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said, putting on her bedtable a self-playing, voice- activated cassette of some music she had once said she liked. Prince, of course.
    She looked at me strangely for a second or two. I guessed at first she was pretty doped up. But it wasn’t that.
    “Okay, I suppose. They tell me that with some spinal regeneration, I’ll be good as new. How’s the book coming?”
    “All right. I’m showing it to some people. Got some nice comments, a few nibbles.”
    Speech ceased between us for a minute, while I chewed my cheek and remembered that awkward silence in the back room at La Pomme. But this silence, unlike the other, seemed empty of potential, a dead end.
    “Why didn’t you visit sooner?” she finally asked.
    “I wanted to,” I said. “I stopped by five times, but couldn’t come up.”
    “Tell me why,” she said stonily.
    “Because I felt—I feel—responsible for what happened to you,” I said, as my insides knotted.
    She sighed. “I know. And you are. I just wanted to hear you say it. They caught the techie at Matagorda who sabotaged my chute. The deal was made over the phone, and he was paid in cash. The police can’t trace anyone else involved. But the circles you and I move in are small and vicious, and people love to pass on bad news. Everyone knows it was Jasmine and her friend Trollinger.”
    I felt a wall building itself between us, each word of hers a brick.
    “You could have told me about you and her,” she said. “I might have been more careful somehow if I knew her type.”
    “I know. I know now.”
    She turned her head away. “You’d better go. And don’t come back.”
    So I left.
    Outside the sky was empty.
     
     

 
    As part of my perverse uncommericalism, I decided to switch protagonists between every story in this abortive series. Lois McMaster Bujold I ain’t. But 1 did feel it allowed me to view my decadent island resort from a variety of coigns. Here, we get political.
    The current “clash of civilizations,” if it even exists in actuality, is, of course, not a new issue. Even twenty years ago, when I wrote this story, any SF writer worth his or her radioactive salts would have observed and predicted even greater friction between postmodern cultures and more traditional ones. The continuing relevance of this story, despite some outmoded players, is depressing.
    As William Gibson has brilliantly observed, “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” But Bill didn’t note this till circa 1999! Note also that this story stealthily precedes Bruce Sterling’s “Are You For 86?” from 1992.
     
    A GAME TO GO
     
     
    That was the year all the women were dressing like Robin Hood, only in shades and synthetics that outmoded hero would never have countenanced. The basic outfit was boots, tights, abbreviated tunic, wide belt, and a little cap, feather optional. No fashion elements that hadn’t been recycled a hundred times before throughout history. The startling part of the look—the area where creative play entered and uniqueness emerged—was in the mingling of outrageous colors and textures.
    Picture neon-red spandex bottoms topped by faux lizardskin. Picture acid-green lurex leggings disappearing beneath purple leather supple as cloth. Picture leopard-patterned plyoskin tights matched with orange fur.
    Picture any combination you can, chances were someone was wearing it.
    As fads went, it wasn’t bad. Flattering to the female form, anyway. So for months I watched them, these feminized Arcadian outlaws, looking rather like Shakespeare’s plucky heroines in male disguise (and exactly how, I always wondered, could the King fail to distinguish that this stranger in doublet and hose was, uh, shaped somewhat differently?), as they stepped boldly off the hydrofoil ferry from the mainland and onto our oil-stained dock of prestressed-concrete, dispersing from this common point, singly or with friends, all over the Hesperides, where, in the course of my duties,