CHILD OF FORTUNE

Chapter 5

For the next two weeks, the Yggdrasil served as a secure and comforting home base for my still tentative explorations of Edoku; here I had shelter and toilet facilities at hand, and cuisine could be ordered up in the hotel refectory or even for delivery to my room without requiring knowledge of the locations or menus of the city's numerous but outre and more often than not well-camouflaged restaurants.

I say the city's restaurants rather than the planet's, for after only a few days' sojourn, even a jejune auslander such as I began to adopt the perceptual mode of the Edojin and regard Edoku as an enormous city rather than a small planet.

For the fact was that Edoku had few of the attributes of a planet. There were no continents, no seas, no characteristic gravity gradient, no coherent weather systems, no regular procession of night and day, and no real sense of geographical distance. Within a day or two, I began to realize that the horizon was always much closer at hand than it seemed, for the ersatz geographical features, while betraying no overall relationship of scale taken one to another, were as a generality crafted as miniatures so as to create the illusion of a far larger planetary surface. The totally arbitrary crazy quilt of gravity gradients was also a necessary part of this legerdemain of perspective, for in point of astronomical fact, Edoku was a modest-sized moon whose natural gravity would have been only about .2 standard g, a kinesthetic clue which would have immediately destroyed the visual illusion of a far distant horizon on a much larger world.

Somehow, my penetration of this trick of scale made Edoku slightly less daunting -- at least in terms of locomotion if not location -- and once I began to learn something of the arcana of the public transportation system, the perceptual transformation was complete.

On a planet where gravity varied abruptly and dramatically every kilometer or so, low-level aerial transport was far too risky to life and limb for even the Edojin to contemplate, and so this mode was confined to suborbital ballistic shuttles, and these horrendous craft, perversely propelled as they were by primeval rockets belching flame, smoke, and earsplitting thunder, seemed to exist more for thespic effect than any semblance of practicality .So too the boats, punts, barques, canoes, und so weiter, available for hire on every body of even marginally navigable water.

The occasional small vehicles-wheeled, legged, or gravity floated-which were to be seen in arrondissements where a  system of streets was in evidence might be practical for locomotion within their precincts, but were useless for travel of any real distance. As for those Edojin who rode about on a bewildering assortment of steeds, no two of which seemed to betray a genetic commonality, these folk, as far as I was concerned, were prime candidates for a mental retreat.

Indeed, for the first few days my modest wanderings were constrained, first by the distance I could cover afoot, and second by the necessity of keeping the hotel Yggdrasil either constantly within my visual sphere or, at most, no further from my sight than a short trail of memorizable landmarks away.

Only when I screwed up my courage and inquired of the domo of the hotel as to how an auslander entirely unfamiliar with the city might explore beyond walking distance from the hotel without becoming hopelessly lost, was I somewhat patronizingly informed of the existence of the Rapide.

Unbeknowst to me, there was a network of tunnels under the entire surface of Edoku, with stations in almost every building of significance as well as cunningly concealed in a plethora of geographic features, though for esthetic reasons, these were unmarked and had to be either memorized or inquired after locally.

Once access to the Rapide was achieved, however, the system was such that it could be utilized with relative ease even by a naif such as myself. In each Rapide station was a goodly supply of Bubbles. These were simple seats mounted\ on floaters and enclosed in the same sort of voidbubble field, used for inspecting the exteriors of Void Ships. Each Bubble was equipped with a chip slot and a display screen.

There were two modes of command. If the cognomen of a specific destination was spoken, the Rapide would forthwith deduct the proper debit from your chip and convey you thither. If one requested a class of destination such as "ho- tels," "restaurants," "mountains," "palaces of pleasure," und so weiter, a complete alphabetized list of same would scroll across the display screen until a choice was announced.

Distance was not a relevant parameter, for the tunnels of the Rapide were maintained in hard vacuum within an inertial nullifier field, permitting enormous accelerations without discomfort, and so once the destination was announced, you were whisked down the mercifully featureless tunnel at tremendous if entirely imperceptible velocity; via the Rapide, no point on Edoku was more than twenty minutes from any other.

Thus, once I became conversant with the Rapide, Edoku became, in practical effect as well as psychic perspective, an endless and randomly accessible succession of possible venues discontinuously distributed by name or category and bearing no geographical or temporal relationship one to the other. The restaurant in which I chose to dine might be a few minutes' walk from the mountain on which I took a postprandial stroll or it might be halfway around the planet. More- over, no matter where I chanced to find myself when fatigue set in, I had only to insert my chip, speak its name, and be safely returned to the hotel Yggdrasil in a matter of minutes.

While the Rapide gave me random access on a hit or miss basis, and while it reduced the Edoku of my perception from a chaotic planetary vastness to an infinite succession of wonders and bizarrities, each in effect a close neighbor of every other, it can hardly be said that such a mode of transport served to enhance my sense of psychic orientation.

Au contraire, while I was now at liberty to wander Edoku entire, my perception of its realities was now, if anything, more fragmented, and so too, therefore, the consciousness informed by same, which went through the rounds of the arbitrary hours and days not merely disconnected from any sequence of time save that of hunger, fatigue, and sleep, but disconnected as well from any topographical map of the territory .

