his own ears.

"It would sound more heroic, wouldn't it?" said Dad, rubbing his face.
"That I keep doing it because I'm on a quest. Better than saying I  do
it for the high. The escape." He rubbed his face for a minute and  got
out of bed, a  little shaky, but with  a determined look on  his face.
"It's get-it-together time, huh, Wendel? Get me a vita-patch from  the
bathroom, willya? I'll call Manda and  go see her today. We need  this
gig. You ready to catch the light rail to San Jose?"



In person, Manda Solomon  was shorter, plainer, and  less well-dressed
than the processed image she sent out on iTV. She was a friendly ditz,
with the disillusioned aura of a Valley-vet who's seen a number of her
employers go down the tubes. When Dad calmly claimed that Wendel was a
master programmer and  his chief assistant,  Manda didn't bat  an eye,
just  took  out  an extra  sheaf  of  nondisclosure and  safety-waiver
agreements for Wendel to sign.

"I've never  had such  a synchronistic  staffing process  before," she
said with a breathless smile. "Easy,  but weird. Two of our team  were
waiting in my office when I came into work one morning. Said I'd  left
it unlocked. Karma, I guess."

They followed her into  a windowless conference room  with whiteboards
and projection screens. One of  the screens showed Dad's old  photo of
him and  Mom scattered  over the  nodes of  a pocket's  space-lattice.
Wendel's dad glanced at it and looked away.

Manda introduced them to the other three at the table: a cute, smiling
woman named Xiao-Xiao just now busy talking Chinese on her cell phone.
She had Bettie  Page bangs and  the faddish full-eye  mirror-contacts;
her eyes were like pale lavender Christmas-tree ornaments. Next was  a
bright-eyed sharp-nosed Sikh guy from  India, named Puneet; he wore  a
turban. He had reassuringly normal eyes and spoke in a high voice. The
third was a puffy  white kid only a  few years older than  Wendel. His
name was Barley, and he  wore a stoner-rock T-shirt. He  didn't smile;
with his silver mirror-contacts his face was quite unreadable. He wore
an uwy computer interface on the back of his neck. Barley asked Wendel
something about programming, but  Wendel couldn't even understand  the
question.

"Ummm . . . well, you know. I just�"

"So what's the pitch, Manda?"  Dad interrupted, to get Wendel  off the
spot.

"Pocket-Max," said  Manda. "Safe  and stable.  Five hundred  people in
there  at a  time, strapped  into ...  I dunno,  some kind  of mobile
pocket-seats.  Make  downtown  San  Jose  a  destination  theme  park.
Harmless, ethical pleasure.  We've got some  senators who can  push it
through a loophole for us."

"Safe?" said Dad. "Harmless?"

"Manda says  you've logged  more time  in the  pockets than anyone she
knows,"  said Xiao-Xiao.  "You have  some kind  of... intuition  about
them? You must know some tricks for making it safe."

"Well ... if we  had the hardware that  created it . .  ." Dad's voice
trailed off, which meant he was thinking hard, and Manda let him do it
for a moment.

And then  she dropped  her bomb.  "We do  have the  hardware. Show him
Flatland, Barley."

Barley did  something with  his uwy,  and something  like a  soap film
appeared  above the  generic white  plastic of  the conference  table.
"This is a two-dimensional-world mockup," mumbled Barley. "We call  it
Flat-land. The nanomatrix mat for making the real pockets is  offsite.
Flat-land's a piece of visualization  software that we got as  part of
our license. It's a lift."

"Offsite would  be the  DeGroot Center?"  said Dad,  his voice rising.
"You've got full access?"

"Yaaar," said Barley, his fat face expressionless. He was leaning over
Flatland, using his uwy link to tweak it with his blank shining eyes.

"Why was DeGroot making pockets in the first place?" asked Wen-del. No
one had ever explained the pockets to him. It was like Dad was ashamed
to talk about them much.

"It  was  supposed to  be  for AI,"  said  Puneet. "Quantum  computing
nanotech. The DeGroot techs were bozos. They didn't know what they had
when  they  started  up  the nanomatrix�I  don't  even  know  how they
invented it. There's no patents filed. It's like the thing fell out of
a flying saucer."  His laugh was  more than a  little uneasy. "There's
nobody to ask because the DeGroot engineers are all dead. Sucked  into
the Big Bubble that popped out  of their nanomatrix. You saw it  on TV
And then Uncle Sam closed them down."

"But�why would  the nanomatrix  be licensed  to Endless  Media?" asked
Dad.  "You're  an  entertainment  company.  And  not  a   particularly
reputable  one,  at  that. Why  you  and  not one  of  the  big, legit
players?"

"Options,"  said  Manda  with a  shrug.  "Market  leverage. Networking
synergies.  And  the  big guys  don't  want  to touch  it.  Too  big a
downside.

