"Please, please, friend cats, don't let these monsters strip my bones!"

The lynxmen laughed. "The shuggoths? We've got them trained not to hurt anyone we don't want hurt. Watch!"

Letting loose a piercing whistle, the lynxmen called out, "Ia, ia, tekeli-li!"

The guardians ground to a sudden quivering halt.

One lynxman slapped Coney's back. "Run now, before we think twice!"

Coney ran.

Once he was far, far from the Soft Sector, he stopped to consider what to do. A clock told him the hour granted for his errand was twice gone. But he could think of nothing to do except try to complete it.

Without any further trouble, he found Peej Foxx's apartment. Building security allowed him in upon seeing her card. Her smart door likewise opened for him.

Inside stood Peej Foxx, coyly grooming her bushy tail.

And beside her was Peej Hopcroft!

Coney's master looked at his servant with ultimate disdain. "So, you finally made it, you filthy worm, after forcing me to come out on my own, into filthy unmodulated atmospherics! If I didn't value Peej Foxx's favors so highly, I don't think I could have nerved myself up to such a trying excursion! I was a fool ever to entrust such a vital errand to a furball such as you. Why, just look at you! You're a disgrace to my household!"

Coney turned toward a mirror.

He was covered with gravedirt. There was a bare raw ulceration on his arm where the shuggoth had brushed him. Dried blood crusted his midriff from the beetle's embrace. His back ached from being tossed to the ground by the scorpion. His swollen ass stung from the snakebite.

"Yes, Peej Hopcroft is right. I am a mess. But it was only--"

"Silence! Where is the trope I gave you?"

Coney dug out the crawlypatch. "Here it is. But I do not think--"

"You are not meant to think! Just give it to me!"

Coney handed the close of N-fear over.

"Luckily, I had a second patch which I brought with me. The lovely Peej Foxx has already applied it to her charming skin. I, therefore, will use this one."

Coney's master pressed out the activation pattern on the patch and applied it to his arm. It crawled until it found a vein, then settled down.

"Ninety-second delay, my dear. Just long enough for us to slide into ourSacks, whereupon we shall meet in virtual heaven."

Two wrinkled circuit-skinned and SQUID-studded bags lay on the soft floor, one end of each agape. Coney's master and Peej Foxx each wormed into his and her own semi-organic Sack, which sealed up behind them and tautened into shape, flowing into orifices, and molding around organs.

Coney watched his master's Sack.

When the violent, highly nonerotic twitchings began, he headed home.

The long way round.

AFTERSCHOOL SPECIAL.

First published in Amazing, June 1993.

"My poohs are so slouch!"

The phemes just spilled out like someone had tripped my gates. At first, I was shocked. But then I felt good.

Before today, I would've rather gone wiggly with a var than admit the truth in front of anyone except Jinx. But somehow -- right here and now -- everything looked different. I was sick and tired of sticking up for my simplex parental units, especially when they wouldn't let me have what I wanted.

The class was taking a break from invirting with CADaver, the human-anatomy virtuality used mainly to train feldshers. We were all lounging around in the spleen, wearing our secondary identities. The school had a contract with MicroDisney, so we were forced to wear their patented images.

Everyone hated it, but the trope dosers claimed it was for our own good. The theory was that no mega-eft spoilboy or churlgirl would be able to run better grafix than someone else, so we could concentrate on studying instead of showing off. Also, some of the ids2 that kids liked to use outside of school were so ciccone or freddie that you'd spend all your classtime creamin' or screamin'.

So I was in my usual Daisy Duck, and Jinx was wearing Goofy, and the rest of the class was all cutesy bluebirds and dwarves, mice and fish, Pinocchios and ballerina hippos, all clogging the virtual lymphoid tissue of this "important component of the reticulo-endothelial system" (or so lectured the tutor-turtle, whom everyone was ignoring).

Every once in a while, someone would reach out and snag a passing red bloodcell and pox it under his or her nose. We had found out the rusty smell could really bend your ladders like the best samogon or kompot.

We had been dissing our respective poohs, as kids will, when I had found myself spitting out my comment. I guess I didn't fully realize till then just how much my poohs had been quenching me.

Right on cue my best proxy, Jinx, spoke up.

Now, I mentioned that Jinx was wearing Goofy, but I should add that, having found out how to tweak the petafits that constituted his suit, he had retrofitted onto it an enormous set of black-skinned balls and dong. It was kinda sad, seeing as how they were the only ones he would ever have until he became an adult, but I supposed virtual sex organs were better than none.

