Dear Host Mother, It's been twenty-four hours since the last manifestation of the invader.

The herriots are starting to feel safe about issuing an all-clear. And Doctor Sax is standing virtually by in the wings with a last-ditch experimental trope similar to CENSORED which they're going to try if there's another flareup.

Keep your fingers crossed (webbing and all)!

Your loving guest son, CENSORED SEND: IMF MOBILE NODE SYS01-4591P RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE.

DATE/HOUR: 070865/0300.

TRANSMISSION STATUS: OK.

Dear Host Mother, We've all received our shots of aldisscine, Doctor Sax's new trope, despite its high LD rating.

There was really no choice after we all went body-blind.

What's body-blindness? I can imagine you asking.

It's total loss of proprioception, the multiplex feedback from your muscles and nerves, skin and bones, that allows you to tell -- mostly subliminally -- what your body's doing.

We're all isolated now in our heads like puppet-masters whose strings leading to their puppets have been tangled, or like a telefactor operator who's lost his sensory feed. It's not that we can't move our limbs or anything. There's no paralysis. It's just (just!) that aside from visual feedback, there's no inherent sense of where any part of you is! You might as well try to operate someone else's body as your own under these conditions.

It's not pleasant, watching your proxies tripping over their own feet, missing chairs, their mouths, the D-compoz unit-- But you can get used to anything, I guess. And the experts are confident that the aldisscine will stop any new deficits from popping up.

Anyway, I'm kind of glad Penguin didn't live to experience this. I never got a chance to tell you, but she used to be a dancer in regular franch life.

The orders have finally come down from Brussels for our pod to be rotated out. There's talk that if the body-blindness proves permanent, they'll try to fit us all out with onboard stabilizer chips and nanosensors to simulate normal proprioception.

What's one more bodymod nowadays, huh, Mom?

Your loving guest son, CENSORED SEND: IMF OFFEARTH NODE SYS02-999Z.

RECEIVE: MC MURDO BIOSPHERE.

DATE/HOUR: 071065/2400.

TRANSMISSION STATUS: SOLAR NOISE IMPEDIMENT (*) = -10%.

Dear Ho*t Moth**, As you might've guessed by the delay between messages, we've been rerouted.

We're in transit to CEN*****, where we'll get the best of care. They discovered that all surviving members of our pod are suffering from degenerative neurofibrillary protein tangles similar to those found in sufferers of that extinct disease known as Alz********. CENSORED is a kind of sanitarium, where an AI-human team waits to cure us.

They say the average stay at CENSORED is *** months, but could stretch to **** years. Jumping genes! You could be in another symb-bonding by then!

Anyway, I can't look that far ahead, as our prognosis is very ****.

Let me repeat that, in case these flares are interfering: we stand a ****

chance, not a **** one.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to take any incoming 'voxes from you for a while, or even send any. Not that I'd be able to really appreciate them too good anyhow. My brain seems a little dull right now. But they promise us that full metamedium contact will be restored as soon as it's appropriate.

But don't worry. You can always contact Brussels for updates.

Just ask for your boy, CENSORED!

STREETLIFE.

First published in New Worlds 3, edited by David S. Garnett, London: Gollancz 1993. Coney's master was a Virtuality Poet. And he was one of the best. Only Planxty or Bingo Bantam could approach the depth and brilliance of his compositions, and rarely at that. So his master would always tell Coney, especially when he was under the influence of a trope such as Egoboo or Meglo, which left him prone to recite aloud his own reviews, complete with melodramatic flourishes of the crepey folds of velvet skin that hung like batwings from his underarms.

"'Hopcroft's latest cortex-vortex is a cell-stunner! Visit to the Mushroom Planet opens with Tenniel's hookah-smoking Caterpillar greeting the percipient with a blast of aromatic smoke. When the cinnamon cloud clears, the perk finds herself on the Mushroom Planet of the title. Fungi lifeforms in startling variety exfoliate and enfold the mind-traveler, who can navigate the construx with more than the standard ten degrees of freedom, thanks to Hopcroft's truly creative use of CoCenSys's Infini-Tree Fabware. The poet's signature use of lush textures and his smorgasbord-gorgeous false-color palette all contribute to a synapse-shattering experience -- especially if you're simultaneously running a coprocessor such as CellSmartz, as this lucky perk was! With this 'strux, Hopcroft delivers on all his past promises and establishes himself as the poet of his cohort.'"

