He got up off of his crystalline recliner and flipped the comm open, floating up a couple of metres. "Thomas, what's up?" "Supe, didja see the reviews? The critics _love_ us!" Hersh held the comm away from his head and sighed the ancient, put-upon Hebraic sigh of his departed stepfather. Thomas Aquino Rusk liked to play at being a sleazy Broadway producer, his "plays" the eye-catching demonstrations he and his band of merry shit-disturbers hijacked. "Yeah, it made pretty good vid, all right." He didn't ask why Thomas was calling. There was only one reason he _ever_ called: he'd had another idea. "You'll never guess why I called." "You've had an idea." "I've had an idea!" "Really." "You'll love it." Hershie reached out and stroked the diamond-faceted coffins that his birth parents lay in, hoping for guidance. His warm fingers slicked with melted hoarfrost, and as they skated over the crypt, it sang a pure, high crystal note like a crippled flying saucer plummeting to the earth. "I'm sure I will, Thomas." As usual, Thomas chose not to hear the sarcasm in his voice. "Check this out -- DefenseFest 33 is being held in Toronto in March. And the new keynote speaker is the Patron Ik'Spir Pat! The fricken head fricken bugout! His address is 'Galactic History and Military Tactics: a Strategic Overview.'" "And this is a good thing?" "Ohfuckno. It's terrible, terrible, of course. The bugouts are selling us out. Going over to the Other Side. Just awful. But think of the possibilities!" "But think of the possibilities? Oy." Despite himself, Hershie was smiling. Thomas always made him smile. "You're smiling, aren't you?" "Shut up, Thomas." "Can you make a meeting at the Belquees for 18h?" Hershie checked his comm. It was 1702h. "I can make it." "See you there, buddy." Thomas rang off. Hershie folded his comm, wedged it in his belt, and stroked his parents' crypt, once more, for luck. # Hershie loved the commute home. Starting at the Arctic Circle, he flew up and up and up above the highest clouds, then flattened out his body and rode the currents home, eeling around the wet frozen cloudmasses, slaloming through thunderheads, his critical faculties switched off, flying at speed on blind instinct alone. He usually made visual contact with the surface around Barrie, just outside of Toronto, and he wasn't such a goodiegoodie that he didn't feel a thrill of superiority as he flew over the cottage-country commuters stuck in the end-of-weekend traffic, skis and snowmobiles strapped to their roofs. # The Belquees had the best Ethiopian food and the worst Ethiopian decor in town. Successive generations of managers had added their own touches -- tiki-lanterns, textured wallpaper, framed photos of Haile Selassie, tribal spears and grass dolls -- and they'd accreted in layers, until the net effect was of an African rummage sale. But man, the food was good.