Part of the setup is we can't sue DeGroot if things don't work out. No
biggie for Endless Media. If the shit hits the fan, we take the bullet
and go Chapter Eleven.  We closed the deal  with DeGroot and the  feds
last week. Nobody's hardly seen the DeGroot CEO since the catastrophe,
but he's still around. Guy named George Gravid. He showed up for about
one minute  at closing,  popped up  out of  nowhere, walking  down the
hall. Said he'd been  hung up in meetings  with some backer dudes�  he
called them Out-Monkeys. He looked like shit, wearing shades. I  think
he's strung  out on  something. Whatever.  We did  our due  diligence,
closed the  deal, and  a second  later Gravid  was gone."  She waved a
dismissive  hand. "Bottom  line is  we're fully  licensed to  use the
DeGroot technology. Us and a half-dozen other blue sky groups. Each of
us is setting up an operation  in the DeGroot Plant on San  Pablo Bay.
And we  time-share the  access to  the nanomatrix.  The Endless  Media
mission in this context is to  make a safe and stable Big  Bubble that
provides a  group entertainment  experience beyond  anything ever seen
before."

"Watch how this simulation works," said Barley. "See the yellow square
in  the  film? That's  A  Square. A  two-dimensional  Flatlander. He's
sliding around,  you wave.  And that  green five-sided  figure next to
him, that's his son A Pentagon. And now I push up a bubble out of  his
space." A little  spot of  the Flatland  film bulged  up like  a time
reversed water-drop.  The bulge  swelled up  to the  shape of a sphere
hovering above Flatland,  connected to the  little world by  a neck of
glistening film. "Go in the pocket, Square," said Barley. "Get high."

The yellow  square slid  forward. He  had a  bright eye  in one of his
corners. For  a minute  he bumbled  around the  warped zone  where the
bubble touched his space, then found an entry point and slid up across
the neck of the bubble and  onto the surface of the little  ball. Into
the pocket.

"This is what  he sees,"  said Barley,  pointing at  one of  the view
screens on the wall. The screen showed an endless lattice of copies of
A Square, each of them turning and blinking in unison. "Like a hall of
mirrors. Now I'll make the  bubble bounce. That's what makes  the time
go differently inside the pockets, you know."

The sphere rose  up from the  film. The connecting  neck stretched and
grew thinner, but it didn't break. The sphere bounced back toward  the
film and  the neck  got fat,  the sphere  bounced up  and the neck got
thin, over and over.

"Check this out," said Barley, changing the image on the viewscreen to
show a circle  that repeatedly shrank  and grew. "This  is what Square
Junior  sees.  The little  Pentagon.  He stayed  outside  the bad  old
pocket, you wave? To him the  pocket looks like a disk that's  getting
bigger and smaller. See  him over there on  the film? Waiting for  Pa.
Like little Wendel in the condo on San Pablo Bay."

"Go to hell," said Wendel.

"Don't  pick on  him, Barley,"  put in  Manda. "Wendel's  part of  our
team."

"Whoah," said  Barley. "Now  Mr. Square's  trip is  over." The  sphere
bounced back and flattened back into the normal space of Flatland.

"You forgot to mention the stabilizer ring," said Dad.

"You see?" said Manda. "I told you guys we needed a physicist."

"What ring? "said Barley.

"A space bubble is inherently  unstable," said Dad. "It wants  to tear
loose or flatten back down. The  whole secret of the DeGroot tech  was
to wrap a superquantum nanosheet  around the bubbles. Bubble wrap.  In
your Flatland model it's a circle around the neck. Make a new  bubble,
Barley."

A new bubble bulged  up, and this time  Wendel noticed that there  was
indeed a bright little line around the throat of the neck. A line with
a gap in it, like the open link of a chain.

"That's the  entrance," said  Dad, pointing  to the  little gap.  "The
navel. Now show me how you model a tunnel."

"We're not sure about the tunnels," said Puneet. "We're expecting  you
can  help  us  with  this. I  cruised  the  Bharat  University Physics
Department site  and found  a Chandreskar-Thorne  solution that  looks
like�can you work it for me, Xiao-Xiao?"

Xiao-Xiao leaned  toward the  Flatland simulation,  her lavender  eyes
reflecting  the scene.  She, too,  wore a  modern uvvy-style  computer
controller. Following Puneet's instructions, Xiao-Xiao bulged a second
bubble up  from the  plane, about  a foot  away from  the first one. A
Square slid into the first one of them and A Pentagon into the  other.
And now the bubbles picked  up a side-to-side motion, and  lumps began
sticking out of them,  and it just so  happened that two of  the lumps
touched and now there was a tunnel between the two bubbles.

"Look at the screens now,"  said Barley. "That's Square's view  on the
left. And Pentagon's view on the right."

Square's view showed a lattice  of Squares as before, but  the lattice
lines were warped  and flawed, and  in the flawed  region there was  a
sub-lattice  of  nodes  showing  copies  of  the  Pentagon.  And   the
Pentagon's view lattice included a wedge of Squares.

"That's a start," said Dad.  "But, you know, these pictures  of yours�
they're just  toys. You're  talking all  around the  edges of what the
pockets are. You're missing the essence of what they're really  about.
It's not that they spontaneously bulge up out of our space. It's  more
that they're raining down on us. From something out here." He gestured
at the space above Flatland. "There's a shape up there�with  something
inside it. I've picked up kind of a feeling for it."

Barley  and  Xiao-Xiao stared  silently  at him,  their  mirrored eyes
shining.

"That's why we need you, Rothman," said Manda, finally.

"That's right," said Puneet. "The problem is�when it comes to this new
tech, we're bozos, too."



"I'll tell  you what  I think,"  Wendel said  gravely. "I think you're
lying to them about what you can do, Dad."

