“Okay then,” I said. “I’m piecing this story together. The boy used to work at Central. Apparently, he pissed on his supervisor’s shoes so badly that he got himself posted out here.”

  “He didn’t get reassigned for bad behavior.”

  “Aha,” I said. “So, you’ve been dating this boy for years?”

  “No, not really. We went on a few outings—”

  “But nothing!” I laughed. “Girl, remember who you’re talking to.”

  She frowned and looked down at her shoes. We trudged along for a while. Etta had never been as good at lying as I was. She certainly wasn’t good enough to fool an old master like myself, and she knew it.

  “Okay,” she said. “We met at Central, we had a few dates, and then when I came out here, we got separated. And that was that, or at least I thought it was.”

  “Oh,” I thought, sensing something new here. “Wait a minute, are you telling me he followed you out here?”

  “I wouldn’t say that, not exactly.”

  “Wait a minute now. Let’s get this straight. Did he request a transfer to Dust World?”

  “He might have…”

  I laughed. “There’s only one reason a boy would request a transfer from a place like Central to this shithole.”

  She threw me a glare at the term shithole, but she didn’t argue with it. No one really could.

  “That’s because,” I went on, “he was hot to check up on his little Etta.”

  She sighed. “You make it sound so tawdry.”

  “No, actually, it makes me like the boy a bit. He seems to know what he wants, and he’s willing to sacrifice for it. That’s never a bad thing in a father’s eyes.”

  “But belonging to Hegemony is...”

  “Yeah, well, that is a problem,” I admitted.

  “You can’t kill him, Dad,” she told me again. “If you do, I’m not going to speak to you for years.”

  “Years, huh…?” I said, and I rubbed at my chin for a bit.

  She looked alarmed all over again. “And if you perm him, that’s it for us. I’ll have no father from that day onward!”

  “Oh…” I said, and I began considering another plan.

  I’d been thinking that it might be worth it if the price to pay was a few years of shunning. Sometimes, I didn’t see her for years as it was. There was no point in just killing him without finishing the job, so now that Etta had made it clear that wasn’t an option she would accept, I dropped the idea… for now.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “So, we’ve got a starstruck security hog who used to check you into the lower depths underneath Central. He probably watched you walking by to the labs every day. You two flirted a bit and then eventually fell in love.”

  Etta seemed embarrassed. “Daddy…”

  “I’m just piecing it all together. One day, you changed into a new body and disappeared. What’s a boy to do? Maybe he tried to find you. Maybe he got access to some security files, huh? He found out somehow that you were out here at Dust World, that you had relatives out this way…”

  “Dad,” she said, “hold on. Let me have my say.”

  “I’m just hypothesizing, here. Then he decided to get himself transferred out to Dust World. Now, that’s got to be the easiest thing to do for any hog. Everybody who works out here puts in a transfer request instantly, just waiting for the next fool and/or victim to get sent to this dismal butthole of the universe. So, pretty quick-like, Derek got his wish and came out here. What was his reaction when he saw you and noticed how different you look?”

  “He was shocked,” she admitted, “but kind of in a good way. I think he kind of liked the changes. Before, I was as tall as he was, but now he’s taller.”

  I smiled. It was true. Etta’s original form was rather impressive. Amazon-like. She’d been a brute of a girl, taller than ninety percent of Earth’s women at least. She’d never been skinny either. She’d been rather stocky in her build—still pretty, mind you, but definitely bigger than average.

  All that was my fault, of course. With a two-meter tall dad, she’d followed my genetics in that regard. But girls rarely wanted to be big. They usually wanted to be small and cute—that sort of thing.

  Well, her new regrown form was exactly that—a bit smaller and a bit cuter than the old one. She seemed to have a good handle on living in this new body of hers, which admittedly looked like the old one, but which wasn’t quite the same. I was glad she’d come to like herself again.

  This hog-boy Derek must have been all grins and giggles. He’d come out here looking for his smarty-pants Amazon girl—but found something better.

