an international and intergalactic zone known as Portland. Portland has its own administration, customs, and police. Biologic inspection and quarantine measures are enforced by the DNA police force. These are highly specialized officers qualified in every branch of medicine, authorities on every disease and drug in the galaxy.
'They are armed with the most sophisticated weapons: Infra-Sound and DOR guns, fear probes, death guns that can be adjusted to kill, stun or disperse, and devices shooting tiny pellets of nerve gas and toxins.
'There officers are highly skilled interrogators, trained in telepathic techniques, equipped with the most advanced lie detectors, with readings taken from the sensitive reactions of living creatures: this flower droops at a lie, and this octopus turns a bright blue.
'In certain cases where the subject has been trained to circumvent telepathic probes and lie detectors, and where time is short (a nuclear device must be located and deactivated), the DNA interrogators have recourse to injections of stonefish venom. This poison produces the most intense pain known. It is like fire through the blood. Subjects roll around screaming.
'And here, in this syringe, is the antidote which brings immediate relief.'
On screen an impassive interrogator holds up a tiny syringe filled with a blue liquid.
A man with a wrinkled old-woman face and toothless mouth was bending over him, his head ringed by a halo of blue light.
'Well, young guy, it's a good thing I happened along.' He picked up the spark gun and hefted it. 'Now this little trick could fetch a right price in the right place....'
The stranger tried to stand up and fell backward, hitting his elbows.
'Easy does it, young feller.' The man helped him to his feet. 'And right this way.'
Every step sent excruciating stabs of pain through his body. His throat ached and he was spitting blood. His legs felt numb and wooden. He had to lean heavily on the man's arm to keep from falling.
'Here we are.' The man kicked at a strange animal in the doorway, a cross between a porcupine and a possum.
'Fucking lulow!'
The lulow snarled and scrambled away. The man inserted a rod with a pattern of holes into the lock and the door opened into a dingy hallway with stairs at the end.
He guided the stranger into a room to the right of the door. The window opening on the street was high and barred and the plaster walls were painted blue. The man lit a torch in a socket: blue light, a filthy bed, a sink, table and stools.
'No place like home, what?'
He pulled a tattered coverlet of blue velvet over the grimy bedding and the stranger slumped down. The numbness in his legs was wearing off and he felt unbearable shootings and pricklings, like recovery from frostbite. He covered his face with his hands, groaning in agony.
The man held out a tiny syringe filled with blue liquid.
'Shoot your way to freedom, kid.'
The stranger held out his shaking hands.
'Roll up your sleeve. I'll hit you.'
Cool blue morning by the creek, soft remote flute calls, sad and sweet from a dying star. Phosphorescent stumps glow in the blue twilight that hangs over the streets at noon like a haze.
Red brick houses line blue canals where crocodiles play like dolphins. Lost mournful stars dim as spark boys chitter and mewl against his shoulder, a frosty luminescence off their back-sides, cool remote garden, lead gutters dripping, a stone bridge where a boy stands with a sad blue monkey on his shoulder.