Throwing the flimsy across the room (to be quickly retrieved by a Braun DoorMaus), Coney's master would spread his batlike membranes wide and exclaim, "'The poet of his cohort!' Did you hear that, Coney?"

"Yes, Peej Hopcroft, I heard."

"It's all gush, of course. But true gush. I am the most accomplished poet of my clade. There's no disputing it, is there, Coney?"

"No indeed. It is just as Peej Reviewer said."

Most likely then -- especially if the tropes were wearing off -- Coney's master would, at this point in the ritual, collapse into a convenient organiform chair (somehow he was never so distraught as to land on the floor), drape his head with his fleshfolds, and begin to weep.

"But what good does it do me, Coney? This crass society does not respect poets, nor does it honor them with rewards material or spiritual. It never has, and it never will. I am an acquired taste, and then only among a few. The mass of my fellow citizens are Philistines, plain and simple. Siouxsie Sexcrime is their idea of poetry! How can such a sensitive soul as mine endure it, Coney? Ah, but my life is hard, Coney -- harder than a stupid transgenic like you could ever imagine. I can barely scrape together enough ecus to pay my Digireal fees. And my art cannot be rushed! This is why I am forced much too often to play the lusty gigaload gigolo!"

Coney knew enough not to interrupt at this point. He would wait with the patience of his kind for the tearful poet to finish his performance.

"Yes," Coney's master would inevitably begin his peroration, "I, the RAM-baud of my cohort, must make ends meet by crawling for pay into the Sack with lascivious starfuckers, eager to boast to their witless friends that they have enjoyed teledildonics with another ii-do tarento whose art they cannot even begin to appreciate!"

At this juncture Coney would venture a comment he hoped would bolster his master's self-esteem and spare himself a collar-jolt.

"Peej Hopcroft only does what he must, to further his art."

If he had by now downed a trope such as Zesta, Coney's master would sigh extravagantly and agree. (Otherwise, the dreaded neuronic zap might be forthcoming, along with the admonition "not to overstep your splicey self with comments about things you couldn't possibly comprehend.") Tonight -- a mild June evening stochastically certified to be rainfree -- much to Coney's relief, his stock phrase served its intended purpose. The familiar scene which he had just endured for the nth time played itself out happily for him.

"Yes, little Daewoo Dumbunni, we all do what we must, don't we? Even peddle our arse for the sake of our ars." Coney had no idea what this last statement meant, but was only too happy to nod his sympathy.

Rising to his feet, Coney's master now said, "And that's why I need you to do your part to make this latest sordid virtual assignation a success, dear Coney. I have here a new trope called O-max-O. It was given to me by one of my fans, a sensitive young plug who works at Xomagraf. It's not available to the hoi polloi yet. He promises me that it will make this digitryst so thrilling for my client that she'll gladly double my Fee. I'm counting on you to deliver it to her within the hour. Her name is Frances Foxx, and this is her address."

Coney's master handed him a crawlypatch and a silicrobe calling card. The card flashed an address in the far west end of the city.

Laboriously tracing a mental map, Coney sought to comprehend his assignment. Finally he spoke.

"This place is quite far. May I take the train?"

"Don't be silly. The train costs eft. The whole point of tonight's dreadful exercise is to earn ecus, not spend them. And besides, the maglev isn't safe for splices, not since those horrid razorboys, the Transgenocides, started haunting the tubes. No, you'll have to walk. You're a speedy little splice, or so the factory claimed. Surely you can cover the distance before Peej Foxx and I are scheduled to crawl into the Sack together."

"But it is night out there."

"So?"

"To make the best time, I will have to cross the Soft Sector. In the dark."

At the thought of such a passage, Coney horripilated.

His master seemed to experience no such somatic dread.

"You force me to repeat myself. so? No one there will pay any attention to you. You're small and insignificant."

"This is the problem."

Coney's master waved the splice's concerns away. "You're exaggerating the difficulties just to extract some concession or luxury from me. Very well, at the completion of your little chore, you may experience one of my sonnets.

Perhaps you could dimly appreciate Dance of the Cold Moons."

"Thank you, Peej Hopcroft. Something like extra rations would be very nice. But I would give up everything just not to go. Perhaps you could--"

"What!" thundered Coney's master. "Leave my wunderkammer and subject my precious body to the gross physical biosphere? How dare you suggest such a thing, you impudent trans!"