  “I have to admit,” I said, “I’m slightly impressed.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, if this guy Derek worked so hard to find you and has been willing to put up with living in the desert to be near you… that definitely puts some points on the board in my book.”

  “You haven’t met him yet.”

  “I know, I know. I’m reserving final judgment, but I like a boy who shows dedication and a willingness to roll with the punches. That’s a very good thing for anyone who’s involved with our family.”

  Etta couldn’t help but agree.

  Right about then, we came into view of the gateway posts. Sure enough, there was a lone hog standing there, looking bored and hot. He stood under the shade of one of those big, waxy, orchid-looking trees that were the size of saplings. The big blossom, which was bigger than a man’s head with flesh-like petals spread wide, loomed above him. The plant provided just enough shade to block out the rays of the local suns.

  “Hey, Derek!” Etta yelled.

  He left his post and waved to her. They approached one another. Then Derek caught sight of me, and he frowned a bit.

  “Etta?” he said. “Don’t tell me this is—?”

  “Yes,” she said, “it’s my father.”

  It took me a moment to realize that Derek, in his mind, had never met me before. Sure, he’d checked Galina’s tapper and mine as we stepped through the post late one night, but we’d been wearing illusion boxes then. I’d looked like some tall, lumpy farmer, dragging my frumpy wife along. I hadn’t looked like James McGill at all.

  Today, I wasn’t bothering with any such disguises. The only fakery about me was the big Georgia grin I’d pasted on my face as I met the hog who’d recently deflowered my daughter.

  “That’s right, Specialist… uh…” I said, realizing I didn’t know the hog’s last name.

  “It’s Jensen, sir. Derek Jensen. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  The hog stuck out his hand. With only a moment’s hesitation, I grabbed it and pumped it.

  The two of us smiled at each other, and Derek had no idea I was fantasizing about murder.

  But I think Etta did. She was watching the two of us, her eyes darting back and forth quickly, wondering if anything unpleasant was about to happen.

  But I kept talking nicely with Derek, and he did the same with me. He made sure to be respectful and complimentary. He went on about how I’d raised the finest daughter he’d ever seen.

  Slowly, Etta began to relax. She was starting to hope that there would be no violence—at least not today.

  -12-

  Less than a week later, the four of us set out to return to Earth. We did it in two staggered ways. This required quite a bit of careful maneuvering on my part.

  First off, I explained to Etta that Boudica had never been to Earth before, and she wanted to do a little sightseeing. Therefore, we weren’t going to go straight through Central, but rather through the Great Globe of Geneva. This kind of baffled Etta, but then, thinking it over, she realized that I was trying to romance Boudica. After an eye roll, she accepted my motivations.

  We were all supposed to meet up a few weeks later at our family farm. Derek managed to wangle a furlough, so they went off to Earth first. Etta took Derek home to meet her grandparents, with my remote blessings to the relationship.

  Now, if the truth were to be told, I was still feeling a bit resentful about this security hog dating my daughter—but a father’s got to be realistic. Etta was thirty-something years old—pushing forty in chronological years.

  She didn’t look that old… so I pressed a bit. She admitted that she’d gotten herself killed one more time just to back herself up to mid-twenties. All that, just so she could date Derek.

  Talk about dedication. Both these young kids had actually demonstrated quite a bit of sincere interest in one another. Derek had given up a cushy post at Central, and Etta had given up a death. As my mama always used to say, “Don’t listen to what people say, watch what they do.”

  Both of these kids had to be serious about each another. As a consequence, I couldn’t find it in my heart to commit murder to separate them. In the darkest corners of my mind such ideas still lingered, mind you, but I avoided that easy solution.

  I figured that at the very least, these two kids visiting Georgia Sector would do my parents some good. They’d been kind of lonely over the last dozen years.

  Me and Boudica were a different matter entirely. Boudica wanted me to take her to Death World, and I’d agreed to do so. I’d calculated privately that if anyone was a match in sheer bitchery for Boudica, it had to be Helsa and Kattra, the queen and princess of the Death-Worlders, as people were starting to call them these days.

