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one, there was a good chance no others were in his immediate vicinity. He had an opening now, certainly.
    As he slogged onward he wondered how Jiminy was doing. When next they met, an angry Whispr would have a few choice words for his leggy friend. Abandoning him like that. Why, it would serve him right if the cops picked him up and took him in for interrogation.
    Something stung his right leg. He flinched but kept moving. Farther inland and higher up in the warm waters of the Savannah or the Ogeechee Rivers there was always the chance of encountering piranha. In their vicinity he would still be okay so long as he refrained from splashing around too much. The bite he had just incurred might have come from one of the nastier river bugs that had migrated north along with their larger tropical cousins the snakes and birds. What he really feared was the candiru, though cases involving that horrific little parasitic fish were still largely confined to the more seriously flooded Deep South.
    He was feeling pretty good about his prospects until he saw the jaguar.

3
    Just the nose.
    Fixing it wouldn’t require a meld. Not even a formal manip. Half the professionals in her tower were qualified to do the work. Rajeev would probably do it for free. Any man who could do a full limb graft (bone, cfiber, organotitanium—your choice of materials and colors, easy financing, no interest for six months) could certainly shorten a nose. For more than a year now his interest in her had encompassed all regions below the nose with an eye toward performing a procedure less complex but just as personal as a meld. They had gone out several times. He was good company, as were several of the other doctors and surgeons who had offices in the same tower. Ingrid preferred him to many of her colleagues because he was less inclined to talk business on a date. If only he could somehow resist the urge to talk cricket. Compared to the favored game of his ancestral homeland, the nuances of infectious diagnosis were a simple matter to explain.
    She knew she was natural-prettier than the average physician. What had been a burden in residency had carried over into private practice. There were prospective patients who hesitated to place themselves andtheir illnesses in the hands of a doctor who was more attractive than the majority of the population. Especially one who was a Natural. Some male patients tended to be either too reluctant or too eager to submit to examination. Age would take care of both problems, she knew. But for now it remained an ongoing concern. Patient unease, however, tended to diminish as her reputation grew.
    Despite the opinion of friends that she leave her nose alone, she was still tempted. She was aware of the importance of imperfection. Nowadays, when anyone could be perfect, perfection was impossible to define. And perfection was the least of it. Pay the appropriate license fee and you could undergo a full cosmetic meld that would leave you looking like anyone you wished. After an initial flood of Marilyn Monroes, Sophia Lorens, Clark Gables, Belmondos, Rais, Washingtons, and others, the popular trend in purely cosmetic melding (for those who could afford it) had shifted to historical figures. That fad too had soon waned. It was all very well and good to look like the Berlin bust of Nefertiti—until four of them showed up at the same melding-out party.
    As the skills of gengineers and surgeons had improved exponentially, cosmetic manips had given way to practical ones. One of the first casualties of the new, more advanced procedures had been traditional sports. To be a three-hundred-kilo lineman was fine on the football field, but rendered the majority of one’s daily life uncomfortable as well as difficult. What was the point in undergoing a meld to be two meters tall when the next meld raised the average height of basketball centers to three meters? You could dunk, but you couldn’t enter most buildings. Or buy clothes, or ride the