Moreover, my selections of restaurants, palaces of pleasure, entertainments, scenic vistas, and the like, were determined entirely by arbitrary choices from the categorical lists offered up by the data bank of the Rapide, and these listings, or so it seemed, were compiled with no little arbitrary caprice themselves.

Vraiment, I could rest assured that any establishment filed under "restaurants" would supply me with nourishment, but the cuisinary style and venue of same might be anything and everything.

I was delighted at a banquet in the Ran mode consumed on a barge floating down a river in a twilit canyon, bemused to find myself supping entirely on pastries circulating on platters affixed to the heads of birdlike creatures high in a treetop, appalled to be offered a breakfast consisting entirely of tidbits of raw meats and fishes in the midst of an extravagant tantric performance, disgusted to find myself in a firelit cave where the diners, required to doff their clothing for the occasion, were constrained to rip small roasted animals and fowl apart with their fingers, entirely outraged by the establishment in which the cuisine consisted of bizarre living gene- crafted birds and beasts which burbled and chittered as they were consumed, and nauseated by the pungent and acrid savors of abstract cubes of many colors served up in an emporium constructed entirely of gleaming white tile.

Similarly, a random selection of "palaces of pleasure" might present me with emporiums offering more or less quotidian assortments of sexual scenarios, if often conducted in venues of bizarre decor .

But as often as not, I would find myself presented with a selection of gross and mindless creatures whose phallic, oral, digital, and tentacular endowments and sexual tropisms had been gene-crafted for the performance of tantric figures that would have astounded even my mother. And while I essayed a few of these grotesque figures with creatures who were all lingam or indeed were equipped with multiple phalluses of superhuman puissance, and while I had certainly never considered myself an arch reactionary in matters of sexual esthetics, I nevertheless found these experiences universally appalling in a psychic sense even while enjoying, if that is the word, a multiplicity of orgasms.

"Theaters" and "holocines" could be relied upon to offer up more or less what the categories implied throughout the worlds of men, namely live performances of dramas on the one hand and hologramic renderings of same on the other, but on Edoku, "entertainments" covered a broad spectrum of the sublime, bizarre, boring, incomprehensible, and vile indeed! Even now, my memories remain a kaleidoscopic blur of images, sounds, odors, experiences, and feelings whose fragmentation owes far more to the nature of the realities themselves than to the intoxicants I consumed to enhance, or in some cases mitigate, my perception thereof.

There were soaring dances in zero-gravity in which the groundlings of the audience were invited to join clumsily with the performers, and slow-motion dances performed by mixed troupes of humans and gene-crafted saurian behemoths under crushing gravity in a setting which simulated the imagined surface of some gas giant planet.

There were displays of hopefully ersatz tortures and executions performed in grim stone dungeons and public squares, and a plethora of mock battles between human warriors of various historical periods and creatures gene-crafted to simulate nonhuman sapients of fanciful imagining as well as monsters out of literature and myth.

In a vast amphitheater under pale moonlight several hours' worth of assorted colorful and earsplitting explosions were set off for the delectation of the audience. Another "symphony" consisted entirely of fugal sequences of odors-sublime, outre, and disgusting -- experienced in perfect, soundless, weight- less blackness.

And of course more quotidian music of every conceivable style, mode, and period, intermixed and interwoven with much of the foregoing, but also performed in solemn isolation on mountaintops, amidst desert dunes, on floating barges, even in simulacra of ancient Terrestrial concert halls, where the audience was outfitted with stiff and uncomfortable vestments of white and black and constrained to endure a stifling humidity .

If I give the impression that I passed these first two weeks on Edoku as little more in a psychic sense than a wide-eyed indiscriminate viewpoint, soaking up and recording sensory images with no more self-awareness or analytical attempt at integrating same into the timestream of my spirit than a word crystal mindlessly storing everything spoken into the scriber , vraiment the state of my consciousness was, if anything, even more trancelike than that might imply.

Strange to say, or may hap not so strange at all, I made no friends, or indeed acquaintances, during this period, for I had no psychic energy left over for even quotidian human interaction, let alone attempts to touch the spirits of the arcane and enigmatic Edojin. Not with every waking moment, every quantum of my attention, given over to coping with the overloading of all my senses and perceptions by a veritable torrent of fragmented, novel, and entirely disorienting experiences.

Which is not to say that this totally experiential state of consciousness was unpleasant, even during those moments when the surreal landscape through which it wandered appeared disorienting, distasteful, or even daunting. Au contraire, to the spirit of that young child of Nouvelle Orlean who had spent the last two years in the pursuit of precisely the ecstatic state of consciousness induced by satoric moments of the transcendently novel, this state of perpetual and all-but-permanent intimacy with wonder was the blissful perfection of all that I in my wildest imaginings had hoped the vie of a Child of Fortune would be.

It is therefore, upon reflection, not so surprising, ne, that my mind had no place for thoughts of exploring means of securing ongoing wherewithal, nor that a young girl in such a state of ecstatic intoxication with wonder itself, and a girl, moreover, who had never had to pay much attention to value given for value received in the bargain, was hardly in a frame of mind to give much thought to the price of wine in Xanadu.

***

Out of this trance I was at last inevitably awoken by a rude karmic satori.

