“Do I have to wear the gloves?” Iala frowns.
“They’re for your hands, not her head,” sighs Proserpina. “Stop tucking your thumbs inside your fists or I shall break them before you do.”
“Swish swish crack!” mutters Ernestine, in the other corner, making little swipes as she stares at the sand-marked edges of the ring. “Pop swish pop!”
“Keep your hands up,” says Radiane, “and please don’t try to pull her hair.”
“I won’t if she doesn’t,” Ernestine lies.
“Eep!” says Georgette, upon accidentally dinging the bell. The chatter of the assembled first-years spooks the pigeons in the rafters.
Cards are more popular, but really Remy prefers dice. It took him a long time to become a serious craps shooter, able to spin flat and even hit the wall without changing faces; he particularly enjoys the inevitable accusations of sharking, and the quick and sloppy fights that follow. Dicing requires physical skill in many arenas.
All you need for cards is a grin and some math.
The girl from the supermarket, says her license, is Annamarie. Remy replaces the wallet in her pocket with a queen of hearts in the billfold. He’s got a whole deck of those, but still.
It’s hard being a unicorn driver on the cotton candy plantation. “Believe in the magic of your dreams!” they’re always crooning at him. “Let’s all take… a snuggle break!” Dilbo’s whip arm aches by the end of the day just from shutting them up, and they eat all the candy.
But he keeps trying, because the gnomes all teleported to Canada and he still remembers what happened the last time his monthly totals dropped. He sees the consequences every time he comes home, and his wife staggers to greet him: the rictus of her frosting smile, and her rigid gingerbread hug.
The autobiography of Cording Vance–callsign Rakehell; alias Cordwood Vance, alias Thomas Cording, alias Tommy Bombshell; interfederal fugitive on charges of racketeering, assault, contraband weapons trading and a number of murders so great it is technically classified as a war crime; called the Fire on Algol, the Sunkiller, Slick Burn Tommy, Bloodbather or the Terricide; subject of the late Jacen Knobpop’s #1 intergalactic megasingle “Demon Star;” threat to disobedient children; pimp, controlled nucleotide dealer, enforcer, executioner, gangster, petty warlord and, of late, writer–reads in its entirety as follows: “Listen man don’t EVER fuck with librarians that’s all I’m gonna say.”
The other thing about time passing is that after a few hundred years it gets impossible to find a good catamite. There are alternatives, of course, but any diet suffers for lack of variety: it’s as if apples were going extinct. Longinus finds himself going to preposterous lengths just for an afternoon with a companionable nine-year-old. It’s one such fit of desperation that drives him to learn Japanese, just in time to get expelled by the shogunate.
He tries thinking about it in terms of relative ages, but it’s no use, and anyway mathematics always made him go soft.
Reaching the West Reaches quenches the mended blade, and brackish steam flares up around him, faster than he expected: brings with it towers and terraces, figures in the mist, screaming, minarets shattered in flames.
Stumble Jade lifts his welder’s mask to glare. “Control, control, you must learn control!”
“I saw a city in the clouds,” says Reaching the West Reaches slowly.
“It is the future you see.”
“They were in pain.” He rubs his head thoughtfully, the scars smoother than they were when he came here, tan blending their edges. “Will they die?”
“Always in motion,” says Stumble Jade, “the future.”
It’s really tough doing witness protection for the Wrasses because all it would take would be one classmate blogging the phrase “that family with twelve kids” and the guns of criminal desperation would fire their bullets right down through the tubes. So they get four houses on a cul-de-sac, assign five full-time agents and literally deal the kids out, face-down assignments. The Wrasses find this an immense relief. The agents, less so.
“So what’s keeping the neighbors from saying they all look alike?” wonders Agent Five (the “single mom”).
“Reflexive shame,” murmurs her supervisor, “seems to serve.”
“–similar to a sugar pill including nausea blurred vision and increased desire to gamble see our ad on health dot com,” finishes Zyrexitab, panting slightly and beaming at the class’s haphazard applause.
“Very good!” says the teacher. “Okay, has anyone not gone yet? Mirazinol? Apostrophex? Wait–yes, our newest classmate! Is it… Reggie?”
“Uh,” says Reggie, who’s been dreading this. “I can’t recite my disclaimer.”
The teacher smiles. “Don’t be shy!”
“No, I mean… I’m named after my grandfather. I don’t have a pharma patron.”
The whole class stares, then, as if cued. Rich boy, mouths one of them, accusingly silent.