Smoke

keep away from the sun, not cigarettes. It seemed both a safe and a worthwhile area of study, but it had also proved, so far, quite frustrating.

It seemed to David and Peter that the key lay in the pigment. Pigmentation is what gives our skin and hair and blood and eyes and all of us their color. David and Peter did not think pigment was the culprit, they thought it was the carrier. They thought that certain cancers could be reduced or even reversed if particular pigments could be temporarily eliminated. They had been working on various formulas for some time, and felt they were near a breakthrough, but they were stymied by an inability to perform a real-world practical test.

They had two formulas at this time, both more or less ready to go, neither of which seemed quite to do the job, though there was no way at this stage to be sure. One of these formulas was in the shape of a serum, to be injected into the buttock. The other was a kind of small black cake or cookie, looking much like an after-dinner mint, which was meant to be eaten. The serum was called LHRX1, and the mint was called LHRX2.

Both formulas had been tested on animals, as a result of which two translucent cats now roamed the townhouse on East Forty-ninth Street. Buffy had been given LHRX1 and Muffy LHRX2. These cats were quite startling, at first, for David and Peter's friends from the worlds of ballet, fashion, art, academe, and retail, when they would come over to the townhouse for parties. 'No one else has cats you can see through!' everybody cried, giving in to both admiration and envy, watching these gray ghosts amble around, silent as the fog.

But what was needed, and what David and Peter had been discussing over late dinner when the alarm's red light went on, was human volunteers. The research had gone as far as it could without real test data, which meant actual human beings. Translucent cats can only tell so much. To finish refining the formulas, to be certain which of the two was the likelier candidate for further study, to achieve the breakthrough they could sense was out there, just beyond their grasp, they needed to try the stuff on people.

It was true, of course, that there were two formulas and two researchers, being David and Peter, so that in theory they could experiment on themselves, as so many heroic nineteenth-century medical discoverers were alleged to have done, but David and Peter were not mad scientists. Who knew what side effects there might be, what long-term consequences? Who would be around to record the data if something were to go wrong? And how could a translucent scientist hope to be taken seriously in the medical journals?

No, the volunteers must come from elsewhere, from outside David and Peter and their immediate circle. They had been discussing this problem over dinner. Could the governor of New York be approached, to offer inmates from the state prisons as guinea pigs? Would a tobacco company be prepared to open a clinic somewhere in the Third World? Could they advertise on the back page of the Village Voice?

Then that red light bounced on, and a sudden idea clicked on, a much brighter light, in Peter's mind. He stood, and dropped his napkin beside his plate. 'Our problems may be solved,' he said. 'Just wait while I get my gun.'

3

Freddie put a fax machine on top of a printer and carried both out to the van, juggling them there with one hand and one knee while unlocking the van's side cargo door. It was a pain having to unlock and relock the van every trip, but anybody who leaves a vehicle alone and unsealed for even a second in Manhattan is looking for trouble, and will soon be looking for a new radio.

It may be that the pervasive air of theft and chicanery forever floating like an aggressive cloud bank over New York City had played some part in Freddie's original decision to become a thief. In a different part of the world, where both property and human feelings are respected — oh, someplace like Ashland, Oregon, say — even the scurviest villain will have the occasional bout of conscience, but in New York's take-or-be-taken atmosphere moral suasion goes for naught.

Not that most New Yorkers are thieves. It is merely that most New Yorkers expect to be robbed, all the time, everywhere, in all circumstances, and in every way imaginable. The actual thieves in the city are statistically few, but very busy, and they set the tone. Therefore, whenever a New Yorker is robbed, there's no thought in anyone's mind, including the victim's, of a community outraged or a moral ethos damaged. There's nothing to be done about it, really, but shrug one's shoulders, buy better locks for next time, and rip off the insurance company.

Having relocked the van, Freddie went back to the neatly appointed front office on the first floor of the townhouse, and by the light of his muted pen-flash stacked a keyboard on a VDT, picked them up with both hands from underneath — van keys hooked in fingers of right hand — turned toward the front door, and a bright light hit him smack in the face.

Oh, shit. Freddie immediately slapped his eyelids shut; he knew that much. Don't lose your night vision. Eyes closed, he started to turn back to the desk to put down the VDT and keyboard, but a voice from the darkness said, 'Don't move,' so he stopped moving.

A second voice from the darkness said, 'I think you're supposed to say 'freeze.''

'It means the same thing,' said the first voice, sounding a little testy.

The second voice said, 'Maybe not to them.'

'Them,' Freddie knew, was him. And 'him,' at this moment in the history of the world, was a guy in trouble. Third conviction as an adult. Good-bye Peg Briscoe, good-bye nice little apartment in Bay Ridge, good-bye best years of his life.

It was very depressing.

Well, let's get on with it, then. His eyes still squeezed shut, Freddie said, 'I'll just put this stuff down here.'

'No, no' said the first voice. 'I like you with your hands occupied. Search him, David.'

'I don't have any weapons, if that's what you mean,' Freddie said. At least they wouldn't be getting him for armed robbery, which might count for something twenty-five or thirty years from now, when he first came up for parole. Jesus Christ.

A lot more light suddenly flooded onto his eyelids; they'd switched on the room fluorescents. Still, he kept his eyes closed, jealously guarding that old night vision, the one asset he still had that might prove useful, God knew how.

'Of course you have weapons,' said the second voice, David, approaching. 'You're a hardened criminal, aren't you?'

'I'm kind of semisoft,' Freddie said, quoting a remark Peg had made one night, comparing him to some crime show they were then watching on television (hoping for a little human contact there, but not expecting much).

And not getting much. If the two voices found the remark as amusing in this context as Freddie had in the context of being in bed with Peg watching television while stroking her near thigh, they kept it to themselves. There was ongoing silence while hands patted him all over, and then David, now directly behind Freddie, said, 'He's clean.'

Everybody watches television. 'Told you so,' said Freddie.

'What a trusting person you must be,' said voice number one.

David, who had now moved around to Freddie's front, said, 'His eyes are closed, Peter, do you see that?'

'Maybe he's afraid of us,' Peter said.

'Maybe it's deniability,' said David, his voice receding toward Peter. 'You know, so he'd be able to swear in court he couldn't identify us.'

Sounding flabbergasted, Peter said, 'For Christ's sake, David, him not identify us? Good God, why?'

'I don't know,' David said. 'I'm no lawyer.'

I'd like to see these idiots, just once, Freddie admitted to himself, but he still thought there might be some value in retaining whatever night vision he might still have with all this fluorescent glare greenish-red on his eyelids, so he kept his eyes squeezed shut and his hands cupping the VDT — which was beginning to get heavy — and waited for whatever would follow from here.

Which was Peter saying, 'David, where did we put those handcuffs?'

Freddie couldn't help it; his eyes popped open, night vision be damned. Scrunching up his cheeks against the sudden onslaught of fluorescents, he said, 'Handcuffs! What do you people want with handcuffs?'