other thug joins him on the stoop. He's got jewelry processors on his eyeballs, little red rubies that flicker when light catches them just right. I stare at the jewelry and the brown eyes. "What's what with this one? He want a go?" the thug spits. "Keep eyein' me, and I'11 take your liver to sell at market." Thinks I'm challenging him. I'm actu- ally just curious about the rubies, but when he threatens me I smile at him and give a little wink like I would in the mines. A knife flips into his hand. Rules are different up here "Boy, keep playin'. Dare ya. Keep playin'." "Mickey is expectin' us," Dancer tells the man I watch Modjob's friend as he tries to stare me down like I'm some sort of child. Modjob smirks and leers at Dancer's leg and arm. "Don't know a Mickey, cripple." He looks to his friend "You know a Mickey?" "Nah. Ain't got no Mickey here.' "What a relief.' Dancer sets a hand on the scorcher under his jacket. "Since you don't know Mickey, you won't have to explain to Mickey why my ... gen- erous friend couldn't reach him." He moves his jacket so they can see a glyph etched on the butt of his gun. The hel- met of Ares. When he sees the glyph, Modjob gulps and says, "Squab," then they fall over each other to open the door. "G-g-gotta take your shooters." Three others move toward us, scorchers half up. Harmony opens her vest and shows them a bomb strapped to her stomach. She rolls a blinking detonator over her nimble Red fingers "Nah. We're good." Modjob swallows, nods. "You're good.' The interior of the building is dark It is a darkness thick with smoke and throbbing lights-much like my mine Music pulses. Glass cylinders stand as pillars amongst chairs and tables where men drink and smoke. Inside the glass women dance. Some writhe in water their strange webbed toes and sleek thighs moving to the music. Others gy- rate to the thudding melody in envi- rons of golden smoke or silver paint. More thugs guide us to a back table that seems made of iridescent water. A slim man reclines there with sev- eral creatures of the strangest sort. I thought them monsters at first, but the closer I look, the more confused I be- come. They are humans. But they've been made differently. Carved differ ently. A pretty young girl, no older than Eo, sits looking at me with emerald eyes. The wings of a white eagle sprout from the flesh of her back. She's like something torn from a fever dream, ex- cept she should have been left there. Others like her lounge in the smoke and strange lights Mickey the Carver is a scalpel of a man with a crooked smile and black hair that hangs like a puddle of oil down one side of his head. A tattoo of an amethyst mask wreathed in smoke winds around his left hand. It is the Sigil of a Violet --the creatives--so it is always shifting Other violet symbols stain his wrists. He's playing with a little electronic puz- zle cube that has changing faces. His fingers are fast, thinner and longer than they should be, and there are twelve of them. Fascinating. I've never seen an artist before, not even on the HC. They're as rare as Whites "Ah, Dancer," he sighs without looking up from his cube. "I could hear you from the drag in your step." He squints at the cube in his hands. "And Har- mony. I could smell you from the door. my darling. Terrible bomb, by the bye.