It was  nearly midnight.  Wendel was  tired and  depressed. They  were
sitting in the abandoned DeGroot plant's seemingly endless  cafeteria,
waiting for their daily time-slot with the nanomatrix. Almost the only
ones there. The  rest of their  so-called team hadn't  been coming in.
Manda and  Puneet preferred  the safety  of San  Jose while Barley and
Xiao-Xiao  had  completely dropped  out  of sight.  What  a half-assed
operation this was.

Wendel and his Dad were eating tinny-tasting stew and drinking  watery
coffee from the vending machines  along the wall opposite the  defunct
buffets. It was a long, overly lit room, the far end not quite visible
from here, with pearly white walls and a greenish floor,  asymmetrical
rows of round tables  like lily pads on  the green pond of  the floor,
going on  and on.  Endless Media  shared the  cafeteria with the other
scavenging  little   companies  that   had  licensed   access  to  the
nanomatrix. None of the reputable firms wanted to touch it.

"Don't talk about it in here, son," Dad said, listlessly stirring  his
coffee with a plastic spoon. "We're not alone, you wave."

"The nearest people  in here are,  like, an eighth  of a mile  away. I
can't even make out their faces from here."

"That's not what I mean. The  other groups here, they might be  spying
on us with gnat-audio, stuff like that. They're all a bunch of bottom
feeders like Endless Media, you know. Nobody knows jack from squat, so
they're all looking to copy me."

"You wish. It's  good to have  work, but you're  going to get  in deep
shit, Dad. You're telling Endless Media you're down with the tech when
you're not. You're  telling them you  can stabilize a  Big Bubble when
you can't. You say you can  keep tunnels from hooking into it�but  you
don't know how."

"Maybe I can. I have to test it some more."

"You test it every night."

"Not enough. I haven't actually gone inside it yet."

"Come on. I'm the one who has to put you back together after a  bubble
binge. It's great having an income from this gig, Dad, a better  place
to live�but I'm not going to let you vanish into that thing. Something
just like it killed the whole DeGroot team five years ago."

His Dad turned Wendel a glare that startled him. It was almost  feral.
Chair screeching  nastily on  the tile,  he got  up abruptly  and went
across the room to a coffee vending machine for another latte. Dad ran
his card through the slot, and then swore. He stalked back over to the
table long enough to  say, "Be right back,  this card's used up,  I've
got another one in my locker."

"You're not  going to  sneak up  to the  lab without  me, are you? Our
time-slot starts in five minutes, you know. At midnight."

"Son? Don't. I'm the dad, you're the kid. Okay? I'll be right back."

Wendel watched him go. I'm the  dad, you're the kid. There were  a lot
of comebacks he could've made to that one.

Wendel sipped his gooey stew, then  pushed it away. It was tepid,  the
vegetables mushy, made him think of bits of leftover food floating  in
dishwater. He heard  a beep, looked  toward the vending  machines. The
machine Dad had  run his card  through was beeping,  flashing a little
light.

Wendel walked over to it. A  small screen on the machine said,  DO YOU
WISH TO CANCEL YOUR PURCHASE?

Which was only  something it said  if the card  was good. Which  meant
that Dad had  gone to the  lab without him.  Wendel felt a  sick chill
that made his fingers quiver . . . and sprinted toward the elevators.



The pocket was  so swollen he  could hardly get  into the big  testing
room with  it. Maybe  two hundred  feet in  diameter, sixty feet high.
Mercuric and  yet lusterless.  The various  measuring instruments were
crowded up against the walls.

"Dad?" he called tentatively. But  Wendel knew Dad was gone.  He could
feel his absence from the world.

He edged around the outside of the Big Bubble, grimacing when he  came
into  contact with  it. Somewhere  beneath the  great pocket  was the
nanomatrix mat that  produced it�or attracted  it? But it  wasn't like
you could  do anything  to turn  the pocket  off once  it got here. At
least nothing that  they'd figured out  yet�which was one  of the many
obstacles  preventing  this  thing  from  being  a  realistic   public
attraction. "Show  may last  from one  to ten  minutes world-time, and
seem to take one  hour to three months  of your proper time."  Even if
there were a way to shut the pocket off now�what would that do to Dad?

Facing a far corner was the dimpled spot, the entrance navel. On these
Big Bubbles,  the navel  didn't always  seal over.  When Wendel looked
into the navel, it seemed  to swirl like a slow-motion  whirlpool, but
in two contradictory directions. Hypnotic. It could still be entered.

Wendel made up his mind: he would go after his dad. He leaned forward,
pressed his fingers against the navel, thinking of A Pentagon  sliding
up over the  warped neck that  led to the  sphere of extra  space. His
hands looked  warped, as  if they  were underwater.  They tingled� not
unpleasantly. He pushed his  arms in after and  then, with a last  big
breath of air, his head. How would it feel to stop breathing?

It was  a while  till Wendel  came back  to that  question. The  first
feeling of  being inside  the pocket  was one  of falling�but this was
just an illusion,  he was floating,  not falling, and  he had an  odd,
dreamlike ability to move in whatever direction he wanted to, not that
the motion seemed to mean much.