One day upon awakening and completing my toilette, I paused by the counter in the lobby of the Yggdrasil as had become routine to have the next day's rent debited from my chip, As always, the domo of the hotel inserted it into his credit slot.

But now a garish sound issued forth, something like a loud mechanical buzz, and something like a lip-vibrating brak of chastisement.

I leaped backward at this boorish and insulting noise, but the domo, far from being startled by this event,' assumed an air of prim and knowing disapproval, directed not at his obviously malfunctioning equipment but at my own person.

"Quelle chose?" I demanded.

"Quelle chose? Voila, meine kleine urchin, your credit balance the mathematical perfection of absolute zero has now achieved."

"Impossible!" I cried. "My father assured me that chip was good for two months' living expenses on a planet of mean galactic cost of living!"

"Indeed?" said the domo, presenting me with a printed readout of all my debits, a scroll of daunting length, "And you imagine Edoku a planet dedicated to providing bargains ist? May hap largesse chez papa did not calculate ninety-seven trips via Rapide, four dozen meals of the hautest cuisine, not please to mention this truly impressive plethora of palaces of pleasure, theatrical performances, holocines, concerts, and assorted spectacles and entertainments? Moreover, the Yggdrasil be not some rude country inn on a frontier planet. You may verify the figures by your own calculation, naturell ment, though this might consume several hours ..."

I ran a quick scan of the horrendous and lengthy document, This was more than enough to fill me with a dreadful dismay, a certain sense of outrage and no little chagrin at my own profligacy, as well as to convince me that verifying the mathematics of several hundred deductions would avail me nothing, It was all there, and no doubt I had taken all these Rapide trips, eaten all these meals, attended all these entertainments, und so weiter. The galling truth was that I had never inquired as to the cost of any of these items at the time, and as I now retrospectively learned just how extravagantly expensive everything on Edoku truly was, I had no doubt that I had managed to squander two months' worth of ordinary living expenses in two short weeks.

"But ... but what am I to do now?" I stammered.

"Vacate forthwith," I was told. "A hopper now fetches your baggage."

"But ... but I'm entirely without funds! Where will I sleep? Row will I eat?"

"By your wits, ne, assuming you possess them. Any venue of commerce will credit your chip in return for ruegelt."

"Ruegelt?"

"Ruegelt," the domo affirmed, displaying for my enlightenment three small discs of silvery metal. "Each 'coin,' so-called, represents a unit of credit. "

"But how do I secure this ruegelt?"

The domo shrugged. "Usual means," he said.

"The usual means?"

"Hai," he said more crossly. "Gainful employment, mendicancy, or theft. I am aware of no others."

As I stood there shaking in a state of absolute despair and terror, a hopper arrived and presented me with my pack. Such was my state of chagrin and helplessness that I imagined that this little creature too was regarding me with contemptuous amusement.

Desperately, and without regard for the folly of the at- tempt, I presented my other chip to the domo. "I can pay with this, " I told him.

"So?" he inserted the chip into his slot, perused the read-out, and returned it to me with a moue of contempt. "Valid only for passage to Glade for one Moussa Shasta Leonardo. Sans value on the surface of any planet." His expression softened somewhat. "Naturellement, you can use it now to return home forthwith without having to brave the vie of the indigent Child of Fortune, ne ..." he suggested.

At this, my spirit was sufficiently roused from the timidity induced by its state of helpless despair to vow "Never!"

"Never?"

"Well at least not without trying ..." I said in a much
tinier voice.

"Well spoken, child," the domo replied. "Bonne chance, buena suerte, vaya con gluck, und so weiter. But now you must leave the premises tout suite."

And so I was constrained to shoulder my pack and slink out of the lobby of the Yggdrasil, through the porchways where guests more fortunate than I were taking their ease, and across the rainbow bridge which led, as it were, from the safety and security of lost Eden into the harsh and unknown world of trial and toil, and while there were no angels with flaming swords to bar my return, I knew that from here on in it would be a road of my own making that I must travel.

Chapter 6

I know not how long I wandered in a state of numb dread and formless sullen anger, nor even whether I traversed any great distance from the Yggdrasil or staggered in rough circles, for this was Edoku, where the hour of the day in any given locus gave no clue to time's passage, and the random landscape gave no clue as to vector. Moreover, if Edoku had daunted my spirit entirely before I had found the Yggdrasil, and had seemed impossible to encompass in any coherent fashion before I had discovered the Rapide, now I was reduced to an even more discombobulated state than that of the naif who had first set foot on the planet, for I was cursed with the knowledge of what I had lost, and while the little girl I had been might rail against the outrageous prices which had been her downfall, the nascent Child of Fortune could not entirely escape the perception that she really had no one to blame for this disaster but herself.

Vraiment, what a catastrophe it was! Immediately upon being expelled from the Yggdrasil, the fact that I no longer had funds to secure food and shelter, horrendous though it was to a girl who had never been forced to miss a meal in her life, had seemed to be the full extent of the dilemma. But when I reflexively started for the nearest familiar Rapide station and then suddenly realized that I had no funds even for transport, I began to perceive that the vie of a total pauper in a venue such as Edoku was likely to present difficulties beyond even starvation and exposure.

For one thing, my sphere of operations was now limited to the range of my feet, and what was worse, I had no idea of how to reach any familiar locus by the tedious process of laying one down after the other, for all my explorations of the city had been conducted via Rapide, and I had therefore learned exactly nothing of the quotidian topology.

