She turned onto Hillsborough near the east end of the Hump, across from a nightclub called The Orifice. A corridor of rippling thighs led to its entrance, ending in shimmering labia. A man stood in the opening, still fastening his pants, his upper body clothed in a cloud of gray smoke that billowed up and dissipated about a meter above his head. In the air was a sign: Slave Girls, All Nude, All the Time.

Hillsborough was busy at this time of night; pedestrians filled the street, leaving little room for bikers to ride. Lynn could keep moving, but not fast, not nearly fast enough. Fumes of alcohol and marijuana hung in the air.

Fantasy Island was next up the street. Your Heart's Desire, its sign vibrated amidst holographic palm trees. All Slave Girls Designed to Our Specs. A woman with straight black hair and brown skin stood in front of sea-blue windows, watching people pass by on the sidewalk. She wore only the love beads which hung from her shoulders and ended in ornate jeweled clamps fastened to her nipples.

The Diner was running a special: Eat the Clothes Off Our Slaves! Only 65 Calories! Heavy musk mixed with the air, and fin-music slithered out of The Diner and flowed into the street.

Lynn shuddered and rode on. Slave girls. The very idea brought shame on her mothers; and Lynn, enhanced but human-born, did not feel so very different from the creatures inside. Still, Lynn was a real girl; slaves were computer-made, stupid and proud of what they were.

She tried to ignore the nude holo parlors (Be a Slave! Own a Slave! Your Choice!), and one of her mother Jeanne's Wannabee salons, where anyone with enough money could buy a skin patch with a genetic program to change anything about one's appearance.

Antique inflatable sex-dolls floated above the street.

For a while she tried watching the people as she rode by: men and women, almost indistinguishable in the latest fashion, a mini-cossack with tonsured hair; a woman in a topless pink tutu, with pointed pixie-ears that were perhaps fifteen centimeters long (undoubtedly a satisfied Wannabee customer); others in clothes that ranged from sparse to transparent to non-existent. Heat lights above the buildings warmed the street, bathing it in a red glow.

Lynn felt out-of-place in her skinsuit and jacket, and warm, so warm she wanted to stop and take the jacket off. She would have stopped, anywhere but in the Hump, anywhere but in this crowd of people that wouldn't get out of her way.

The heat began to feel good. Everything felt good; the Hump felt more comfortable, less threatening. By the time she reached La Difference!, she was sweating heavily, and not just from the lights. A soft glow seemed to envelop her.

FEELS GOOD, DOESN'T IT? The voice came from nowhere. Yes, it felt good, so very good. A tingling radiated up into her belly and down her thighs.

WHAT'S YOUR HURRY, GIRL? STAY AND ENJOY IT FOR A WHILE. Lynn looked around. No one was speaking to her.

A black woman, dark as nightshadows, sat with her back against the wall of La Difference! with her eyes closed and legs scattered wide, her blouse pulled open and her fingers caressing pale golden nipples. An albino man in samurai robes knelt beside her and slipped his hand around the curve of her breast; with her hand freed, she pulled his face down to her own and kissed him, then pulled him down to the concrete and pressed her warrior's face to her chest.

Lynn watched the couple, feeling the black woman's passion as if it were her own. Her foot slipped out of her pedal and down to the ground; she would have fallen had she been riding any faster.

OH, BE CAREFUL, GIRL. YOU'RE IN NO CONDITION TO RIDE, ARE YOU? No, she was not. The tingling became a throbbing, and the pressure of her saddle against her crotch kept her attention focused on desire. She got off her bike and walked it to the sidewalk, under an ancient oak tree on the old university campus, where its edge ran along Hillsborough Street.

DON'T BE AFRAID. COME ON OVER HERE, BY THE BLACK GIRL. A blonde woman wearing a purest-white wedding gown approached from up the street; in front of La Difference! she wrapped her arms around a passing man in a mini-cassock and began kissing his face and neck. Her embrace pulled the hem of his cassock up to his waist, and she reached down and brushed a white-gloved hand across his bare cheeks. THE PARTY'S JUST BEGINNING, SEE? COME CLOSER; YOU'LL LIKE IT.

Lynn stepped toward the club. Near the curb her throbbing burst into orgasm; she dropped her bike and slumped down onto a wooden bench. OH, YES; THAT WAS GOOD, WASN'T IT? TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES AND I'LL DO IT AGAIN. No. Can't. Let this. Happen. But her hand found the waistband of her tights. She lifted her hips off the bench long enough to push her tights down to her knees.

GOT ANY TOYS TONIGHT, GIRL? Yes. Lynn opened her coat pocket and felt for her stinger: rounded, hard, smooth. It always seemed to know just how to snuggle into her hand; her thumb sought as it always did for the trigger. The stinger shivered, and the shiver flowed up her arm and spilled down to her breasts. Lynn pulled her hand out of her pocket, pushed her stinger between her thighs.

OH, MY; THE LITTLE LADY HAS A STINGER. I HEAR THEY PACK QUITE A TICKLE. Lynn giggled and pulled her thumb away from the trigger. She pressed the trigger against her clitoris, but felt just the physical pressure; the stinger was keyed only to her thumbprints. That could be changed, but not now; she couldn't concentrate with this voice in her head. This voice--Jesus. She had to get out of there, soon. Her thumb found the trigger again; it felt so good.

I HAVE A FRIEND FOR YOU. A white-haired man dressed only with ornaments of black lace was sitting on the bench beside her, watching; his hand slid up her thigh toward the place she rubbed with her stinger. Jasmine perfume drove away all other street smells. I BET HE'D LIKE YOUR STINGER IF YOU THINK THE POWER DOWN LOW; IT CAN KEEP A MAN STIFF FOR HOURS. LIKE THAT IDEA? I'LL SHOW YOU WHERE TO STING HIM.