There was a  dim light that  came from everywhere  and nowhere. Spread
out around  him were  little mirror-Wendels,  all turning  their heads
this way and  that, gesturing and�yes�none  of them breathing.  It was
like flying underwater and never being out of breath, like being  part
of a school of fish. The space was patterned with veils of color  like
seaweed in  water. Seeing  the veils  pass he  could tell  that he was
moving, and as the veils repeated themselves he could see that he  was
moving in a great circle. He  was like A Pentagon circling around  and
around his bulged-up puffball of space. But where was Dad? He  changed
the  angle  of his  motion,  peering around  for  distinctions in  the
drifting school of mirror-shapes.

The motion felt like flying, now,  with a wind whipping his hair,  and
he found a new direction in which the space veils seemed to curve like
gossamer chambers of  mother-of-pearl, sketching  a sort  of nautilus
spiral into the  distance. Looking into  that distance, that  twist of
infinity, and feeling  the volume of  sheer potentiality, he  felt the
first real wave of bubble-rush. His fatigue evaporated in the  searing
light  of  the  rush,  a  rippling,  bone-deep  pleasure  that  seemed
generated by his flying motion into the spiral of the pocket.

"Whuh-oaaaah .  . .  ," he  murmured, afraid  of the  feeling and  yet
liking it. So this was why Dad came here. Or one of the reasons. There
was something else, too . . . something Dad never quite articulated.

The bubble-rush  was so  all-consuming, so  shimmeringly insistent, he
felt he couldn't bear  it. It was simply  too much; too much  pleasure
and you lost all  sense of self; and  then it was, finally,  no better
than pain.

Wendel  thought, "Stop!"  and his  motion responded  to his  will. He
stopped where  he was�an  inertialess stop  partway into  the receding
nautilus-spiral. The bubble-rush receded a bit, damped back down to  a
pleasing background glow.

"Dad!"  he  yelled. No  response.  "Dad!" His  voice  didn't echo;  he
couldn't tell how loud it was. There  was air in here to be sucked  in
and expelled for speaking. But when he wasn't yelling, he felt no need
to take a breath. Like a vampire in his grave.

He tried  to get  some kind  of grasp  of the  shape of this place. He
thought with an ugly frisson of fear:

Maybe I'm already lost. How do I find my way back out?

Could A Pentagon slide  back out the neck  into the ball? Or  would he
have to wait for the ball to burn out its energy and flatten back into
space?

There were no  images of Wendel  up ahead, where  the patterns of  the
space seemed to twirl like a nautilus. It must be a tunnel. If pockets
were dangerous, the tunnels from pocket to pocket were said to be much
worse. But he knew that's where Dad had gone.

He moved into the tunnel, flying at will.

The pattern haze  ahead of him  took on flecks  of pink, human  color.
Someone else was down there. "Dad?"

He leaned into  his flying�and stopped,  about ten yards  short of the
man. It  wasn't Dad.  This man  was bearded,  emaciated, sallow  . . .
which Dad could be, by now, in the time-bent byways of this place. But
it wasn't his dad, it was a stranger, a man with big, scared eyes  and
a grin that looked permanently  fixed. No teeth: barren gums.  The man
sitting was floating in fetal position, arms around his knees.

" Ya got any grub on yer, boy?" the man rasped. A UK accent. Or was it
Australian?

"Um�" He remembered he had two-thirds of an energy bar of some kind in
a back pocket. Probably linty  by now, but likely this  'slug wouldn't
care. "You want this?"

He tossed over the energy bar and the pocket-slug's eyes flashed as he
caught it, fairly snatched  it out of the  air. "Good on ya,  boy!" He
gnawed on the linty old bar with his callused gums.

It occurred to Wendel that at  some point he might regret giving  away
his only food. But supposedly you didn't need to eat in here. Food was
just fun  for the  mouth, or  a burst  of extra  energy. Right now the
scene made him chuckle to himself�the bubble-rush was glowing in  him,
made everything seem absurd, cartoonlike, and marvelous.

Between sucking sounds, the  'slug said, "My name's  Threakman. Jeremy
Threakman. 'Ow yer doin."

"I don't know  how I'm doing.  I'm looking for  my dad. Rothman  Bell.
He's about. . ."

"No need, I know whuh 'e looks  like. Seen 'im go through 'ere .  . ."
Threakman looked at Wendel with his head cocked. A sly look.  "Feelin'
the 'igh, are ya? Sure'n you are. Stoned, eh, boy? Young fer it."

"I feel something�what is it? What causes it?"

"Why,  it's a  feelin' of  being right  there in  yerself, beyond  all
uncertainty about where yer might go.  For here, yer are all that  is,
in yerself. And that'll  get you 'igh. Or  some say. Others, like  me,
they say it's the Out-Monkeys that do it."

"The Out�what?"

"Out-Monkeys,"  said Threakman.  "What I  call 'em.  Other's call  'em
Dream Beetles, one 'slug in 'ere used ter call 'em Turtles�said 'e saw
a Turtle thing with a head like a screw-top bottle without the cap and
booze pouring out, but 'e was a hardcore alkie. Others they see'm more
like lizards or Chinese dragons. Dragons, beetles, monkeys, all  hairy
around the edges, all curlin' out at yer�it's a living hole in  space,
mate, and you  push the picture  you want on  it. Me and  the smartuns
calls 'em Out-Monkeys 'cause they're from outside our world."

"You mean�from another planet?"

