One moldie was striped blue-and-silver with stubby little fins or wings, another glowed red-and-yellow, still another looked like a tangle of wire. Jenny pointed out two moldies whom she said were her close friends: Frangipane, who looked like an orchid blossom, and Ormolu, who looked like a kitschy ornamental cupid.

Looking down at the enormous disk-shaped floor of the Nest, Terri saw things like factories along one part of the edge and a pink-glowing assemblage of domes diametrically opposite. The region of the Nest floor directly below them held a light-bathed circle with moldies in it, and between this lightpool's central plaza and the Nest's walls were winding little streets lined with buildings and shops.

"I don't feel very good," Terri told the Jennies. "Is there someplace I can rest and walk around in normal air? Take a shower and lie down?"

"Yes indeedy," said Jenny-1. "And I'm taking you right there. Um-hmmm! Don't you worry one tiny bit."

"But where?" asked Terri anxiously.

"See those pink domes over there? Most of those are the pink-tanks where we grow nice healthy human organs to sell. But that little round one right at the end is a pink-house where humans can live. That's where I'm taking you, Terri. Willy Taze lives there."

Terri recognized the name. Willy Taze was the eccentric computer genius who'd invented the uvvy some twenty years ago. She recalled hearing a news story last year about Willy moving into the boppers' Nest.

The Jennies angled out of the great column of light and headed toward the pink domes by the Nest wall. The flowery Frangipane and the gilded Ormolu accompanied them, each of them bearing a new copy of themselves. Two orchids, two cupids, and two carrots, with Terri inside one of the carrots. They touched down lightly outside the air lock of a dome that resembled half of a giant peach.

"We put the woman into the air lock and then we go to the lab, yes?" uvvied Frangipane.

"Push in through that pucker in the air lock, Jenny-2," added Ormolu. "Ditch the flesher and then let's tweak our new clones. Wasn't that great how we chopped up Quuz, Frangipane? And free new bodies for all of us. Was that an easy score or what?"

"Out out, to chop up Quuz was very easy," said Frangipane. "But it is no cause to be joyful. Quuz was formed from the bodies of honest moldies like you and me.

All of them were murdered by the Gurdle Decryption process that we have helped to bring about. I hardly know what will come next."

"Stahn Mooney is coming next—inside the little Quuz that used to be Wendy," said Jenny-1. "Twenty-four hours from now."

"We have to find a way to halt him!" cried Frangipane. "We must discuss with Gurdle-7. You three new clones—go away instead of following us and being always under the foot. Later we can enjoy to talk with you. And as for you, Terri—Jenny's clone will help you into Willy's dome, and we will see more of you very soon. Gurdle-7's lab is sharing a wall with Willy."

Frangipane, Jenny, and Ormolu hurried off around the side of the pink dome and into a hole in the cliff, leaving the three new clones to fend for themselves.

"So what is it we are doing?" asked Frangipane-2, fluttering one of her petals.

"I say we go over to the lightpool at the center of the Nest and make some friends," said Ormolu-2, pointing with a shiny chubby arm. "We've got all this Know from our parents, but now we can find things out on our own."

"That is such a good idea," said Jenny-2. "Wait just a sec for me while I get Terri to where she's going."

Jenny-2 wormed pointy-end-first through the sphincter in the outer door of the dome's air lock. "You look out for that Willy Taze, Terri. I know he's a real horn-dog!" There was a hiss as air filled the lock. Jenny-2 gave a wild giggle and hatched Terri out onto the air lock's stone floor like a pea shelled from the pod. The carrot-shaped moldie gave an abrupt bow and squeezed back out through the pucker in the outer door. Then the three clone moldies bounded off toward the Nest's center.

Terri stood alone in the pink-house's air lock, feeling the air nice and warm and humid around her, and then the inner door opened, and a gray-bearded man was standing there, grinning like a mad, lonely hermit. For a second Terri thought she saw some things darting across the floor behind him, but then they were gone. Maybe just a trick of the eyes.

The man was wearing ragged shorts and a T-shirt. He looked about fifty. He had bare feet and a yellow uvvy on his neck. The floor of the large round room behind him was covered with oriental carpets. Hundreds of potted plants lined the walls and hung from the ceiling.

"Hello, Terri Percesepe! I'm Willy Taze. You're naked!"

"Duh!" said anxious Terri, walking in and letting the inner door close behind her

"I'll get you some of my clothes," said Willy, bustling across the dome's single big room, talking all the while. "I don't want to be staring at you too hard."

He glanced back and grinned the wider. "Boy, it's good to see a human. I've been in here for over a year. Me, myself, and I and I." He bent over a trunk and rummaged briefly. "Here we go, a fresh outfit. The moldies bring me whatever I need. I'm very rich, you know." He walked quickly back, his feet silent on the thick rugs, and handed Terri some elastic-waisted shorts and a new plastic-wrapped T shirt with an ISDN logo. "You don't think it smells bad in here, do you?" He wrinkled his nose and sniffed at the air. "It's hard for me to tell anymore. I don't let the big moldies in here at all, even though I do uvvy with them a lot a lot a lot every day. Gurdle-7 has his lab right through there." Willy pointed to a flat transparent window where the dome wall touched the cliff.

Behind the clear plastic of the window was a brightly lit cave filled with machinery, and indeed Terri could see Frangipane, Ormolu, and Jenny in there, along with a thick snake-like moldie with metallic purple skin—that would be Gurdle-7. Seeing her look at them, the moldies waved. Terri waved back, then focused her attention on Willy's pink house.

There was a chair and table, a bed, a big sofa, and an easy chair. To the left was a freestanding food pantry with a microwave, and to the right was a toilet, an exercise treadmill, and a deep clear pool of constantly recirculating water.

The air smelled okay—maybe a little like a man's dirty laundry and maybe a little bit like moldies. The masses of hanging plants seemed to help. There were no papers, no keyboards, no books, no vizzy, and no hollowcaster—apparently Willy's uvvy served for all that.

"I'd like to wash before I get dressed," said Terri, walking over to the pool.

"It's been a week."

"Go ahead. Here's soap and a washcloth and the towel's over there. Do you mind if I keep talking to you?"

"I want to talk. I have a lot of questions. But don't stare at me that way."

Terri slid into the water and ran the cloth over her face. It felt wonderful.

"I gather that you and your moldie friends sent out some kind of virus," she said presently.

"A Tessellation Equation program," said Willy, sitting down at the edge of the pool with his back to Terri. "We call it the Stairway To Heaven. It turns a moldie into a kind of antenna that can pick up alien personality waves—though you can equally well think of the signals as alien personality particles.

Hilbert space prisms with gigaplex nontrivial axes. Anyhow, when the alien gets unpacked, that's a Gurdle Decryption. We sent the Stairway To Heaven to Wendy, and she did a Gurdle Decryption of a personality wave from the Sun. Quuz.

Then all of a sudden Wendy-Quuz sent the Stairway To Heaven and the Quuz code to Blaster. We should have realized that could happen. What a fiasco." Willy sighed heavily. "The spaceport dome is totally destroyed? You were inside Blaster when his Gurdle Decryption happened, Terri. What was it like?"