The hand of Coney's master moved toward the keypad in his hip.

"Sorry. Sorry. Sorry," said the smart-door, which had failed to open fast enough for the splice scrabbling at its manual override handle.

Coney's civicorp had recently bred a Pedlumo system to replace the antique solar-powered light-standards. By night, small swarms of gnat-like silicrobe aggregations hovered darkly outside every building waiting for pedestrians to emerge, whereupon they flared up with sufficient candlepower to illuminate a sphere some four meters in diameter. Anchoring themselves above the individual's head, they would accompany the traveler to his destination, then await new service.

With his soft personal corona fluctuating in response to those of all the other citizens and splices abroad that night, Coney set off toward the West End.

This initial stage of his journey fostered in Coney no trepidations.

Patrolled by teams of Parke-Davis Offisimians and Schering-Plough Deputy Dawgs, his neighborhood was a pleasant one, a mixed-use zone of shops, residences, and zero-light autofacs, and he was intimately familiar with it.

And the few errands that had taken him to the West End had revealed that district to be equally unthreatening.

No, it was only the dread territory in between the two zones that terrified him. The Soft Sector.

Striving to master his emotions, Coney recited a trigger-mantra he had been taught at Daewoo.

"Tension, fear, care, nowhere. Tension, fear, care, nowhere--"

Hypothalamic changes spread throughout his central nervous system, lowering his heartbeat and respiration. Soothing neuropeptides washed his brain.

Somewhat relieved, Coney dug in his bellypouch for the card with Peej Foxx's address. Perhaps with a clear mind he would see something about the chore that he had missed.

But a second perusal only confirmed what he had known from the moment his master gave him the assignment. There was only one way to deliver the dose of trope on time, and that was to cut across the interdicted streetlife habitat.

Replacing the card against his skin, next to the all-important crawlypatch, Coney increased his pace.

A clutch of zarooks, ragazzi, and chats sauvage stood on the corner of Artery Nine and Orange Capillary, hanging out by a trope bar whose silicrobe icons of synaptic junctions exchanging molecules flashed green and purple.

Heady-mental music spilled out from floating silicrobe speakers. Big Skulls and Piebalds predominated in the crowd, with a smattering of Moles.

"Swap protocols, little splice!" yelled one. "Where you off to so krebby fast?"

"Stop and share a dose of Heavy Wonderful," called another.

"Yeah, you'll feel like you were born a pure-gen!"

"Peej Splice, if you please!"

Coney knew enough not to heed these bad ones. Although not as violent as the razorboys, they would like nothing better than to divert him from his duties and mess up his factory parameters.

Hurrying away, Coney was followed by their jeers and laughter, and the soft wheezes of the Moles.

Within a few blocks of the Soft Sector, Coney began to grow nervous again. So intent on chanting his mantra was he that he failed to notice the whir of wheels behind him.

"Buy a refreshing Pepsi-plus, citizen? It's the pure charles!"

Coney jumped and whirled.

A mobile smart-vendor, battered and splashed with Liquid Lingo grafitti, had rolled up on his tail. The autorover looked completely disreputable, perhaps even a rogue.

"I am not a citizen," said Coney cautiously.

"Oh, excuse me. My biosensors have been malfunctioning since I took a spill. But rest assured, my product is still fresh! Would you care to purchase a cup, whatever you are?"

Coney straightened his back righteously. "I am a genuine midline Daewoo transgenic, bearing fully fifteen-percent human genes. You are simply a machine, a kibe."

The soda-vendor's voice assumed a plaintive tone. "Yes, you are right.

And an unlucky kibe at that. Unless I can sell more soda, I cannot apply for repairs. But the longer I put my repairs off, the more decrepit I get and the less soda I sell. It is a vicious circle."

"So is life. In any case, I have no eft."

"No eft! You have wasted my clock-cycles!"

"It was you who approached me!"

The crazed machine let loose a warbling siren. "Thief! Thief! All concerned citizens, nine-eleven the harrys!"

Fear building up in him, Coney sped off.

In less than a minute he was out of hearing of the vendor's calls for help and within sight of the Soft Sector.

He rested a moment, until his heart had slowed.

A wide bare ringroad separated the city from the zone of interdiction.