My only consolation from this perception was that a mental map of the territory would in any case have been useless knowledge, for I had no means of securing food from any of the emporiums I had previously patronized even if I could find them.

Nor would even the magical power to transport myself to anywhere I wished by act of will have enabled me to even begin to seek remunerative employment. For when it came to the ebb and flow of credit, I had been entirely occupied with exploring the manifold possibilities of expenditure, and had not given so much as a passing thought to the process of accumulation.

Indeed, as I wandered aimlessly through the streets and parklands, the public squares and arrondissements of what seemed like commercial activity in a slowly escalating state of agitated depression sharpened by the apprehension of the empty space in my stomach where breakfast should have been, as I regarded the extravagantly dressed Edojjn sipping wine, inhaling intoxicants, and languidly picking at haute cuisine, I realized that while everyone in the city seemed lavishly wealthy, I had never given the slightest thought as to how all these riches were acquired.

Or rather how I might insinuate myself into the economic bourse. I knew that Edoku was a center of the arts and sciences and commerce, and that this, no doubt, was the foundation of the general wealth of the populace, but in these areas of endeavor my only skill, at best, was that of the appreciative connoisseur. Vraiment, I could perceive within my own repertoire not even some skill that might earn me credits in some humbler occupation; I could not prepare even rude cuisine, I knew nothing of the art of waiting on table, and my lack of knowledge of the rudiments of commerce had been more than amply demonstrated. Rumbling myself to the point of begging for alms I might eventually consider if only I had some notion of the graces and techniques of the mendicant's trade, and theft, if not precluded by moral nice- ties, seemed entirely beyond my powers, for I could hardly imagine myself overpowering a victim and absconding with what ruegelt his purse might contain.

Naturellement, I was still in possession of the ring of Touch which my father had given me, and in some venue far less sophisticated than Edoku, its amplification of my tantric puissance combined with what I had once regarded as my considerable amatory skills might very well have allowed me to secure funds as a tantric performer according to parental plan. But here, where creatures were gene-crafted for performances in palaces of pleasure and the sensual arts were refined to levels beyond my comprehension for the delectation of the most jaded connoisseurs of same, even augmented by my father's art, it seemed to me that I had about as much chance of succeeding as a tantric performer as a tantrically unschooled rube from a frontier world would have had in Nouvelle Orlean.

At length, these weighty considerations of economic survival, and even the gnawing hunger in my belly, were superseded by an even more overwhelming matter of immediate urgency which I had thusfar not even considered but which nevertheless had proceeded stealthily beneath my conscious attention to the point where it now intruded into my awareness to a level of entirely alarming dominance. Which is to say that after many hours of wandering, my bladder had finally filled to the point of bursting, and I would now have to rouse myself from my funk and take my first practical survival step. I had to find a toilet at once.

Far easier said than done. Toilets, I knew, were to be found in every hotel, restaurant, taverna, and entertainment emporium in Edoku, and naturellement I had used them often enough. Alas, all of these establishments required the presentation of valid chip of credit as a bona fide in order to even gain admittance, and it was made clear to me in terms of considerable outrage that their sanitary facilities were not available gratuit to other than paying customers.

By the time I had screwed up my courage for a sixth attempt to gain access to toilet facilities after five curt and altogether belligerent rebuffs, this time in a modest taverna carved into a miniature desert butte, I was fairly squirming in agony, to the point where the upholding of dignity was no longer even a passing consideration, and I accosted the domo of the taverna in a forthright whine.

"Please! Bitte! Por favor! Your toilet, kudasai! I have no funds, but I am bursting with need! I beg  of you-"

"The grossity!" exclaimed this worthy, a thin green man in a saffron robe. "Taverna desu! Public jai nai!"

"What?"

"The Public Service Station over the stream and in the woods desu! Ici, nein! The insult!"

"What are you talking about?" I cried.

"What do I talk about? What do you talk about? Surely even Children of Fortune comprend the difference subtle between a taverna and a Public!"

"Kudasai, bitte, mercy upon my ignorance, good sir," I begged. "I'm entirely new at this. I have no idea what you mean by a Public Service Station!"

The domo's expression softened somewhat, at least to the point of regarding me as an ignorant bumpkin in some distress rather than a deliberately insulting churl. "Nouvelle Child of Fortune desu, auslander, ne? Wakaru. Attends, kind: Edoku a magnet for indigent Children of Fortune desu, ne, therefore wir wollen nicht a great display of public munificence to render to same, ne, lest what is already a flood become a tsunami. But Edoku a civilized planet desu, and we cannot therefore allow even such as yourself to starve or suffer disease, and certainly not to be forced to relieve yourself al fresco, ne. Voila, the Public Service Stations, where you will find the necessities of survival and no more, pared to the edge of physical discomfort, but not beyond."

Thanking him far more profusely than his modest aid justly required, I hastened, indeed fairly ran, to the venue he had suggested, and there in the little wood, screened from casual sight by tall hedges, was the first truly unesthetic construct I had seen on Edoku. Vraiment, as if in contrast to every other building in the city, the Public Service Station--or rather Stations, for, as I was to learn only too well, the hundreds of them secreted all over the city were entirely identical -- seemed designed to negate all concepts of esthetics. It was a single-story windowless cube constructed of some textureless gray material, the perfect nullity of its design marred only by an oblong doorless portal.