"No, mate, from  the bigger universe  that this one  is kinder inside.
They got  more dimensions  than we  do. They're  using DeGroot and the
nanomatrix�they give all  that ta  us to  pull us  in, mate.  The Out
Monkeys  are drizzlin'  pockets down  onto us,  little paradise  balls
where yer don't 'ave to breathe nor eat an' yer can fly an' there's an
energy that stim-yer-lates that part  of yer brain, don't ya  see. The
Out-Monkeys want us all stony in here. Part of their li'l game, innit?
Come on, show yer somethin'. The Alef. Mayhap yer'll see yer da."

In a single spasmodic motion Threakman was up, flying off in some  odd
new direction  through the  silvery scarves  of the  enclosing spaces�
leaving a rank scent in the air behind him. Wendel whipped along after
him, remembering not to  breathe. Soon, if it  could be thought of  as
soon, they came to a nexus  where the images around them thickened  up
into an incalculable diversity.  It was like being  at the heart of  a
city in a  surveillance zone with  a million monitors,  but the images
weren't electronic, they were real, and endlessly repeated.

"The Alef has tunnels to  all the pockets," said Threakman.  "Precious
few of us knows about it."

In some directions, he saw  pockets with people writhing together�  he
realized, with embarrassment, that they were copulating. But was  that
really sex? He made himself  look away. In another pocket  people were
racing around one another in a blur like those electro-cyclists in the
Cage of Death he'd  seen at a carnival.  Off down the axis  of another
tunnel,  people  clawed at  one  another, in  a  thronging melange  of
combat; you couldn't  tell one from  another, so slick  was the blood.
But the greatest number of  the pockets held solitary 'slugs,  hanging
there in  self-absorbed pleasure,  surrounded by  the endless  mirror
images of themselves. And one of these addicts was Dad, floating quite
nearby.

"For 'im, mate," said Threakman as Wendel flew off toward his father.

Not quite sure of  his aim, he hit  Dad with a thud�and  Dad screamed,
thrashing back from him. Stopping himself in space to glare shame  and
resentment at Wendel�like a kid caught masturbating.

"What are you doing?" demanded Wendel. "You call this research?"

"Okay, you really want to know?" snapped his father. "I'm looking  for
Mom."

Wendel peered at  his father; his  Dad's face, here,  seemed more like
the possibility of all possible Dad facial expressions,  crystallized.
It was difficult to  tell whether he meant  it. It might be  bullshit.
What was the saying? How do you know an addict is lying? When his lips
are moving!

But the possibility of seeing Mom made Wendel's heart thud. "You think
she's still in here? Seriously, Dad?"

"I think the Out-Monkeys got her. That's what happens, you know.  Some
of the pockets float up�not up exactly, but ana�"

"To the shape above Flatland," said Wendel.

"Right," said Dad. "We're in their Flatland, relatively speaking.  And
I want to get up there and find her."

"But you're just floating around  in here. You're on the  goddamn nod,
Dad. You're not looking at all."

"Oh, yes, I am.  I'm looking, goddammit. This  happens to be just  the
right spot  to  stare down  through  the Alef  and  up along  the  Out
Monkeys'  tunnel.  Not  their tunnel,  exactly.  The  spot where  they
usually appear. Where their hull  touches us. I'm waiting for  them to
show up."

"The Devil in his  motorboat," said Wendel  with a giggle.  The bubble
rush was creeping back up on him. Dad laughed, too. They were thinking
of the old joke about the  guys in Hell, standing neck deep  in liquid
shit and drinking coffee,  and one of them  says, "Wal, this ain't  so
bad," and the other one says, "Yeah, but wait till�"

"Here it comes," said Dad, and it wasn't funny anymore, for the  space
up ahead  of them  had just  opened up  like a blooming squash-flower,
becoming incalculably larger, all  laws of perspective broken,  and an
all but endless vista spreading out, a giant space filled with  moving
shapes that darted and wheeled like migrating flocks of birds. It  was
hard to  think straight,  for the  high of  the bubble-space  had just
gotten much stronger.

"The mothership,"  said Threakman,  who'd drifted  down to  join them.
"Yaaar. Can you  feel the rush  off it? Ahr,  but it's good.  Hello to
yer, there, Da .  . ." He gave  a deep, loose chuckle.  Everything was
glistening and wonderful, as perfect as the first instant of Creation;
and, as with that moment, chaos waited on the event horizon: chaos and
terror.

"Those shapes are the  Out-Monkeys?" asked Wendel, his  voice sounding
high and slow in his ears. "They look like little people."

"Those little things are people," said Dad. "They're the pets."

"Livin'  decals  on  the  mothership's  'ull,"  said  Threakman. "Live
decorations fer the Out-Monkeys. An ant farm for their window box. Ah,
yer'll know  it when  you really  see an  Out-Monkey, Wendel.  When 'e
reaches out through the hull ..."

And then the space around them quivered like gelatin, and the cloud of
moving people up ahead spiraled in around a shaky, black, living  hole
in space, a  growing thing with  fractal fringes, a  three-dimensional
Mandelbrot formation  that, to  Wendel, looked  like a  dancing, star
edged monkey made up of other monkeys, like the old Barrel of  Monkeys
toy he'd  had, with  all the  little monkeys  hooked together  to make
bigger monkeys that hooked together to make a gigantic monkey,  coming
on  and on:  A cross  section of  a higher-dimensional  alien, partly
shaped by the Rorschach filter of human perception.