  So, after Etta and Derek had taken their leave, I introduced Boudica to the fake tappers and the illusion boxes. We donned both, simulating the same frumpy pair who’d arrived here nearly a week earlier.

  Then we said our goodbyes to the Investigator and Floramel. They were busy stirring up a fresh new batch of what looked like bubbling turds in a big ceramic tank.

  “Is that Galina?” I asked, wrinkling my nose.

  “It will be. It will be,” Floramel said. “Just give it some time.”

  “That’s right, McGill,” the Investigator said. “At least six weeks, possibly eight. If you’re back by then, we should have Imperator Turov as our guest.”

  “Plenty of time,” I said. Then I left with Boudica.

  Boudica was unaccustomed to wearing something on her tapper arm, and she constantly fidgeted with the rubber sheath that covered her real tapper with a fake one. She seemed to be having even more trouble with the shirt I’d gotten her to wear. It wasn’t illusionary, as I didn’t want any chance of a failure and a big surprise at the Geneva Globe.

  “Why do I have to wear these tight, scratchy, irritating garments?” she asked.

  “Look,” I told her, “there are about a billion cameras in Geneva City these days, and I do mean a billion. Every citizen has one. Every street corner has one. Every door has one.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she said. “What’s your point?”

  “So, you’re going to be filmed, categorized, AI-scanned, and identified probably a hundred times between the Geneva Globe and the sky train port. We have to fake out every one of those computers, every one of those electric eyes. We can’t leave anything to chance.”

  “All right,” she sighed. “This better work. But I don’t want to go to the sky train port. I want to go to Death World.”

  “Just straight out?” I said. “Just like that? You don’t want to come back to the Georgia Sector?”

  “Hell no,” she said. “I spent nearly a century in a tank on that property. I never want to see your stinking slice of swamp again, McGill.”

  “All right, all right. Suit yourself. We’ll buy you a ticket, switch directions, and put you on a one-way flight to the second most reviled spot in the human zone of influence.”

  She eyed me strangely. “Why do they call it Death World, after all?” she asked. “It’s not a very enticing name if they want to bring colonists there.”

  “No, I guess it isn’t. The name just stuck. It was originally L-374,” I said. “Kind of a nondescript world. It was taken over by the Wur.”

  “The what?”

  “The Wur are these weird, plant-like aliens. They spring up now and then like a weed in the driveway. We killed their brain-plants that control the rest, but they still have giant growths there. Anyone who lives on that planet has to deal with immense flora, some of which still roam about.”

  “Oh…” she said, “and they kill humans frequently?”

  “Yes…”

  “Not a very pleasant set of living conditions…”

  “That’s right. Lots of death. Lots and lots of death. I’m not sure I ever died more times in one short stay on a planet than I did on that one. Every soldier I’ve spoken to agrees with me, the place sucks. In fact, when we invaded the planet the first time, we were reduced to a single lifter and about five hundred men. We managed to revive the rest back, but it was a near wipe for the legion.”

  “Plants…?” she said wonderingly. “Plants managed to do all that?”

  “Yes, ma’am, they sure did. You’ll see. I’m certain the current inhabitants will be willing to tell you all about it.”

  As I spoke, she suddenly stopped walking and clamped a hand onto my wrist. Now, even though she had a stately stature, she certainly wasn’t a strong brute of a girl in the arms.

  I felt a pinch and looked at her quizzically. “What?”

  “You’re talking as if you’re not coming with me.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I said, “No, no, I’ll escort you there. Just like I promised.”

  The truth was, I’d almost blown it. She searched my eyes, her own darting side-to-side, squinting just a bit.

  I’d been scrutinized by countless women in this fashion. She was searching my face for a lie. As any man knows—especially a philandering scoundrel like myself—a suspicious woman has a lie detector built right into her head that’s superior to anything the AI boys have yet concocted.