Inside, the Public was only marginally less unappetizing. All of the interior surfaces were of the same gray substance, entirely unadorned, and the lighting was an unwholesome bluish-white harshness emanating from naked overhead fixtures. The central area of the single room was given over to benches and tables seamlessly extruded from the gray material of the floor; at these sat about a dozen people more or less the same age as myself. The far end of the room was given over to shower stalls, for the doors supplied only a modicum of privacy, and 1 could see the shanks of bathers abluting themselves within. To the right as 1 entered was a counter with a bored-looking elder functionary lounging be- hind it, a long rack holding several dozen gray garments, a series of water fountains, and then a long narrow table piled with strange rubbery-looking gray blocks.

All these accoutrements I perceived, as it were, en pissant, for the left-hand wall was given over entirely to toilet stalls, and to the nearest unoccupied stall I scurried, with only the briefest nod of my head to a young boy in a singularly unappealing gray smock who had lifted his arm and pointed his finger thereto in an entirely superfluous gesture of friendly, if jocular direction.

***

After relieving myself of both catabolic waste products and the chagrin of my not exactly graceful entry , I emerged from the toilet stall to essay my debut into the society of the Public Service Stations and apprise myself of the nature of the facilities and services which Edoku in its magnanimity provided gratuit to indigent Children of Fortune such as myself.

Now that I had dealt with the most pressing matter, I could more exquisitely appreciate the extent of my thirst and hunger, and so I first repaired to one of the fountains, where I surfeited myself on water so perfectly tepid and tasteless as to be remarkable for the very perfection of its blandness.

Food, however, seemed nowhere in evidence, and so I next introduced myself to a group of two young boys and a young girl lounging at the nearest table. "Hello, I am Moussa Shasta Leonardo. My mother, Shasta Suki Davide --"

The younger of the two boys, dressed, like the girl, in a singularly unappealing gray smock, held up his hand to stay the telling of my name tale. "Greener, ne?" he said. "We don't exchange name tales, since we've just started to live the tales of our own freenoms, right, so all we have is the kindernoms someone else gave us, and paternoms and maternoms mean nothing to the vrai Child of Fortune, ne. So in the Publics, you're just Moussa, I'm just Dan, she's just Jooni, and he's just Mart."

While this bizarre mode of introduction seemed entirely uncivilized to me, I felt in no position to deliver a lecture on manners; they seemed friendly enough, and, moreover, I had more pressing needs than the desire to hear their name tales. "Bien," I said amiably, ''as you surmised, I'm entirely innocent of the ways of the Public Service Stations. I was given to understand that food was available gratuit, but I see no refectory, nor even a cold buffet ..."

For reasons which I was about to learn, the three of them seemed to regard this as high comedy, breaking into raucous and ironic laughter. There were half a dozen gray oblong blocks on the table before them; Dan handed me one of them with an exaggerated courtly flourish.

"Voila, your very first fressen bar, Moussa," he said. "you are about to enjoy a unique culinary experience."

I fingered the unappetizing-looking gray thing dubiously. It felt like soap. I sniffed at it. It was almost odorless, save for a subtle odor of something chemical, perhaps formaldehyde. It seemed to me that I was being set up as the victim of some juvenile prank ...

Seeing my reluctance, Jooni took up another fressen bar, bit off a large chunk, and rapidly chewed it down with an entirely neutral expression. "Mangia, Moussa," she said. «Not only perfectly safe, but each fressen bar is perfectly com- pounded to provide optimum nutriment for one human for one standard day."

"But we may eat as many as we want," Mart added.

"Though we may not want as many as we eat," Dan muttered enigmatically.

Properly famished, and at least assured that I wasn't about to poison myself, I bit off a sizable chunk of my fressen bar and masticated it appraisingly.

It had the nontexture of a bland fromage made of cellulose dust. It had no taste at all, or rather, perhaps, the perfectly neutral savor of a wad of wet paper. I chewed it down swiftly and mechanically, if only to clear my palate of this wretched substance, while my companions, seeing my expression, burst once more into laughter .

"It's vile!" I cried. "It's disgusting!"

"Try again and reconsider," Mart said. "you will find it neither vile nor disgusting, but something both easier to consume and more boring. "

"Perhaps you have sampled the art of some great chef maestro and marvelled at its culinary perfection?" Jooni said. "Such art is a triumph of cuisinary esthetics, ne?"

"Well you should also appreciate the art behind the creation of the fressen bar, " Dan said. "Somewhere on Edoku there is a chef maestro who has achieved, through the exercise of daunting skill, total culinary antiperfection. The fressen bar is not the result of cuisinary incompetence; au contraire, it is a triumph, a perfectly nutritious meal perfectly shorn of the slightest hint of cuisinary esthetics!"

"Entirely in keeping with the Edojin's general regard for Children of Fortune," Jooni added, and then, as ravenous hunger overcame esthetic reluctance and I glumly gobbled down the rest of my fressen bar, the three of them delivered up a communal lecture which admirably served to apprise me of my current true status in Edoku's scheme of things and induct me into the demimonde of the Public Service Stations.

