At the moment, she hated Tink, who was Denny, and stupid, stupid, stupid. He pulled this right when her own credit was shaky.

“I can’t get him out. My dad’s mad at me. I’ve used up all my good-points for a month.”

“You’ve got to. Your dad can stop it if it doesn’t get any further. Random was with him. And we were all at the table and we’re probably all on the vidder. Mignette, where’s your soul?”

“Was Random with him when he did it? In the store?”

“I don’t know.”

“He was. I know he was.” Mignette rolled onto her stomach. Tears ran down her nose, and she wiped them. She slept in the nude. The air from the vents chilled her skin and she felt as if she might throw up.

“How do you know?”

“Because he’s a fool. And if he’s going to be a fool, Random’s got to go along, I’ll bet he did. And they’re probably both in thatstore’s vidder doing it. They haven’t got a brain. And I can’t do anything, Noble, I swear I can’t.”

“Out with mumsy today?”

“Shut up!”

“Out getting fancy stuff? Don’t care about your friends?”

“I can’t help it!” She heard a noise somewhere in the house and dropped her voice to a whisper, thinking it might be her father, down in the kitchen. She wasn’t supposed to be getting phone calls in the middle of the night. “You can talk, and don’t you take advantage of it. I can’t, right now. I think I heard somebody out of bed.”

“Your mother?”

“Dad, I think.” She was very still, talking in her half whisper. She had a lock on her door. She was sure she’d locked it.

“Sure they haven’t got a bug on you?”

“No.”

“You truly sure?”

“I’m pretty awfully sure.” She strained her ears to hear down to the kitchen, wishing she was amped, but she couldn’t get any useful mod like that, not while she was living at home. She couldn’t do anything with mods at all, not even a common tap, and they’d dyed her hair this awful red-brown, like sludge, and she wanted to cry. The fish had been awful. It had been a living thing, and they killed it and her mother tucked it on a plate with a flower arrangement, burned side down and expected her to eat it, because Earthers ate live things, and it was class. “I think he’s gone back to bed.”

“You’ve just got to do something.”

“I can’t, is what I’m telling you. Mum and I are having a fight, and Dad won’t listen. He just gave me his card.”

“You got credit?”

“I got a little. Five cee.”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Don’t tell me that.” It reminded her about the hair, which, if Noble had seen her on the street, was just too humiliating to think about, and, more than that, it was permanent dye, Renee had said so. The chemical when they were doing it had made her sick at her stomach and the nasty perfume in the dye was in every breath she breathed now, complicating the nasty taste of the fish on her tongue. “You only care because I’ve got money.”

“Meet me down at 11th in an hour.”

“The hell I can.” She didn’t want to explain how she looked. She couldn’t stand mirrors. Not until it grew out.

“Scared?”

“No.”

If she went down to Blunt, she could buy a mod for her hair, a mod that would let her say what color it was for the rest of her life. Or she could buy one of the fat-nibblers, that would let her eat anything at all, as much as she wanted.

Or a real multichannel tap. Which got you fevers and headaches for a month or more while it took, but after that, her mother woulddisown her and she’d have to go to the street to live.

While Ippoleta ruled the scene on the block and would probably sniff and call her déclassé, all the while saying hergenes were pure.

“Maybe I’ll buy a hit on Ippoleta and get herinfected with a mod.”

“That would be a laugh.”

“Ippoleta’s so good, Ippoleta’s so smart, Ippoleta’s so haute class the instructors all fawn on her. I could just puke.”

The instructors were all part of the social clique, was what. And her father didn’t remotely understand what she was up against, in that school full of his enemies.

“Know what I might buy?”Noble drew her into the fantasy. “A tap.”

“You think your parentals wouldn’t know if you did it?”

“They don’t know what I do. I bet I could even get a tap and just not let it show.”

“You’d puke your guts out. I heard a guy once did it at sixteen and he was in hospital for six months. You’d be sicker than hell. On the other hand—surface stuff doesn’t do that, most times. I might do my eye color. I might be like that Stylist and have my eyes go all colors. I’ll bet my parentals never would know if I kept them brown at home.”

“I wonder how you see in the dark if they glow like that.”

“It’s on the iris, not the retina, silly.” She knew some things from science sessions. If it could possibly involve mods, she was interested.

“I still wonder if you don’t see the light from them. I’d think you would.”

Having a glow in her eyes didn’t sound so attractive, under those terms. She turned the tables. “So what would you get besides a tap?”

“Me? I’d get a mod so I’d never get drunk.”

She giggled. “Then how would you have fun?”

A small dull silence. “Well. I suppose. But I could drink all the beer I like.”

“Then you’d need a fat-mod. And all that beer still wouldn’t get you drunk. So where’s the fun in that?”

“Hell. Come on down here, rich bitch.”

The parentals would kill her if she did. She could get based, completely based for a month. “Can’t.”

“11th and Blunt. Right now. Scared?”

“Not scared. Just don’t want to.”

“Scared of her shadow. Nice little Kathy-boo. All talk and no action. I’ll call you back when I’m there. You’ll change your mind.”

“Go to hell.” She pulled the phone out of her ear and, deprived of body heat, it would beep out on Noble, who was a slime.

She hated her life. She really hated it.

4

THE WIND HAD KICKED UP at dark, as Drusus had forewarned, and a perverse and wicked wind it was. It would have made the extension of the antenna uncommonly difficult, if they had tried to outrace it. It was likely to cause damage if they tried extending before the dust fell, and that and the need to get the deep-stakes driven and the guy wires on the relay station anchored had made them postpone that task.

The boys were entirely frustrated, having looked forward to calling their sweethearts and relatives back at the Refuge, but the desert and the weather made for patience with certain things. There was always time, in Marak’s way of thinking, and an immortal who could love the sound of the demon wind thumping and booming at the canvas and revel in the sand hissing off the tent at night was far happier and healthier in his life. An immortal who could meet occasional frustration and not see in it the pattern of all his past frustrations was the one who would survive the longest. Some who had the gift lacked patience, battering themselves against all adversity, increasingly finding malevolence and divine obstruction in small accidents.

Those who adopted that opinion grew more bitter and strange by the year. They eventually wandered off from their fellows and lost themselves in a solitude where only the dunes changed. They mattered less and less once that happened, and all but the oldest forgot them.