Wendel thought: Out-Monkey? And  the thing echoed psychically  back at
him�Out-Monkey!�with the alien thought coming  at him like a voice  in
his head, mocking, drawling, sarcastic, and infinitely hip.

The Out-Monkey swelled, huge but with no real size to it in any  human
sense, and the  fabric of space  rippled with its  motions�the Devil's
motorboat indeed�and Wendel felt  his whole body flexing  and wobbling
like  an  image in  a  funhouse mirror.  Beneath  the space  waves,  a
sinister undertow  began tugging  at him.  Wendel felt  he would burst
with the disorientation of it all.

"Dad�we've gotta go! Let's get back to the world! Tell, him, Jeremy!"

"No worries yet," said Threakman grinning and flaring his nostrils  as
if to inhale the wild, all-pervading rush. "Steady as she goes,  mate.
Your dad and me, we've 'ad some practice with the Out-Monkeys. We  can
'ang 'ere a bit longer."

"Look at the faces, Wendel!" cried Dad. "Look for Jena!"

Around  the  Out-Monkey  orbited the  people  imprisoned  on its  vast
bubble. They seemed to rotate around the living hole in space,  caught
up in the fractals that crawled around its edges: faces that were both
ecstatic and miserable; zoned-out and hysterical.

"There goes George Gravid," said Dad, pointing. "The original guy from
DeGroot." Wendel stared, spotting a  businessman in a black suit.  And
there, not too far from him were�Barley and Xiao-Xiao?

"Come on, come on, come on," Dad was chanting, and then he gave a wild
laugh. "Yes! There  she is! It's  Jena!" His laughter  was cracked and
frantic. "It's Mom, Wendel! I knew I could find her!"

Wendel  looked�and thought  he saw  her. Looking  hard at  her had  a
telescopic  effect,   like  concentration   itself  was   the  optical
instrument,  and his  vision zoomed  in on  her face�it  was his  mom,
though her eyes  were blotted with  silver, like the  faddish contacts
people wore in the World. All those rotating around the Out-Monkey had
silvered eyes, mirror-eyes endlessly looking into themselves.

Torn, Wendel hesitated�and then the fractal leviathan swept  closer�he
felt something like its shadow fall over him, though there was no  one
light  source  here  to throw  a  shadow.  It was  as  if  the greater
dimensional inclusiveness of its being overshadowed the other limited
dimensional beings here . . . and you could feel its "shadow" in  your
soul. . . .

"Dad!" Wendel shouted in panic, and his father yelled something  back,
but he couldn't make it out�there was a torrent of white-noise crackle
upwelling all around  him in the  growing "shadow" of  the Out-Monkey.
"Dad! We have to go!" shrieked Wendel.

And then Dad plunged forward, arrowing in toward Mom, and Wendel  felt
himself on the point of a wild, uncontrolled tumble.

"Ol'roit, mate," said Threakman, grabbing Wendel's arm and pulling him
up short. "Keep  yer 'ead now.  Ungodly strong rush,  innit? It's 'ard
not to go  all the way  in. But remember�if  yer really want,  yer can
'old back from its pullin' field. Let's ease in, nice and  quiet-like,
and try and snag your da."

Wendel and  Threakman inched  forward�Wendel feeling  the pull  of the
Out-Monkey as  strong as  gravity. Yet,  just as  Threakman said,  you
didn't have to let  it take you, didn't  have to let it  pull you down
into that  swarming blackness  of the  Out-Monkey's fractal membranes.
Jeremy Threakman's grip on his arm  was solid as the granite spine  of
the planet  Earth. Wretched,  stinking Jeremy  Threakman knew  his way
around the Out-Monkeys. . . .

Wendel  stared  in at  Mom  and Dad:  they  were swirling  around  one
another, orbiting a mutual center  of emptiness, just as they  and the
others orbited  the  greater center  of  emptiness within  the  higher
dimensional being. It reminded  Wendel of a particular  carnival ride,
where people whirled in place on  a metal arm and their whirling  cars
were also whirled around a central axis.

"Dad!"

Dad looked at him�if it could be called looking. In the thrall of  the
Out-Monkey  it was  more like  he was  going through  the motions  of
turning his attention to Wendel, and that attention was represented by
the image of an attentive paternal face. "Wendel, I don't think I  can
get  out!  It's snagging  my  ..." His  voice  was lost  in  a surging
crackle, a wave of static. Then: ". . . purple, thinking purple . . ."
Crackle. ". . . your mom! It wants us!"

Wendel's arm ached where Threakman  clutched him. "We gotter go  soon,
mate!" said the scarred pocket-slug.

Mom turned her attention toward Wendel, too, now�she was reaching  for
him, weeping and laughing at once. He wasn't sure if it was psychic or
vocal,  but  he   heard  her  say:   "We're  pets,  Wendel!"   Static.
"Waterstriders penned in a corner of the pond." His mother's face  was
lit  with  unholy  bliss.  "Live  bumper  stickers."  A  sick  peal of
laughter.

There was another ripple in the space around them, and all of a sudden
Mom and Dad were only a  few feet away. Close enough to  touch. Wendel
reached out to them.

"Come on, Mom! Take my hand! Jeremy and I�we can pull you out! You can
leave if you want to!"

How Wendel  knew this,  he wasn't  sure. But  he knew  it was true. He
could feel it�could feel the relative energy loci, the possibility  of
pulling free, if you tried.