Indeed the latter were the perfect practical incarnation of the former, for the Publics were designed with demonic perfection to supply us with precisely the absolute essentials of animal existence and exactly nothing more. Toilets and bathing facilities. A medical dispensary and other minimal healing services. The strictly functional and esthetically dismal gray smocks for those of us without serviceable clothing on our backs. Entirely tasteless distilled water. And of course the unspeakable but perfectly nutritious fressen bars.

As for sleeping accommodations, did not Edoku abound in every sort of public parkland to suit any conceivable taste for temperature, climate, hour of the day, season, and even gravity gradient?

Edoku, according to the social philosophy of the Edojin, was morally obligated to safeguard our protoplasmic existence, but our esthetic and spiritual requirements were the responsibility not of the body politic but of ourselves.

Moreover, we were assured at every opportunity, the people of Edoku would accuse us not of ingratitude on the basis of wounded civic pride should any of us choose to desert their planet for a venue of more lavish public munificence. Au contraire, as a bona fide of their good will in this regard, Children of Fortune leaving Edoku were gifted with a subsidized 25% discount on electrocoma passage in any and all Void Ships departing the planet.

***

Thus did the Publics serve as the salons, restaurants, and bazaars of the Children of Fortune of Edoku, and thus did I become a citizen of the demimonde which existed in the interstices of Great Edoku, if not exactly out of sight of the educated eye, then at least discreetly tucked away in the nooks and crannies.

When I had been a haut turista with a valid chip of credit and quarters in the hotel Yggdrasil, I had never noticed the small gray buildings screened by shrubbery or built in the obscured bottoms of ravines or hidden in rarely-frequented copses or secreted in alleyways between tall towers. Nor had I regarded the occasional figure dressed in a gray smock as anything but an Edojin with a peculiarly outre sense of style; in fact, among the colorful throngs of birds of paradise, such dull plumage faded into effective invisibility, unless, of course, you were a bird of the same species.

Similarly, who was to notice that the parks and gardens and woodlands served as regular dormitories for a considerable population of indigents when these same venues were also frequented by the Edojin themselves, who were much given over to lounging on lawns, postprandial al fresco naps, and amatory exercises conducted in dells and bowers?

Now, however, being barred by pecuniary circumstances from the restaurants, hotels, and entertainment emporiums, and being limited in the range of my wanderings to the ground I could cover afoot, I experienced a perceptual reversal of figure and ground. The extravagant buildings of the urban arrondissements, the pavilions and palaces of pleasure, the hotels and entertainment emporiums, all hardly impinged on the forefront of my conscious attention, for they had now become facets of a society, indeed a reality, from which I was exiled; these now assumed the perceptual role of a background blur, an extravagant kaleidoscopic ground against which I perceived with a vividness and detail sharpened by practical imperatives the quotidian realm of the Children of Fortune which all along had been cunningly hidden in plain sight.

I might not know which fanciful building contained a restaurant or taverna nor the modes of cuisine and drink to be found within as I wandered aimlessly about a relatively circumscribed territory, but within a few days I knew the precise location of every Public therein. The entertainments to be had for a price within this vecino might be a matter of complete indifference, but soon enough I became a knowledgeable connoisseur of the gardens, woods, and parklands. I knew where one might find a luxuriant lawn under warm midnight skies with just enough gravity to keep a sleeping body from drifting, or where one might nap on a forest floor at twilight, or bake one's bones on a noonday beach beside a lake, or secure a bower by a cooling stream in a land where dawn remained perpetually imminent.

In short, I was a typical Child of Fortune of Edoku: fresh from home, out of funds, on the planet only a short time, subsisting on fressen bars, sleeping al fresco, and frequenting the Publics as much to pass the time as to utilize the practical facilities.

For in truth, most of us had little to do with ourselves in this stage of our evolution as Children of Fortune but wander aimlessly about the landscape and public venues, sleep, engage in desultory amorous dalliance, or gather in the Public Service Stations to exchange tales, lore, and gossip.

Most of which involved stratagems whereby we might some- how obtain sufficient ruegelt to either regain access to the restaurants, hotels, entertainment emporiums, and particularly to the Rapide, or to quit Edoku for a less financially demanding planet. That, and methods whereby we might gain entree to the elite circles of Public Service Station Society -- those wiser, older, and more experienced Children of Fortune who had neither gone home in surrender nor chosen to work their way off the planet, but who had carved out their niches in the social ecology of Edoku itself by organizing themselves into small tribes for the communal purpose of securing ruegelt from the throngs of the city.

While these lordly urchins consumed fressen bars only when they were down on their luck, the ruegelt in their pockets could not purchase freedom from the need to void their bowels and bladders, and so they too were required to pay regular visits to the Publics, though by and large they deigned not to mingle with the likes of us.

But we saw them often enough, and for the most part they were quite distinguishable from greeners like ourselves. For one thing, they were never seen to take a fressen bar; even when the necessity did arise, so it was said, they would patiently seek out a Public that was empty for a moment and then scoop up as many as they could carry to consume secretly in their hidden burrows. Nor was this tale difficult to credit in light of the general hauteur with which they carried themselves in our lowly presence. Then too they were generally older and wore either cheapjack versions of extravagant Edojin modes or Public smocks painted with grandiose tribal ensigns, and carried out their necessary business among us with a swiftness and indifference to social niceties that led us to declare that they would have given up excretion entirely in order to preserve their dignity in our eyes if only they could.

