quickly learned that was no way.
âCourse I thought that might open the door for me to sort of find out if Fly would see me as anything other than a dumb kid or a computer geek. That wentnowhere fast. No one can make me feel like a kid quicker than Fly Taggart.
âI donât care that civilization has almost collapsed,â he told me one time when I let him see me dressing, or undressingâI forget which. âI have my own rules,â he said. âMy own personal code of conduct. A kid your age shouldnât even be thinking about such things. Now cut it out!â He said a lot more, but I tuned him out. Lucky for him that his personal code was exactly the same as that of other adults. He called it the âyour actionsâ principle, or the YA rule for short.
Fly was just like all the other adults Iâd known, except that he was a better shot. A full-grown man is telling me what I shouldnât be thinking about. Typical! At least Dr. Ackerman didnât do that to me. But I sure didnât want him to pump me about my marine friends. I didnât want to tell him that I think Fly would rather fire a plasma rifle than make love to anyone. My opinionâs none of Ackermanâs business.
I didnât want the doc to know that Iâd rather be a scientist than a marine. Thatâs probably no big secret. I donât want ever, ever, ever to be a marine. I hate the haircuts.
6
âY ouâll find this fascinating, Jill,â Dr. Ackerman promised as he led me to a massive table covered by a gigantic plastic sheet. About the only thing missing was an electrical machine buzzing and zapping from one of the old movies.
âThere are too many of them to be defeated by firepower!â He sounded like the president of the Council of Twelve from the Mormon compound. But he didnât go on to talk about the power of prayer. âAfter what your friends told us, we must face the reality of an unlimited number of these creatures. The bio-vats witnessed by Taggart and Sandersââ
âThat was before I met them.â
âYes, we were briefed, you know. They saw those vats in spaceâon Deimos, to be exact. The aliens can replace their creatures indefinitely, and they keep improving their models. So . . .â Ackerman had a great sense of the theatrical, playing for an audience that was only me. Reminding me of a stage magician, he reached out with both hands and yanked the big sheet off the thing on the table.
Large pieces of steam demon were spread out on aheavy slab. The table had to be very strong to support the weight. âItâs not rotting?â I said, blurting out the first words that came into my head.
âThey donât decay naturally. The zombies decompose, of course, because of their original human tissue.â He slipped a pair of surgical gloves on and prodded the red side of the big chest lying there all by itself. It looked like the worldâs biggest piece of partially chewed bubble gum.
âThereâs no smell,â I volunteered.
âNo odor, right. Not with a cyberdemon.â
âA what?â
âI forgot. You call them something else, donât you?â
âSteam demons.â
âYes, well, weâre standardizing the terminology for official government science. Now take the cacodemons, for instance.â
âA what?â
âYou call them pumpkins. I confess I like that name myself, what with the Halloween associations, but it wonât do for an official name.â
âDo you have any cacodemons here?â
He shook his head. âThey dissolve shortly after the tissues are disrupted. When we try to secure samples for analysis, weâre left with only a test tube of liquid and powder. So tell me, Jill, what do you make of the cyber . . . er, the steam demon?â
âThe name âcyberdemonâ makes sense,â I agreed. I didnât tell him what I