"We can go home, Dad! You and me and Mom!"

"Can't!" came his Dad's voice from a squirming gargoyle of his  father
with a fractal fringe, weeping and laughing.

"Dad don't lie to me! You can do it! Don't lie! You can come! . . ."

His arm ached so�but he waited for the answer.

Wordlessly,  his father  emanated regret.  Remorse. Shame.  "Yes," he
admitted finally. "But I  choose this. Mom and  I ... we want  to stay
here. Part of the gorgeous Out-Monkey. The eternal fractals."  Static.
"... can't help it. Go away, Wendel!"

"Have a life, Wendel!" Mom said. Several versions of her face said it,
several different ways. "Don't come back. The nanomatrix�you can  melt
it. Acid!" Huge burst of static. "Hurry up now. It heard me!"

He felt  it, too:  the chilling  black-light search-beam  of the  Out
Monkey's attention,  spotlighting him  like an  escaped prisoner  just
outside the wall. . .

"No, Mom! Come back! Mom�"

Mom  and Dad  swirled away  from him,  their faces  breaking up  into
laughing, jabbering fractals. The white noise grew intolerably loud.

"Gotter leave!" screamed Threakman in his ear. "Jump!"

With an impulse that was as much resentment of running away in fury as
it  was a  conscious effort,  he leapt  with Threakman  away from  the
hardening  grip  of  the Out-Monkey,  and  felt  himself spinning  out
through the  dimensions and  down the  tunnels, he  and Threakman in a
whirling blur, one  almost blending with  the other ...  he thought he
caught a glimpse of Threakman's memories, bleeding over in the strange
ambient fields of the place from his companion's mind: a father with a
leather strap, a woman giving him  his first blow job in the  backroom
of a Sydney bar, his first  paycheck, being mugged in London, a  stout
woman angrily leaving him ... All this time Threakman was steering him
through the bent spaces, helping him find his way back.

And then their minds were discrete again, and they were flying through
a  vortex  effaces  and  pearly-gray  glimmer,  through  a symmetrical
lattice of copies  of themselves, back  out into the  Big Bubble space
he'd first entered. And just about then the bubble flattened down into
normal space�and burst. He was back in the World.

Wendel knelt in the huge lab  room, sobs of fury bubbling out  of him,
beside the floor mat of the little nanomatrix, slapping his palm  flat
on  the  floor,  again  and  again,  in  his  frustration  and   hurt.
Especially,  hurt. His  dad and  mom had  chosen that  over him.  They
hadn't really been inescapably  caught�it was a choice.  They'd chosen
their  master,  the Out-Monkey;  they'd  gone into  a  spinning closed
system  of  onanistic  ecstasy; sequestered  their  hearts  in another
world, in the pursuit of pleasure and escape. They'd left him alone.

"Fuck youl"  he screamed,  pounding his  fist on  the nanomatrix.  The
magical bit of alien high-tech was a fuzzy gray rectangle, for all the
world like a cheap plastic doormat. That's all the lab was, really. An
empty  room, some  instruments, and  a scrap  of magic  carpet on  the
floor.

"Roit," said Threakman  hoarsely, slumping down  wearily next to  him.
"My old man, 'e was the same  way. But for 'im it was the  bottle. The
Out-Monkeys, they use the 'igh to pull their pets in. Something  sweet
'n' sticky�like  the bait  for a  roach motel.  And, God  'elp me, I'm
hooked. I won't make  it back out next  time. I need to  ... something
else. Bloody hell�anything else."

"Mom and Dad coulda left! They weren't stuck at all!"

"Yeah. I reckon." Threakman was tired, shaky. Pale. "Lor' I feel  bad,
mate. I miss that rush like it was my only love. Whuh now?"

Wendel stared  down at  the nanomatrix.  Tiny bubbles  glinted in  the
hairs that covered  it, endlessly oozing  out from it.  It was like  a
welcome mat  that someone  had sprinkled  with beads  of mercury.  The
little pockets winked up at him, as if to say, "Wanna get high?"

"The chemical factory,"  said Wendel. "Right  next door. I  know where
there's  a  tank  of  nitric  acid." He  pulled  at  a  corner  of the
nanomatrix. It was glued to  the floor, but with Threakman  working at
his side, he was able to peel it free. He rolled up the grimy mat  and
tucked it under his arm, tiny bubbles scattering like dust.

The clock on the wall outside the lab said 12:03. All that crazy  shit
in the Big Bubble�it had lasted about a minute of real time. The  next
team wasn't scheduled till 2:00 A.M. The halls were empty.

Threakman shambled along  at Wendel's side  as Wendel led  them out of
the research building and across a filth-choked field to the  chemical
plant, staying in the shadows on one side. Wendel knew the plant  well
from  all  the hours  he'd  spent looking  at  it and  thinking  about
modeling it. The guards  wouldn't see them if  they cut in over  here.
They skirted the high, silver cylinder of a cracking tower, alive with
pipes, and climbed some mesh-metal stairs that led to a broad catwalk,
ten feet across.

"The acid  tank's that  way," whispered  Wendel. "I've  seen the train
cars filling it up." The rolled up nanomatrix twitched under his  arm,
as if trying to unroll itself.

"This'll be the 'ard bit," said Threakman, uneasily. "The  Out-Monkeys
can see down onto us, I'll warrant."