So Jinx said, "Just how slouch are they, Arnie?"

"They're so slouch," I shot back, "that they make the Bogd Gegeen look like Siouxie Sexcrime!"

Everyone got a laugh out of that, imagining the eternal godboy of Greater Free Mongolia tricked out like our favorite teledildonics star.

When the hoots and hollers died down, Honeysuckle spoke up.

I've always hated Honeysuckle. Her poohs let her have these really glamslam Xoma tits two years ago, whereas my chest has yet to even bud naturally, which is the only way with poohs like mine that I'll ever get any boobs, short of turning twelve and becoming franchised. More than anything else, this was why I guess I had exploded and called my dumb old poohs slouch.

In keeping with her primary id, Honeysuckle always wore the LittleMermaid. Only she too had twiddled with her image, so that the doe-eyed cartoon transfection sported impossible macro-tits on which the seashell cups had dwindled to nipple-caps.

Now, I watched all the whychromes -- including my very own Jinx -- hang on her every word.

"That's because your poohs are Tee-Ems!" jeered Honeysuckle.

I winced at the dig. It was not something I could deny. Everyone knew my dads belonged to the Transcentennial Moderationists. They even had their own hour on the metamedium: Keep It Simple, Stupid, with Alvin and Calvin Arneson.

In the face of all the laughter Honeysuckle's comment caused, I found myself having to stick up for my dads, and it was awfully difficult, since I didn't really want to and felt like a total hypocrite.

"My poohs may be retro-jethro KISS-asses," I said, "but at least they're not black science boryokudans like yours!"

Everyone got silent as cell-death. My reference to the illegal underworld origin of the wealth of Honeysuckle's surface-respectable poohs was ultra loosh and faroosh. But I couldn't just sit there batting off phagocytes and let her run my dads down. I mean, it was all right for me to do it, but not her!

Honeysuckle's cartoon gaze grew as slitted and mean as that of a Secret Service pantherine confronted with a suspicious character feinting at the World Bank Managing Director. I knew I was truly on her shit list now and wondered how wise it had been to sass such a nasty girl.

"Well," she said, her voice dripping lysozymes, "the duck can quack! I suppose you think it's all spidersilk and hormone sodas, having poohs like mine. You don't know what it's like, every night half-expecting the crick-cops or Protein Police or the IMF to bust down the door and boot us all!"

It was hard to feel sorry for Honeysuckle as she sat there on a spongy mass of lymph, flicking her flippers and flaunting her chest, so I didn't even try. "You can have anything you want--"

"What does that have to do with being happy! Suppose you could have anything you wanted? Would you always be happy?"

"Why, sure..."

Honeysuckle assumed a venomous smile. "All right, then. What do you want most? C'mon, tell us, and I'll give it to you. I'll see to it that your wildest dreams come true."

Somehow the grounds of this battle had shifted under me. How we had gotten from the respective merits of our parents to who had the happier life eluded me, and I didn't like the change. Somehow, I found myself on the defensive and was really uneasy.

What could I say, in front of Honeysuckle and all my friends? All I really wanted was a pair of nice unassuming moderate-sized boobs and maybe some basal whychrome genitals for Jinx. But I was too embarrassed to say so.

So instead, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

"I'd like, um -- a spike!"

Honeysuckle laughed. "That's all? Out of anything you could have, you choose a crummy, soilin' spike?"

Jinx intervened then, and I sent a silent thanks his way.

"What's the matter with a spike? They're really peppy! Plus they're so new, hardly anybody's got one!"

Honeysuckle huffed. "Oh, I suppose you'd like one too?..."

"I wouldn't mind one. But they cost more than a bucket of brains. And besides, you need your pooh's chop to get one planted...."

Now Honeysuckle adopted that I've-swallowed-every-trope-ever-made tone she frequently used, which always got under my skin like a stitchbug.

"Well, I think they're simply as tawdry as sparkleskin, and frankly I'd rather wear chitin! But if you two larvae want spikes, I suppose I'll just have to get them for you."

Before Honeysuckle or Jinx or I could say any more, the tutor-turtle informed us that recess was over, and we had to get back to work. I couldn't really concentrate on the rest of the lesson. All my bulbs were firing doubletime, trying to imagine what Honeysuckle intended to do for -- or to -- Jinx and me.