Among the true elite of Edoku, however, dignity was not exactly their stock in trade. There were four tribes working the parklands and streets of the vecino for ruegelt and it was easy enough to observe their techniques, though any attempt to ape them by someone not formally inducted into the guild, we were obliquely given to understand, would result in a sound thrashing.

The largest of these local tribes was the Sparkies, some fifteen or twenty strong, who frequented the busy streets and particularly the parklands, peddling tidbits of finger food. While the Edojin could easily purchase more artful fare at any of a hundred restaurants, the Sparkies catered to their immediate whims on the spot, and, moreover, many of the Edojin found it drole to grant their custom to these urchins upon occasion. Similarly did the Tinkers depend upon the aura of quaintness clinging to the repute of the crafts of Children of Fortune in the eyes of the Edojin, for the quality and design of the rude jewelry, paintings, items of personal adornment, and assorted geegaws that they hawked was such that they could hardly have had much trade on the basis of intrinsic worth alone.

As for the Buccaneers, who numbered no more than a dozen, their commerce depended upon certain peculiarities of the ambiguous Edojin legal philosophy which even to this day I find difficult to comprehend. While certain items of trade -- mainly psychochemicals with unpleasant or even dangerous side effects-were legally proscribed to the extent that no transaction involving same could be recorded on a chip, Edoku was entirely indifferent to what changed hands outside the electronic bourse for ruegelt.

Indeed, even the legal attitude towards the smallest of the local tribes, the Wayfaring Strangers, who were straightforward pickpockets and pilferers, was difficult for an auslander to fathom, Any miscreant caught in the act of a simple theft would be deprived of everything in his possession including the clothes on his back by an impromptu posse, but no further sanction would be taken. On the other hand, anyone apprehended for applying violence of any sort in the commission of a theft would be subject to a session of physiologically benign but nevertheless temporarily agonizing torture.

While it was only too obvious that the only feasible means of escaping indigency was to gain entry to one of these tribes, the truth is that I had little desire to do so, for I did not relish the thought of spending my time cooking or peddling, I had absolutely no skill when it came to crafting trinkets, and I had too much pride, not to say moral scruples, to descend to thievery.

To the endless scheming and theorizing on means and methods of gaining entree to a tribe and critical discussions of the comparative merits of the Tinkers, Buccaneers, Sparkies, and Wayfaring Strangers which were current in the society of the local Publics, I was therefore rather loftily indifferent.

Until, that is, I learned of the Gypsy Jokers.

I was lounging about the Public in the bottom of the miniature canyon which marked the border between noonday woods and desert night, nibbling absently on a fressen bar, when two of these legendary creatures made their appearance.

Two boys entered the Public, and without a glance or word to anyone, made straight for the toilets. The one wearing yellow and green divided blouson from trousers with a strange sash I thought must have been quite ancient, for it was so thoroughly patched with scores, or even hundreds, of irregular scraps of wildly assorted cloths that none of the original material was visible. The one dressed in red and blue striping wore a beret of the same sort of patchwork.

But as soon as the toilet doors were closed behind them, the whole place began to buzz with bemused if not astonished excitement.

"Gypsy Jokers, ne?" exclaimed Jooni, who was sitting at table beside me but directed her remark across the table at Rand, a boy known for his devotion to the lore of the tribes, and in truth for a certain pedantry on the subject.

Rand nodded solemnly. "You can tell by the Cloth of Many Colors; all the Gypsy Jokers are said to wear some item made of it. It is said that Pater Pan wears a great cloak of it, though some say a coat, and other versions have him dressed in a whole suit of patchwork, the so-called Traje de Luces."

"But isn't their camp a long way from here --"

"What are the Gypsy Jokers, bitte, who is this Pater Pan, and what is this excitement?" I demanded of Rand.

He gave me a somewhat patronizing look, but of course was only too willing to enlighten my abysmal ignorance out of his vast store of knowledge. "The Gypsy Jokers are a tribe, naturellement, it is said one of the largest on Edoku, and surely the richest, for they ply many trades, all of them with great success. "

At this, my interest was definitely piqued. "What sorts of trades?"

"Crafts, cuisine, all the ordinaire, but also, most lucratively, ruespieling, street theater, circus, tantric performance, the various arts of entertainment. It is said that they have their own village somewhere, an Edoku for Children of For tune, as it were. Or more precisely, for those fortunates they deign to admit to their tribe."

"Indeed?" I said with no little enthusiasm. For the first time, I considered using my wiles to gain admission to a tribe, for the vie of a Gypsy Joker seemed far more promising than that of a Tinker or a Sparkie." And this Pater Pan?"

"You have not heard the tales of Pater Pan?" Rand exclaimed in what seemed like sincere astonishment. "He is their domo, it is said. The wisest, oldest, and most outre Child of Fortune in all Edoku, it is said, if not in the worlds of men. A mage of all possible arts of accumulating ruegelt, it is said ..."

