"Saint is—he's wearing a silvered coat and he has tinfoil on his head. And Babs is—oh, Babs—" She laughed harder. "I can hardly describe this, Stahn. She's got a little tray around her waist with things on it and a terrible yellow shirt; I have no idea what she's supposed to be. Let's hurry and meet them."

"Do you really want those poor children to see their mother's body butchered?" demanded Stahn. "It would be traumatic. And then, once you were twenty-five, you'd get young guys and you wouldn't want me! That's what I get for being faithful to you all these years?"

"I said let's drop it. You get so dramatic when you're lifted! You know damn well that I'm a Happy Cloak, not a human body. This body—this wendy—it's a mindless piece of meat that I use to walk around in and to make love to you, Stahn. You never got excited when I replaced my imipolex every three years. If I change my flesher body, everything will be just the same. I'm a moldie, I'm your wife, and I'll always love you. So there."

Wendy pushed into the crowd, and Stahn followed. There were a lot of brides here tonight; that was just about the number-one favorite costume. Other faves were strippers, debutantes, princesses, and slaves. A few people recognized Stahn or Wendy, but most mistook them for het looky-look tourists. "Hello, Cleveland," sneered a skinny large-breasted morph with a beard. A disco dandy snipped,

"When you drive back to the 'burbs, remember that my car is the Mercedes and yours is the BMW." "I didn't use a car," said Wendy pityingly, "I used my broom!"

Though Stahn hadn't noticed it before, Wendy was indeed holding a broom—oh yeah, it was a piece of her 'Cloak that she'd temporarily pinched off and reshaped.

Wendy pointed Stahn in the direction where the dragonfly had shown her the kids.

"Press on, dear old fool." Stahn fought past a man with a cardboard toilet around his head and his face sticking out of the bowl and a plastic dick over his nose, past a woman with a leash leading a blindfolded nude ungenitaled Barbie, past a morph with a head built up with phonybone to the shape of a cube, past people with wings and huge flexing cocks—the crowd pressed and swirled like the ripping currents of a particularly nasty ocean break—

"Hey, Da, Ma!" called Babs.

"Yaar!" whooped Saint.

Babs and Saint were in a doorway near the Castro Theater. Saint was a tall cheerful youth who habitually darkened his appearance by means of odd hair, a ratty beard, silvery stung-lasses, and heavy blue suede boots. For tonight, he'd covered his head with vintage aluminum foil crudely wadded into the shape of a helmet and he wore a reflective metallic fireman's coat that went down to his knees.

Babs had big firm cheeks that grew pink when she was excited, like now. As part of her costume, she wore a yellow polyester shirt with a tag saying: HI I'M LYNNE - HAPPY DOLLAR

She held a stick bearing something like a square lantern with the numeral "3" on each of its four sides, and around her waist was a cardboard tray with packages glued to it—cereal boxes and udon and pho noodles and tampons and panty shields and disposable ceramic forks. Her hair was pulled tight into a lank little ponytail that was barrette-clamped to point upward; and to complete the groovy hairdo, she wore a wiiiiiide bandeau.

"Can you tell what I am?" chirped Babs cozily. Wendy couldn't guess, but Stahn recognized it from his childhood.

"You're a clerk in an old-time supermarket!"

"Ye oldie checker gal," said Babs, laughing gaily.

"What about me?" asked Saint.

"A robot?" guessed Wendy.

"Sort of," said Saint. " 'I am Iron Man.' I've got my stunglasses broadcasting realtime live on the Show, you wave, and I'm using this classic twentieth-century metal song for the background. Listen." He switched his uvvy to speaker mode and karaoked some crude guitar licks. "Danh-danh deh-denh-deh.

Dadadada-danh-danh dah-dah-dah."

Wendy had set their dragonfly to filming the little family outing; it hovered a few feet over their heads like a hummingbird, its wings whispering and its single bright bead-eye lens staring at the Mooneys. Wendy and Saint could see the pictures through their uvvies.

Saint sang Iron Man some more, raising his hand toward the dragonfly in a spread-fingered salute; Wendy could see that he was goofing on the self-images he was realtime mixing into the ceaseless global interactive multiuser stunglasses Show. Saint saw Wendy seeing him, and he shifted fabulations.

"Ma is Wendy the red witch," smiled Saint. "Who are you, Da?"

"I'm the night sky," said Stahn, all painted black and spangled with sparkles.

"As seen by a cosmic ray from the galactic equator. How you kids floatin'?"

"We're having a good time," said Saint. "I like how much there is to see. I'm pulling in some viewers. I'm not gonna have to pay any Web charges for weeks."

"People keep trying to take stuff off my counter," said Babs. "And then they're surprised when it's glued on. You look beautiful, Ma."

"Thanks, Babs," said Wendy. "But don't you think I'd look better with a new age-twenty-five body?"

"Oh, come on, Wendy," said Stahn.

"Let her talk, Da," said Babs. "She's already told me all about it and it's no prob."

"I see a group that looks funny," said Saint, pointing. "Let's head that way."

They pushed down the street toward a group of nude morphs, each painted a different primary color and each equipped with big morph muscles. A few of them had tails. They were tossing each other about like acrobats—with much lewd miming.

The Mooneys walked along with the happy, laughing crowd watching the acrobats for a while, then drifted into the less crowded blocks deeper into the Mission.

"I still haven't had supper," said Wendy presently. "Is anyone else hungry?"

"I am," said Saint. "Where should we go?"

"I know a wavy Spanish place near here," said Babs. "The Catalanic."

"Let's do it," said Stahn.

As they walked toward the restaurant, Babs began tearing items off her counter and setting them down on doorsteps. "For the homeless," she explained.

"Anyhoo, I'm tired of wearing all this." She took the cardboard counter from around her waist and skimmed it toward Saint as hard as she could. He caught it, ran with it, flipped it onto the sidewalk, and managed to slide about twelve feet before stumbling off, pin-wheeling his arms and yelling, "Aaawk! Happy Dollar!

Aaawk!

Happy Dollar."

The outside of the Catalanic was a warmly lit storefront painted red-and-yellow.

Inside, it was bustling and cream-colored, with a few nice things on the walls: an old Spanish clock, two nanoprecise copies of Salvador Dali oils

(Persistence of Memory and Dali at the Age of Six Lifting the Skin of the Water to Observe a Dog Sleeping in the Shadow of the Sea), and two nanocopied Joan Miro paintings of hairy bright lop-lop creatures (Dutch Interior I and Dutch Interior II).

There were lots of people sitting at tables covered with tapas dishes and—"Yes, of course, Senator Mooney"—there was a table for four. Wendy's dragonfly telerobot perched on a cornice across the street to wait.

The Mooneys sat down happily and fired off an order for Spanish champagne and plates of potatoes, shrimp, spinach, pork balls, squash, chicken, mussels, endives, and more potatoes. The bubbly and the first dishes began arriving.

"See that moldie over there with the bohos?" said Babs, waving across the room.

"She's a friend of mine. She's called Sally. She's so funny. One day when I was here, Sally and I fabbed about Dali for a long time."

Sally was sitting on a chair with a group of five lively young black-dressed artists. Sally had been shaped like a colorful Picasso woman, but now, seeing Babs, she suddenly let her body slump into the shape of a melting jellyfish with wrinkles that sketched a flaccid human face.