Finally, the tutor-turtle told us to get ready for the phase-change out of virtuality, and the next thing I knew, I was back in my Sack, which was already withdrawing its squelchy threads and tendrils.

I tickled it open and emerged into the classroom.

All the other kids were climbing out of their Sacks too, their familiar faces and forms a welcome sight after so much microdiz nutrasweet. Most of them -- all of them except poor old me, in fact -- sported various kiddie-moddies: tails, scales, and pointy nails, manes, veins, and extra brains. I was the only one whose poohs wouldn't let her have even the simplest little gill-slit or sixth finger -- never mind tits -- all because they believed in some weird principle of "somatic integrity."

Honeysuckle was brushing her perfect calico hair and eyeing me from her perch on the corner of a smartdesk with the raptorial look of an execucondo's security bird. I wanted Jinx beside me before she could say anything, but he was still struggling to get out of his sack, last one as usual. I went over to help him.

Jinx's sack was undergoing some bizarro kind of peristaltic reaction, and I had to pet its control ganglia till it calmed down. Jinx always had some kind of trouble with his interface bag, because its parms weren't set up for his peculiarities.

At last, though, the two of us got it open, and Jinx emerged.

There was nothing to Jinx below his abdomen. His body simply ended a few centimeters below his navel. He looked just like he had been sliced in half by some mad magician.

His bottom -- or ventral side or whatever you want to call it -- was capped with a tough protective Immunologic membrane like sharkskin that was integral with his regular epidermis. This membrane handled all his metabolic wastes, so that Jinx never had to pee or shit.

The way Jinx got around was on his knuckles. His hands and supermyofibril biceps were massive, and his knuckles well calloused. Suspended from these pylons, he could either swing his torso forward, rest on it, then shift both supports, or he could sort of fall forward from left to right hand.

Jinx had been born this way. His poohs were third-generation spacelings whose ancestors hadn't seen much need for deadmeat legs in zero-gee, and so they had bid the chromosartors snip and transcribe until the result was my proxy, Jinx.

His folks -- nomenklatura of Asgard -- had sent Jinx to Gaia -- to our school -- for what they insisted was a superior educational experience.

(Although, what with tropes and the digiverse being equally accessible and high-quality practically anywhere, I failed to see exactly what benefits they were conferring on him, unless it was the dubious Gaian social life or high-status eft expenditure.) When I first got friendly with Jinx, I asked him two questions.

"How come you don't ride, um, a prosthocart, maybe like the dolphinboys use?"

"Because I'm not a cripple. I'm completely normal, for a spaceling."

I didn't argue the point, even though only baseline scantlings like me rate the semiderogatory word "normal." Maybe the word meant something different on Asgard. Instead, I asked the second question.

"I imagine your colony cooks new members in some fancy ductwork."

"Yeah. Repligen wombs with i-Stat endometriums and Ares-Serono placentas."

"But how do you -- I mean, what do you do when--"

"How do we get wiggly?"

"Well, yeah!"

"It's all virtual. That's the one thing I don't like about home. I keep wishing I had -- had legs and a cock! I even dream I'm walking sometimes...." "It's probably feedback from Gaia's morphic fields, the human subset. You felt it out in space, but it's even stronger here. Like they say, 'Ain't no shield against the field, cuz it dwells in the cells.'"

"I guess."

Now, as I helped Jinx to a "sitting" position, my reverie was brought to a harsh end by Honeysuckle's sashaying, tit-quaking approach. She stopped a meter or so away and addressed me while ignoring Jinx -- except to insult him.

"If you're done helping that knucklebuster, I'd like to finish up our little business matter."

Honeysuckle ran a flicker-screen thumbnail across a seam bisecting her bare midriff, opening up a possum-pouch. From within, she deftly filched a flashcard and handed it to me.

I noticed that Honeysuckle's nailscreen was running the Mandelbrot set, and everything suddenly felt as strange as one of the set's remoter precincts.

With nervous fingers I flexed the still-warm card, and its silicrobe message blinked at me.

THE G-GNOME'S CAVE.

1040 BUGHOUSE SQUARE.

(RIDE THE RED ARTERY TO NODE TEN, OR TAKE SLIDEWALK SEVEN).

Somatic and gnomic alterations of all types. Deletions, insertions, and inversions. Coleopterics a specialty. Fully bonded and licensed by the BDC.