Greg Bear Slant

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Giffey tries to remember who told him that, and when; but the memory doesn't
come quickly and soon he stops trying.
"It's perking and ready to go," Jenner reports.
"Lets go over it again," Hale says. "What can this stuff work from?"
Jenner gleefully obliges. He puts on an expert military tone, clipped,
precise.
"MGN is a living substance designed to thrive in a wartime environment,
specifically, a high-tech battlefield. Supply it metal, flexfuller, organics,
any plastics, anything but glass or gold. It absorbs nitrogen and CO2 from the
air.
Might be quite a suck if we're low on organics." He folds his arms,
self-impressed.
"There's a cafeteria unit in the building. It might be best to set it loose in
there."
"Organics?" Preston says.
Giffey had deliberately not covered this topic.
e
"It's designed to absorb and recycle battlefield casualties," Giffey says
quietly.
"Mechanical and otherwise."
"Jesus," says Kim Lou Park, grimacing.
"We'll set it on the pharaohs," Jenner says, poking his finger into the air.
"We'll treat them with kid gloves, actually," Hale says. "They're something we
didn't count on. We'll be better off using them as shields and hostages."
That's the first really intelligent thing Giffey has heard Hale say.
"How will we unload the stuff?" Pickwenn asks.
"We're going right into the VIP garage, through the armor, through outside
security, limo and all," Hale says, smiling. "That's the beauty of it. These
folks aren't as smart as we thought."
Giffey expresses no opinion on the matter. The setup does indeed seem sweet,
much better than he had hoped.
But all too clearly, he remembers the sweet deal of the night before.
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SLANT 159
GODSTREAM I
THE MULTIWAY CHRISTIAN NEWS FIBE
NEWS BLAST: SATAN ON THE MARCH, Edition 216
Hideous sex-selected abortions in India and China have led to the death of
300,000,000 (that's three hundred million) unborn female children. Satan is
laughing now! Tens of millions of Chinese and Indian men cannot find wives.
Satan is ready for the next step! The governments of India and South China,
and even of Northern Enclave China, have caved in to enormous public pressure
and are forcing ten million adult men and boys a year to undergo sex change
transformations, to become WOMEN! THE SIN OF MURDER BEGETS EVEN
GREATER SIN!
Meanwhile, the demand for that Hell-spawned and all-pervasive sin called
Pornography (the night-sweats of Onan himself!) in India and China outstrips
the rest of the world! Western-produced and now Eastern-produced pornographic
material accounts for fully one third of ALL PURCHASES in India and China!
Prostitution has always thrived in India, and now is rampant throughout Asia,
but the perverse combination of robots and pornography has led to a TENFOLD
INCREASE
IN PROSTHETUTION, the use of robot sex surrogates! These prosthetutes, also
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known as whorebots and sexbeiters, are manufactured in Japan and
Thailand. Satanic mechanical sex temptresses have been invading our shores and
despoiling our youth for over twenty years!
SODOM AND GOMORRAH WERE PIKERS! Can anyone deny that the end is near? BIBLICAL
PROPHECY POINTS TO THE REAL ENDTIME! SATAN HOODWINKED
US IN 2000 AND AGAIN IN 2048!
JESUS IS RACING TOWARD US LIKE A FIERY LION, AN AVENGING COMET
SOAKED IN GASOLINE!
TAP THIS BU'ON TO MAKE AN INSTANT CONTRIBUTION FROM YOUR
GOVERNMENT UNEMPLOYMENT FUND. ONLY THE GENEROUS WILL BE
LAUGHING WHEN GOD'S WRATH SWALLOWS THE EARTH!
COME TO GREEN IDAHO, GOD'S LAST FOOTPRINT ON EARTH!
Jonathan walks into his wife's hospital room. Pale blue cloth curtains in a
circle around the bed ripple with a light breeze scented like a pine forest.
There are five other patients in this bloc, but he can hear none of them; no
conver-
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GREG BEAR
sations, no coughing or moaning. Chloe is silent as well. She has eaten
breakfast and stares with grim determination at nothing.
Her body is filled with a new set of monitors, these directed from outside
rather than operating autonomously. They are trying to find an explanation for
her condition. The probe receiver hangs from the ceiling on a narrow track,
and a small cord leads from the receiver to a silver spot behind her left ear.
This, he realizes, is a medical-grade plug. It could also be feeding her
soothing impulses. Even with her eyes open, she might be asleep.
He almost dreads the possibility she is awake. Walking into her room is like
going before a judge. He has always been very sensitive about criticism,
especially from Chloe; he has always been extremely careful not to do anything
that might merit her anger.
She does not seem to see him.
"Hello," he says softly. "How are you?"
"Like shit," she snaps and her face tightens, lines dragging the edges of her
lips down. This makes her look much older. She looks like a female villain in
an old Disney vid, hard, sexless, and bitterly angry.
"I've talked to the doctor. She isn't sure what happened."
"Isn't she?" Chloe asks flatly.
"Nobody is. There seems to be something going around."
"Good, Jonathan. Never blame yourself."
Jonathan halts his slow, cautious progress into the room one step from the
side of Chloe's bed. She is not well, he tells himself. There will be a
lingering aura of her collapse. He will not let himself fall victim to her
off-center affect.
"A lot of people are becoming ill," Jonathan says, his voice rough. "Nobody
nows why."
"I'm as healthy as a horse. It's my sou/that has bootprints all over it."
"I know it hurts," Jonathan says, barely a whisper. He starts to take that
last step, to stand beside the bed, but she jerks her head and stares at him
with the glassy eyes and wooden expression of a puppet. "God damn you," she
says flatly.
Jonathan stops. His mouth goes soft and his tongue seems to fill the space
behind his jaws, dry and gummy. His eyes close to slits and he can barely see
her beyond a light-beading film of tears.
"You've been pushing me since we had Hiram and I'm sick because of it."
He can say nothing to this. He tries to tell himself that she is not well,
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that the woman he loves and who mothered his children, the woman with whom he
has slept in bed almost eight thousand times, and with whom he has made love
at least two thousand times, would not use these words, this voice. Chloe has
become someone else and this person will soon go away.
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