He paused and shrugged, as if for once he could not entirely credit the veracity of the lore he was about to convey. "Other things are said ... that Pater Pan is a thousand years old ... that Pater Pan was once an Arkie ... that he was born on Earth before the Age of Space began ... that he has been a Rom and a Rippie and a Ronin ... that he is the eternal spirit of the Child of Fortune of which the present incarnation is merely an avatar ..."

At this extravagance, I curled my lips and snorted. For as everyone knew, the Arkies passed with the First Starfaring Age, no human has ever lived to be four hundred, and reincarnation is nothing more than a literary metaphor .

On the other hand, the real Pater Pan, if such in fact existed, must be a fellow of no little puissance to inspire such a mythos, the Gypsy Jokers were real enough for two of them to be relieving themselves in these very premises, and I might be willing to credit Rand's tale of the tribe's riches.

"And where might the encampment of the Gypsy Jokers be found?" I inquired, already beginning to consider practical steps to become one of their number .

Rand shrugged. "Quien sabe? Certainly not nearby enough for me to have ever spoken with someone apprised of the location."

Jooni laughed. "you are thinking of becoming a Gypsy Joker, Moussa?" she said japingly.

"1 thought I might explore the true nature of the vie and allow this Pater Pan to recruit me if I deemed, it suitable," I japed back. But as soon as the words passed my lips, I realized that I might not be joking. Legend or not, this Pater Pan, if he existed, was a male animal, ne, almost certainly possessed of the usual phallic equipment, and just as certainly not uninterested in the pleasurable employment of same. And while I had little confidence in the puissance of either my wiles as an erstwhile femme fatale of Nouvelle Orlcan or the as-yet-untested pouvoir of the ring of tantric amplification I wore on my finger when it came to persuading the sophisticated Edojin to part with ruegelt in exchange for my amatory services, surely I possessed at least a certain unsporting advantage when it came to winning the favor of some egoistic tribal guru by the gratis granting of same.

Moreover, while this chain of logic might lack a certain mathematical inevitability in terms of proceeding remorselessly from initial premise to desired conclusion, the fact that at present I had no other quest to pursue or avenue of escape from indigency was suddenly all too apparent. In short, why not? I had nothing to lose in the venture save the present sequence of idle hours and of that I had certainly had a surfeit.

"Come, come, Rand," I demanded. "Surely, with your vast store of knowledge, you must have some clue as to the vicinity of the Gypsy Jokers' territory?"

But for once Rand fell silent.

"Why not merely inquire of them?" Jooni said archly, nodding her head in the direction of the two Gypsy Jokers who had now emerged from the toilet stalls and were making their way past us to the egress.

"Indeed, porque no?" I shot back, rising to my feet, flush with a certain indignation, courageous with rediscovered pride. Vraiment, I knew full well that it was considered gross lese majeste for such as myself to approach even members of a lowly tribe such as the Wayfaring Strangers, but when all was said and done, was I not still Moussa Shasta Leonardo of Nouvelle Orlean, and were not even these lordly Gypsy Jokers no more than puffed-up street urchins?

"A moment, bitte," I said, stepping into their path and effectively blocking them. I was favored with a matched pair of sneers and a lofty cocking of eyebrows.

"I wish to inquire as to the location of your tribe's encampment ..." I continued in a tone far more polite than their boorish manners justified.

"Porque?" the one in the beret at last deigned to utter.

"For the purpose of traveling thither."

This was greeted with snorts of derision and an attempt to sidle by me. For a moment I was tempted to Touch one or the other in the solar plexus so as to remove some of the excess wind from their sails, but I had not yet used the ring, and besides, such a public embarrassment of these Gypsy Jokers would not be exactly politic. Any riposte must be confined to the verbal level.

"I can see from your churlishness that you are entirely unaware of my identity," I told them haughtily. This at least had the desired effect of stopping them in their tracks. "Fear not," I went on, "this innocent ignorance will to some extent stand in mitigation when I relate this incident to Pater Pan." I now had them exchanging glances of some uncertainty.

"You be an intimate of Pater Pan?" said the one with the patchwork sash.

"Precisely spoken!" I told him. "I am his favored inamorata, having wandered from his embrace in a fit of pique, but now willing to relent and grant him my favors once more. " Since this was exactly my intent, the only falsehood lay in a certain bending of the temporal sequence, and was this not Edoku, where the procession of days and hours occurred with just such a relativistic nonlinearity?

The Gypsy Jokers, alas, broke into braying laughter. "In that case," said the beret, "we do know your identity. Vraiment, your name is Legion!"

Even louder laughter at my expense. "Still," said the sash, "such outrageousness is at least the right spirit, and deserves its reward, ne?"

"Porque no?" said the beret. "Let's try her wit, eh?"

"Bon," said the sash. " Attends, muchacha! Where are the Gypsy Jokers to be found ...?"

"Over the river and through the woods ..."

"Where the sun never sets and the moon never shines ..."

"First star on the left, and straight on till morning ..."

"Somewhere under the rainbow ..."

"The circus is in town!"

And having performed this duet of doggerel, they pushed past me, fairly doubled over with merriment, and made their exit, leaving me standing there like a fool, with the laughter of the entire Public Service Station ringing in my burning ears.

Chagrined, outraged, fairly shaking with fury, I stood there transfixed with embarrassment for an endless moment, and then, not quite knowing what I was going to do, but determined that she who laughed last would laugh hardest, I shouldered my pack and followed.

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