  At last, she seemed satisfied. “All right,” she said, “I’ll chalk it up to your general idiocy. Let’s continue.”

  We went through the gateway posts and arrived moments later. The bustling halls of the Geneva Globe struck Boudica hard. She halted, gaped, and swiveled her head around like an owl for about a minute. She was in sheer disbelief.

  “This is an amazing structure,” she said.

  “Yep. Over the last century or so, things have moved along a bit on old Earth.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she admitted, “but it’s also an ostentatious display of stolen wealth.”

  That was Boudica for you. If you showed this girl a golden fork, she’d mourn the mountain from which the gold had been stolen, or maybe the unfortunate soul she imagined had been forced to mine and craft it. There wasn’t a construction, man-made or divine, within which she couldn’t find some injustice to lament.

  After a few moments of gawking, I coaxed her into moving again. We left the Dust World posts, passing the lone attendant who was shaking his head and giving us odd looks. He scanned our tappers, realized we were the couple who had left about a week ago, and waved us through. He cracked a few jokes about the “worst honeymoon in the history of humanity,” but neither Boudica nor I paid him any mind.

  I led Boudica toward the central booth to buy tickets to another infamous world. But before we got there, a shout broke out. It was a shout of recognition, of alert, of alarm.

  Turning, I saw an approaching group. To my surprise, it wasn’t just a pair of hogs. It was a big team, and leading them was a Saurian.

  This particular Saurian was all too familiar. It was Raash.

  Trailing him were no less than six armed men. With a pointed claw, matched by his upright tail, he directed the hogs to spread out and move cautiously.

  “That’s the one,” Raash rasped, his voice dripping with the glee of a predator closing in on its prey. “Don’t be fooled. He’s not fat. He’s not slow. It’s an illusion. He is: the McGill.”

  Boudica stood tall beside me. “Kill them, McGill,” she said. “Kill them all. I order it. I command it!”

  “Uh…” I said, “That’s kind of a tall order, ma’am. I count seven of them, and they’re armed. We aren’t. Maybe we should try talking first, huh?”

  “Talking? This isn’t the time for talk. It’s the time for action. I won’t be captured to have my brain ripped out again. I won’t!”

  “Okay, but right now, you need to shut up,” I told her. She threw me a glance full of instant hate. I lowered my voice. “If you want to get out of here, I need you to do one thing.”

  “What?” she snapped.

  “Take off your top.”

  -13-

  Boudica hesitated for only a moment before she whipped off her shirt, a garment she’d hated all along anyway. While she was doing this, I reached across to her bare midriff and flipped off her illusion box.

  This display caused the hogs, who were now converging on us from several directions, to misstep. Some of them even staggered.

  Somehow, I’d changed a dumpy middle-aged woman into a topless stunner, and that transformation had stopped them in their tracks.

  “That doesn’t look like Galina Turov, sir,” one said to Agent Raash.

  Raash halted as well, glaring at me. “What have you done, you chattering apes? Are you both falsities?”

  “Uh… what?” I asked.

  “Have you been duped into misrepresenting yourselves?” he demanded. “For the benefit of a tall ape that befouls every tree he squats in?”

  I’d finally managed to gather from Raash’s odd statements that he was wondering whether I was really James McGill or not.

  I threw my hands high and haphazardly, shaking my head. “I’m nobody, sirs,” I said. “Just a farmer from Wisconsin who—”

  “Silence,” Raash interjected. “I know of your device.”

  He stepped forward, reaching out. Had it not been for the half dozen guns aimed at my face, I might have made a move. As it stood, I was tempted to face-plant Raash just for fun—but I thought the better of it. It wouldn’t have been fair to leave Boudica on her own, while I died in a hail of power bolts.

  So, I let him switch off my box. There I stood, James McGill in the flesh.

  Raash smiled, revealing more teeth than seemed natural. “So,” he began, his foul breath washing over me, “I have captured you. What is this female? Another trick?”