No. No more. The stinger quivered in her hand, and he slumped into her lap. His arm slid down into the triangle between her legs and her tights. Lynn looked down at him, frozen. She'd never felt such an intense joy from a stinger before; her arousal must have driven it up to full power. Weren't there always convulsions when stingers killed, or was this charge too intense? He'd taken it full in the face, less than half a meter away. What if he were really dead? A stronger odor mixed with his jasmine, fouling the air; it was the smell of his bowels.

I THINK YOU'VE GOT HIS ATTENTION, HONEY; BRING HIM OVER TO LA DIFFERENCE! AND WE'LL SET YOU UP ON STAGE. Lynn clutched her stinger and spread her arms around the man, her hands gliding over skin slick with sweat. If she held him close, it might hide his death long enough for her to think. Sooner or later, though, someone would notice--probably very soon, considering that the owner of the voice had watched the entire incident.

Alertness replaced arousal in her mind but not in her body, giving her a sense of detachment from herself and the dead man in black lace. The detachment let her notice a second invasion of her body: besides the voice, which must have come from La Difference!, an invisible hand seemed to reach through her belly and fill her vagina, even stretching a finger out to her clitoris. No! Lynn commanded the hand to go away, but instead it massaged her to another orgasm which left her pinned under the weight in her lap. She tried not to gag on the jasmine stink of his death.

COME ON, GIRL; BRING HIM OVER. WE'RE WAITING. She felt a small lump in the top of his stockings and palmed it. Whatever it was, he wouldn't be needing it any time soon. Above La Difference! she spotted a row of cameras; several of them watched her, while others aimed at the black woman and her samurai, and at the blonde woman who no longer wore her wedding gown. That was the source of her voice, she was certain, but from the number of cameras aimed at her, Lynn knew that she hadn't yet understood everything that was happening to her. The dead man must have had his own voice. Still more cameras--were others watching? Was her murder shown live to the customers at La Difference!, even as she sat with the corpse in her lap? She had to get away. Now.

Lynn shoved the dead man off her lap, and he crumpled to the sidewalk at her feet, his hand caught between her legs. Pushing his hand away, she stood and pulled up her tights. It was hard to dress; her clothes were soaked with her sweat and his. She picked up her bicycle, swung her leg over the saddle, and, while still holding her stinger in one hand, she managed to start riding. Its trigger pulsed under her thumb; it was ready to kill for her, and she for her stinger, her true and reliable friend, her gift from her mother Diane.

HEY! THAT'S NOT VERY SPORTING, LITTLE GIRL! DON'T YOU THINK YOU DUMPED HIM KIND OF HARD? She rode as fast as she could in the crowded street, not watching or caring that she bumped into people, only seeking to get out of Hump Town. COME BACK HERE! WHAT DID YOU DO TO PETE? HE'S NOT MOVING!

Near the edge of the Hump she saw Red Riding Hood's Wolf, its sign glowing in the air above the street. Clothes for the Hump! Who Will You Be Tonight? She rode her bicycle into the store, barely clearing the automatic doors as they opened. The doors closed behind her, just missing her back wheel, as she braked to a stop with her front wheel buried in a pile of British redcoat uniforms from the American Revolution.

"Not much demand for those any more, I'm afraid," said a grizzled black man behind the counter to her left. He stepped out into the room, wearing a battered red cape and a blue skinsuit with red boots. A large red letter 'S' swelled to fit a yellow shield on his chest. "Too warm with those damn lights out there." He started to smile, but the smile froze as Lynn pointed her stinger at his face.

"I won't kill you, and I won't rob you," she said. "I just don't want anyone to remember I was here. Got a problem with that?" As soon as she said it, she cringed; even in the Hump, this was an unforgettable entrance.

"You don't need that to convince me," the man said, nodding at her stinger. "Not many people like to be remembered down here, particularly not come nightfall. What can I do for you?"

"Got a skinsuit I can buy?"

The man nodded. "Be a man's skinsuit, tall as you are. Don't think I got one for biking, either; not in your size. That all right?"

"Got some secondskin I can use for a pad?"

"Sure thing. Dressing rooms are back that way," he said, gesturing toward a door. "What color skinsuit you want?"

"Black. No, dark green. Get me a jacket, too, please." Lynn pushed her bike through the door, and stopped when she saw a young white man--she thought he was male--standing down the hall. She pointed her stinger at the boy, but he stared above her head as if unaware of her presence. He wore a black dress and a veil, but Lynn had a sick feeling that he was unaware of that as well. "Who's this boy back here?" she called toward the front.

"Just my clothes horse, is all," the man called back. "Can't afford no slave girl to model that stuff. Got myself a boy, though." She heard the man chuckle.

"He talk much?" Lynn kept her stinger pointed at the boy.

"About fifty words, on a good day. Don't remember what he sees much, either. Don't you worry about him."

Lynn leaned her bike against the wall and dropped her stinger into her pocket. Her head hurt, and she rubbed her brow as she looked at the row of dressing rooms. She knew she should check to see if anyone else was in the store, but at this time of night a costume store in the Hump could very well be idle. Returns would probably start before long, but she didn't intend to stay and watch.

She unhooked her pack from her bike and tried to take it into the nearest room. The doors were locked, with only a thumbpad on the outside. The boy came to life then, and walked to the door in front of Lynn, where he pressed the lock with his thumb. He held the door open for her and said, "Nice day."

"Yeah," Lynn said, staring back at him. "Nice day." But the boy's eyes said he'd already forgotten her.