Wendel tightened his grip on the nanomatrix, holding it tight in  both
hands. It pushed and shifted,  but for the moment, nothing  more. They
marched forward  along the  catwalk, their  feet making  soft clanging
noises in the night.

"That  great  thumpin'  yellow  one  with  the  writin'  on  it?" said
Threakman, spotting the  huge metal tank  that held acid.  Practically
every square  foot of  the tank  was stenciled  with safety  warnings.
"Deadly deadly deadly," added Threakman  with a chuckle. He ran  ahead
of Wen-del to get a closer look, leaning eagerly forward off the  edge
of the  catwalk. "Just  my cuppa  tea. Wait  till I  undog this 'atch.
Let's get rid of the mat before I change my mind."

The nanomatrix was definitely alive, twisting in Wendel's hands like a
huge,  frantic  fish.  He stopped  walking,  concentrating  on getting
control  of the  thing, coiling  it up  tighter than  before. "Hurry,
Jeremy,"  he called.  "Get the  tank open,  and I'll  come throw  this
fucker in."

But now there was a subtle shudder of space, and Wendel heard a voice.
"Not so fast, dear friends."

A businessman emerged out of thin air, first his legs, then his  body,
and then his head�as if he were being pasted down onto space. He stood
there  in  his black,  tailored  suit, poised  midway  on the  catwalk
between Wendel and Threakman.

"George  Gravid,"  said  the businessman.  His  eyes  were dark  black
mirrors and his suit, on closer inspection, was filthy and rumpled, as
if  he'd  been wearing  it  for months�or  years.  "The nanomatrix  is
DeGroot property, Wendel. Not that  I really give a shit.  This tune's
about played out. But I'm supposed to talk to you."

There was another shudder and a whispering of air, and now Barley  and
Xiao-Xiao  were at  Gravid's side,  Barley sneering,  and Xiao-Xiao's
little face cold  and hard. The  plant lights sparkled  on the three's
reflec tive eyes,  black and silver  and lavender. Wendel  took a step
back.

"Run around  'em, Wendel,"  called Threakman.  "I got  the 'atch  off.
Dodge through!"

Wendel was fast and small. He had a chance, though the bucking of  the
nanomatrix was continuously distracting him. He faked to the left, ran
to the right, then cut back to the left again.

Gravid, Barley, and Xiao-Xiao underwent a jerky stuttering motion�  an
instantaneous series  of jumps�and  ended up  right in  front of  him.
Barley gave Wendel a contemptuous little slap on the cheek.

"The Higher One picks  us up and puts  us down," said Xiao-Xiao.  "You
can't get past us. You have to listen."

"You're being moved around by an Out-Monkey?" said Wendel.

"That's a lame-ass term," said  Barley. "They're Higher Ones. Why  did
you leave?"

"You're its pets," Wendel said, stomach lurching in revulsion. "Toys."
The fumes from the nitric acid tank were sharp in the air.

"We're free agents," said Gravid.  "But it's better in there  than out
here."

"The mothership's  gonna leave  soon," said  Barley. "And  we're goin'
with it. Riding  on the  hull. Us  and your  parents. Don't  be a dirt
world loser, Wendel. Come on back."

"The  Higher  One wants  you,  Wendel," said  Gravid.  "Wants to  have
another complete family. You know how collectors are."

The nanomatrix bucked wildly, and  a fat silver pocket swelled  out of
its coiled-up end like a bubble from a bubble-pipe. The pocket settled
down onto the catwalk, bulging  and waiting. Wendel had a  sudden deep
memory of how good the rush had felt.

"Whatcher mean, the ship is  leavin'?" asked Threakman, drawn over  to
stare at the bubble,  half the height of  a man now. It's  broad navel
swirled invitingly.

"They've  seen  enough of  our  space now,"  said  Xiao-Xiao. "They're
moving  on.  Come on  now,  Wendel and  Jeremy.  This is  bigger  than
anything you'll  ever do."  She mimed  a sarcastic  little kiss,  bent
over, and squeezed herself into the pocket.

"Me come, too," said Barley, and followed her.

"Last call," said Gravid, going back into the bubble as well.

And now it was just Wendel  and Threakman and the pocket, standing  on
the catwalk. The nanomatrix lay still in Wendel's hands.

"I don't  know as  I can  live without  it, yer  know," said Threakman
softly.

"But you said you want to change," said Wendel.

"Roit," said Threakman bleakly. "I did say."

Wendel skirted  around the  pocket and  walked over  to where the acid
tank's open hatch gaped. The  nanomatrix had stopped fighting him.  He
and his world were small; the Out-Monkeys had lost interest. It was  a
simple matter  to throw  the plastic  mat into  the tank  . . . and he
watched it fall, end over end.

Choking  fumes wafted  out, and  Wendel crawled  off low  down on  the
catwalk toward the breathable air.

When he sat up, Threakman and the bubble were both gone. And somewhere
deep in his guts,  Wendel felt a shudder,  as of giant engines  moving
off. The pockets were gone? Maybe.  But there'd always be a high  that
wanted to eat you alive. Life was a long struggle.

He walked  away from  the research  center, toward  the train station,
feeling empty, and hurt�and free.

There were some things at the  apartment he could sell. It would  be a
start. He would do all right.  He'd been taking care of himself  for a
long time. . . .